Using clean amps without a cab = good?

Jason Scott

Fractal Fanatic
I've been playing around with clean tones lately and noticed some amps sound quite good, if not great, without a cab. Obviously this doesn't work for gainy stuff, but cleans? Sure, why not? Surely I'm not the only one who's noticed this?

Here's a sample using the Deluxe Tweed model:

 
One of my favorite presets styled after Nile Rodgers is just a compressor, eq and reverb. No amp or cab.

Cool. I tend to like what various amps bring to the table tone wise, but to my ears cabs can obscure the intricacies and nuances of the tone.
 
For cleans, I usually branch off the signal after the amp and put one through a CAB block and leave the other alone (or maybe put a filter to take out some of the nastier highs), and then blend back together. You can effectively adjust the ratio to taste using levels and really get the best of both worlds this way.
 
Yeah, cabs seem to make a lot less of an impact on clean tones, sounds good, so why worry if it's "correct"? My ears say it's just fine with no cab there.

I had one of those Palmer Cab sims, it had the unfiltered clean (no cab sim) path on a blend knob, so if you set up your signal path like DrNick says, you'll pretty much be doing the same (with a lot more choices for your filtered speaker sim sound).
 
Yeah, cabs seem to make a lot less of an impact on clean tones, sounds good, so why worry if it's "correct"? My ears say it's just fine with no cab there.

I had one of those Palmer Cab sims, it had the unfiltered clean (no cab sim) path on a blend knob, so if you set up your signal path like DrNick says, you'll pretty much be doing the same (with a lot more choices for your filtered speaker sim sound).

I'm not sure I'd agree that cabs make less of an impact on clean tones. Different cabs sound very different clean, just in a different way from overdriven tones.
 
Dirty tones have more harmonics, so the cab's filtering is more noticeable, especially in the upper mids and highs. Bass players have been going direct into the board for decades.

Supposedly, the super crispy, crunchy guitar tones on the Beatles' song Revolution are from plugging straight into the board and daisy chaining two channels together in series to make the second one clip hard. Nasty but effective. Whatever works. There's no right or wrong way if you like the way it sounds.
 
One of the greatest guitar solos ever has been recorded directly to the desk without guitar amp and cab - and not with a Strat it has been a Les Paul.

The Wall - Pink Floyd
 
One of the greatest guitar solos ever has been recorded directly to the desk without guitar amp and cab - and not with a Strat it has been a Les Paul.

The Wall - Pink Floyd

Which song? The Wall is an album.

If it's Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (agree amazing solo), the guitar was supposedly recorded direct into the console to add compression. Then the recorded compressed guitar track was sent back out to an amp and cab and re-recorded on another track. In essence it was reamped, but in the old school way.
 
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Mike landau did that a lot on this incredible "tales from the bulge" album.direct clean sound sound great (with chorus here)
 
I've heard/read many times that the guitar on "Under the Bridge" by RHCP was recorded direct (through a compressor first).

 
I hadn't tried any of the clean amps without a cab block, but I definitely will now.
 
Which song? The Wall is an album.

If it's Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (agree amazing solo), the guitar was supposedly recorded direct into the console to add compression. Then the recorded compressed guitar track was sent back out to an amp and cab and re-recorded on another track. In essence it was reamped, but in the old school way.

Yes, you are right, they mixed it together.
Start at 4:30

 
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