Ethical Aspects of Amp Cloning

I like some of his opinions but not all of them. He gives such a great amount of praise to tube amp manufacturers, which is awesome that they offer them, because we all love tube amps..... right?

But..... if you look at what they are really doing (the amp manufacturers) it is

A: original instrument tube amps were modified radios

B: then came modified versions with tone controls and more power

C: other builders/manufacturers copy the ideas..... always

D: guitarist start liking distorted sounds by pushing amps beyond their limits and manufacturers add a master volume

E: manufacturers learn that an overdriven preamp tube is easier controlled for more distortion

everything else is based off of these ideas which weren't really original at all. I mean how many amps are based off a Marshall with an added preamp gain circuit or master volume?

Another way to look at it is most every tube amp uses the same exact tube variations (or lack of) for many decades now.

So I agree that the amp makers should be paid for their products and work, but to say that they have a unique intellectual property isn't exactly true. If they were really creating new ideas they wouldn't be using off the shelf parts and tubes especially.

Voodoo/superstition has always been a big part of music and will always be, from lyrics to players to equipment.

Here on earth there are 7-8 billion ways to look at or think of one thing, but that doesn't change what it really is.

all IMHO :)
 
Yeah you´re absolutely right - to be honest I don´t have an opinion to that topic up to now, but it´s worth thinking about....
 
the point he makes about people buying tube amps, profiling and returning is a horrible thing for everyone - the manufacturers and retail both lose. maybe an over saturation of profiles will eventually cause all that madness to stop? but then again kemper v2 will pop up and they all will need to be re-profiled? Hopefully something will change and fix that problem.
 
If your buying an amp just to profile it and return it to the store, that is an example of being a bad consumer. That kinda practice catches up with you fast and gets you black listed from stores.

Also it doesn't means you have profiled something correctly either. There are alot if things you can do while profiling something can effect tone and behavior, the same goes for IR's.

So if your really looking for something particular, or are constantly advancing your tones and the techniques around your tone. Then you are already putting yourself at a disadvantage if your whole sound is based around something like that.
 
How is what the Kemper and Axe-Fx are doing different from what amp modelers have always done besides actually being really good at it?

I'm sure the modelers these days make amp collectors angry. It's kind of weird that this guy starts by saying that modelers are not as good as real amps and then gets angry for modeler being capable of recreating real life tube amps.

The ethics of it are same as when Napster came out. Times change. This is the future.
 
if the amp companies are smart its actually more profitable. Cause you can liscense trademarks and stuff. It can be much cheaper than having a physical production model. Slowly modelers are winning not just cause of their ability reproduce tone. But the convience factor as technology around music changes.

How many people have adopted really advanced pedal and effect setups that would likely of not happened without a modeler?

Its an example of how patents work too. If its an improvement on something to a certain percentage you can get a patent on it (to some degree). However if your not innovating anything new, they your likely out of luck. If the physical amps want to remain a viable production model they need to bring some new tricks to the table. A good example is the new boogie having native midi.
 
I'll start by saying i get where he is coming from. Doing the buy an amp > copy it > return it thing....is fucked. There's absolutely no defending that type of behavior. But those points aside, I gotta say i don't agree with him. To sit here and tell me that we should all go back to a point in time where the cost of entry into music was buying an amp from the handful of companies putting them out at the price point that tube amps come at (at LEAST a grand you're dropping on ONE sound.), then paying a studio however many hundreds of dollars for a little demo that will probably get rushed out for the more serious projects that studio has going on, all because you refuse to adapt to the current norm and the way things are and because YOU liked the way things were...is selfish to say the least IMO. Tube amps, while yes they ARE the benchmark, are dinosaurs in the grand scheme of things at this point. Cling to a sinking ship and guess what, you're gonna drown! Idk what else to tell ya
 
Obviously the next big step for Kemper would be that a profile also captures how the knobs on the amps work... but creating that profile will most likely be a bit complicated. And for the profiler to be able to measure speaker resonances. Well that's off topic. :)

It's a weird time right now. Seems like whether it's the music industry, wood industry, electronics industry etc. everyone is struggling and pointing the finger towards someone else.

Personally I feel like the world is changing too fast for most industries to be successful right now.
 
It's definitely a period of transition for sure, guess we'll see who the real innovators are bc those are the ones who'll come out of this in one piece :nomouth:
 
One Point he also mentioned was that if you could agree paying royalties, you would have to share them with all the companies involved in the profiling chain- the mike, the mikepreamp, the speaker the cabinet....so literally unpracticable.
I also agree that this is the way the future will like like- but maybe there' s a way to step forward without losing knowledge of the past - like oldfashioned amp engeneering, old fashioned studio engeneering and recording and so on
 
It seems like one of the things hes most pissed off about is money from music royalties. Which honestly has little in the grand scheme to do with illegal downloading, and I will explain why here in a bit. Which he views is likely to become a problem for amp and other gear manufacturers. While I completely agree that if your buying an amp just to return it after you have profiled it or even if you are trying to use a company as your personal gear rental service without paying for gear and using the 30 day return as loophole, that you are a jerk, and a problem that should be dealt with.

Let me explain something about record companies and illegal downloading. We can start with before napster even, with illegal recording. Taping of shows, sharing of copies and even band encouraged spreading of music copies. This started as in inexpensive cheap way to spread the word about a band. Its a tried and true method for bands. Metallica is a big example of this. They not only encouraged copying and sharing music at one point, but I believe they made profits off of taping and redistributing other peoples shows when they where fledgling artists. (though admittedly they might of had some permission at that point, and labor does mean something after all).

Bring Napster and the internet into play. It did several things for music. Yes it allowed people to easily download music they didn't own rights too. It also allowed small bands a method of distribution and publicity. There was music you could get on there at the time there was no other way to get your hands on. Cause it wasn't distributed anywhere else. While people did abuse it, there was actually a hugely beneficial side too it. Music sales soared in fact during all the RIAA complaining about piracy and napster in the first few years, sales where rocketing through the roofs.

Enter the accountants, and lawyers.

So the music industry like most investment based companies are based on projections. The company looks at a potential artist and they make an investment in them. Based on the reactions and the current market they are pushing to get into. So lets say they invest 100k into an artist, with the expectation of getting back 10mill. If the artist does't get close to breaking where they want they pretty much drop the artist or they find a new way to monetize off that contract one way or another (sometimes by selling the contract itself). However when your seeing high test results based on alot of buzz around music initially, They started over projecting the value of artists. It became really easy for some artists to rapidly exceed Their value, but at the same time they where hedging their bets. By flooding the same market with tons of garbage, but they they had equally high expectations for market wise.

End of year/quarter comes, they have a significant profit(200-300% range in some years), but they also have fallen way behind where their projections based on extreme optimism show them. But they are so substantially off their projection marks based off of social polling. So the blame falls on illegal downloading. Certain types of losses related to theft can be monetized off of as a large corporation. Not to mention the music industry loves IP and lawyers. So it becomes a logical next step for them to increase profits. It also becomes a logical next step for them to share the loss, so that their pay is not effected.

How did they share their loss. Well lts face it, artists really don't get shit for their music, they often get treated like slave labor by their record companies. I have seen the contracts and the near slave level of treatment of their artists. So they cut the percentages they pay to their artists from music sales. Not only that but they cut the licensing amounts as well. Radio stations, pay license fees based on what they play too the RIAA and its other related musical entities. Its been that way for a long time. There is also a tariff on recordable media in most countries based on piracy projections. That gets paid too the music and movie industry. They also have projection based numbers on who is the most illegally downloaded artists are. But does the money for those compensations make it back to the artists. NOPE, pocketed by the record execs.

This practice has only gotten worse with Youtube and other digital stream services, Despite the fact that people are buying and paying for licences to view stuff now (more so than viewing illegally). The money that is paid as compensation for the artist does not get passed along. They are then told well you didn't sell enough to offset our expenses. So you don't get jack for cash. (when you see 140,000$ appearance payment and license of talent of usage get pocketed by a record company that shits no joke).

These practices have also paved the way for the indie labels. If your promoted by a big label, your likely represented based on what they figure you will make them. You might have more talent than a bigger artists but if someone doesn't see that in you, they will not take the chances or spend the money to promote you. They will literally let people rot in their employ.

In summary the problem with artists getting paid for music comes more from their labels than it does an actually piracy problem.
Though admittedly i forgot to mention above, part of the numbers they used to generate statistics for project sales off of, is based on people that had close to no likely hood to buy music in the first place.

Hopefully that wasn't to ranty.
 
The fact of the matter is: Digital gear is not perceived as valuable as physical gear.

We might as well use this example for the IR's that I create. If I would have to pay royalties for the cabinet, speakers, mics, pres, converters etc. that I used in the process of making IR's we'd be looking at something in a completely different price range. However the work that I do is more like photography. The way I frame the picture (place the mic) is an art form or skill. However modeling an amplifier is not about that. It's more about science and copying something someone else created.

The evolution of guitar gear is getting smaller and smaller. I'm just happy if 10-20 years from now people still use guitar in pop music.

About hurting amp manufacturers businesses: Most of the guitar amps people use nowadays are old gear or new gear that's made to sound like old gear. Even the speakers I shoot are better if I can find them as old and worn as possible. I don't feel like we're killing the amp industry but better than that we're preserving what still exists now and saving it in a format that still works a 100 years from now.

And I'm sure most of us have a little less respect for the amplifiers and a lot more respect for cabinets after learning the affects of both while using the Axe-Fx.
 
The fact of the matter is: Digital gear is not perceived as valuable as physical gear.

We might as well use this example for the IR's that I create. If I would have to pay royalties for the cabinet, speakers, mics, pres, converters etc. that I used in the process of making IR's we'd be looking at something in a completely different price range. However the work that I do is more like photography. The way I frame the picture (place the mic) is an art form or skill. However modeling an amplifier is not about that. It's more about science and copying something someone else created.

The evolution of guitar gear is getting smaller and smaller. I'm just happy if 10-20 years from now people still use guitar in pop music.

About hurting amp manufacturers businesses: Most of the guitar amps people use nowadays are old gear or new gear that's made to sound like old gear. Even the speakers I shoot are better if I can find them as old and worn as possible. I don't feel like we're killing the amp industry but better than that we're preserving what still exists now and saving it in a format that still works a 100 years from now.

And I'm sure most of us have a little less respect for the amplifiers and a lot more respect for cabinets after learning the affects of both while using the Axe-Fx.
Most of what your capturing is out side of patent protection at this point believe.

Not to mention what your doing partially comes into play as labor. Someone is paying you to hunt down and perform the service of capturing IR's for them, rather than taking the time and money to do it themselves.
 
...it will become unprofitable for tube amp companies to make their products, and tube amp development will effectively end.

Haven't we been hearing this since the mid 70s? There seem to be more valve amplifiers and amplifier companies than ever.
 
If I buy a car that's not assembled, put it together and have a Ferrari. Can I just change the tires and say I've created something new?

Isn't this exactly what happens with any device that has existed before?

Everything created on this planet (good & bad) goes into the big stewpot of mankind, you may profit from it or not, but once it leaves your mind or hands, you no longer own nor control it. You may think you do for a short while but time will change that.

There's a song that says we don't own the earth, we are only borrowing it from our children and grand children!!?? Throw something significant into the big stewpot of mankind, because it will become part of them. (the last part is mine)
 
Interesting discussion - I've often wondered about this - but if tube amp manufacturers' sales really are being hurt by modelling (i.e. people buying a modeller instead of the real amp(s) ), then why have we not heard of any lawsuits? Maybe such litigation is not public knowledge?, and/or, perhaps current copy write laws don't support their cause?, but when has that ever stopped any sizeable corporation from mobilizing their legal team to find some legal angles when revenues are threatened. I'm not convinced modelling is hurting them - and I wonder if it may actually be helping them as it spreads favourable attention to their products from people who would not otherwise come into contact with those products (I'll never own a dumble style amp but thanks to my modelling gear I appreciate what one is and would not have had a clue I'f I'd not owned a modeller).

Re - illegal downloading - yes, it's unethical and wrong, but I think it's incorrect to pin the present state of the music industry and devaluation of music on illegal downloading alone at this point in time. Illegal downloading may be a factor but there is soo many other factors:
- Overall advent of the digital format/streaming services ...
- Decentralization of the recording/manufacture/distribution of music,
- Availability of cheap / hi-quality recording tools,
- Availability of cheap music distribution,
- New options for artist exposure (or over-exposure),
- ...
- Perhaps most of all: Changes in economies and consumer spending habits: a public that just no longer has any appetite to spend 30$ on 10 songs from a given artist and then listen to only 3 for a few years until they spend $30 again on the same 10 songs in another format and so on as was the cycles thru the 60s/70s/80s
It's sad to say but musical artists like the one posting that video need to recognize the reality that making music is not as viable a career path as it once was. Thier plight is not unique as many other "professions" are facing the same challenges. Blaming their whole situation on illegal downloading in 2016 seems to me to be a little skewed.
 
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Whatever........progress brings with it some potential issues. Companies/individuals are either proactive /reactive & adjust with the times if necessary, or they go the way of Blockbuster Video......

I'm sure there will continue to be cool vintage & new innovative stuff I dig, so it's all good!
 
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