Amp Modeling Timeline

ericar

Inspired
I would like to get a correct timeline on amp modeling. Please add to this. I think the first device used to model an amp was the sansamp which was introduced in 1989. I always read posts talking about the POD as the first but Sansamp and Roland were both before the POD with Roland coming out with the amazing VG8 in 1995 ,3 years before the POD.
 
POD came after the original Line6 amps, I think.

I had the Johnson Millennium amp, which I'm pretty sure was the 2nd modeling amp after the Line6 stuff.
 
Depends on your definition of modeling. Early fuzz and overdrive units of the 60's were analog recreations of tube amp breakup. Solid state guitar amps from the 70's were designed to mimic tube amp sound. First real amp replacement was probably the Rockman, which came out in early 80's (used extensively on Boston albums and Def Leppard Hysteria album!). First successful digital modelers were probably the Roland VG-8 and AxSys 212 from Line 6 from the mid 90's.
 
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ART and Digitech had modellers with cab emulation in the late 80's. I had the GSP21, which sounded pretty good for the time.
 
Its a good project. I guess the distinction must be made that my ART MP1 had a built in preamp tube. If you want to do a timeline then it needs to branch between those that purely model, and those like the innards of my Vox amps that had some analog circuitry blended with modeling stuff.
 
Already I can see that with your posts of these products that "modeling" was not started all of a sudden with one distinct unit. It seems that it might be too blurred as to who or what was the first to try and replace the amp and cabinet.
 
yeah so if you do, then things like the sans amp don't count because it's not really modeling anything, it's giving you an emulation. i don't remember much about the VG8 but did it actually model amplifiers? for my memory it was either Johnson or the AxSys
 
The VG-8 was a pretty impressive piece of kit for the time; my Dad got one when it first came out ('95?) and my early memories of playing guitar revolve around that device!

The Roland website states;
"The Roland VG-8 is a breakthrough guitar processor that uses advanced modeling technology to emulate the most popular guitars and amplifiers in music history. Using Roland’s Composite Object Sound Modeling (COSM) technology, the VG-8 combines multiple "sound objects"—like double-cutaway guitar bodies, vintage tweed amplifiers, and humbucking pickups—to create a perfect reproduction of these components that can be played from any steel-stringed guitar with a Roland GK-2A pickup. The VG-8 also has a built-in polyphonic pitch shifter for creating 12-string guitars and open tunings as well as a complete digital effects processor and parametric EQ."

From memory you can model pickups, pickup placement and amplifiers but you don't have a lot of control over the "deep" parameters in the amplifiers. The GK pickup system allowed for some pretty cool guitar synth stuff too; there's more information at the link below.

http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=cf1567ea86b0a1e7e466b0e71f990031&topic=88.0

I should pull it out and do a side by side with the Axe-Fx for fun :p
 
I owned an Line 6 AX2 (successor to Line 6 AxSys) in the late 90s.
 
The first digital amp modeler with cab sim I can recall is the Yamaha REX50 (mid-late 80s). Any other device I can recall prior to this was analog.
 
Effects only , don't remember cab sims or amp modeling. I had one and it was kinda cool for the day. Really ugly looking though.

Distortion for guitar was one of the algorithms. Being one of the first digital distortion guitar amp simulations on the market, the distortion algorithm was rudimentary. But it did have digital distortion designed for guitar (which could be dialed from clean, to crunch, to high gain) with an equally rudimentary cab sim filter. I had one as well. The aliasing it produced was comical.

For this tread, I am only concerned with digital products that tried to emulate guitar amps, no matter how early and primitive. IMO, the REX50 was most certainly part of the evolutionary chain of digital modeling.
 
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