Looking for pure amp tone MP3s
Cybermonk
alt.guitar.amps a lot. I think the amp heads are too busy debating about
tube manufacturers to spend the time playing and recording samples of the
gear they are presumably experts about. Are they balking? It's so easy to
talk about the ideal of awesome amp tone, but where's the shared proof and
demonstration online? I have no confidence in providing penultimate
standards for ideal amp tone, so I first am focusing on pulling together the
few MP3s there are, from other people.
What we need most of all is solo guitar, short samples, high-fidelity. Do
you know of any such amp tone samples? Can you make some, or one, and
upload it to your site or email it to me via my site?
Please check out this page and send more links or clips.
http://www.amptone.com/g237.htm -- Amp Tone MP3s: the longest page,
perhaps the only page, of links emphasizing pure amp tone samples.
I've listened to most of the clips linked to this page. Most do not
highlight the amp tone enough, and lots are mid-to-low fidelity, and many
are really too long to be highly relevant. And some of the solo, short,
hi-fi clips are interesting but not what I would pick as an ideal Basic Tone
foundation, if there were many to choose from. So please help gather and
create more samples that are solo, short, and hi-fi.
Jeff Liberatore
format...I would consider the MP3 a "model" of the original source material
anyway...We're talking data compression that inherently leaves artifacts
that would discriminate against what you are trying to achieve (albeit a
noble cause), by losing a lot of nuances that one could only experience
properly unless you were sitting with said amp with your own guitar in an
environment you are familial with.
--
Jeff
http://www.onlinerock.com/musicians/jl130/
http://www.radiohounds.homestead.com/rh1.html
"Cybermonk" <gl...@blort.com> wrote in message
news:A5A95.2269$V34....@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com...
RonSonic
As a guy who plays and does amps, got a lot of them, repair, voice and
mode even more of 'em. I'm reluctant to upload samples as they could
be recorded in my home or shop or the practice studio. When I am in a
real studio (not as often as I'd like) the clock is ticking and I
don't have time, money or interest in guitar tone studies. Get a sound
and go! Got tracks to lay. Do I spend time and money having the
engineer isolate amp tone samples? Not likely.
I'm sure that's what you're running into from everyone. Not that
people are reluctant to help, but that they are reluctant to give you
anything other than their best representation. And when the
opportunity for that arises there are other, higher priorities.
I have a lot invested in my amp work and don't want to see a dashed
off, poorly recorded specimen on the web. One of these days, yes,
I'll have some time to use for the purpose. Perhaps make a swap with
a local studio for time and tape. Until then, sorry, can't help you.
I'll bet cash money there are a bunch of other people who feel very
much the same way about it.
Ron(Sonic)
Matt Seniff
are really big into "reproducibility" which is the ability of the test
procedure to be performed identically on every amp to be tested. In
science there is no useful data that cannot be easily reproduced by
others in the field in fact you need to do this to be published.
To accurately determine an amp tone from an mp3 file it would seem to
me that you need some concrete points of reference:
A standard guitar played in a standard way (to my mind this would
require a mechanized instrument that can perfectly reproduce the same
signal repeatedly) but which guitar as a standard Les Paul, Strat,
ES335, PRS, Ibanez? I believe the variation in guitars is a total road
block to the amptone mp3 plan let alone an individual players touch,
which IMHO is way too big a variable to every be involved in any sort
of comparisons. Send me a standard mechanized test guitar please. I
also don't think playing sound files into a guitar input is an answer
either since you are talking about a device with a totally different
output impedance and design than a guitar pickup. A recording could
also lack the dynamic range and associated inductive influence of a
guitar pickup as well as any feed back effects. While you might be
able to compare different amps one to one it will have zero bearing on
real world operation much the same way that the distortion wars in
HI-Fi of the late 70's had little to do with how things actually
sounded to human ears. I could easily envision these tests having a
solid-state amp come out on top probably unreservedly.
My second major problem is the recording setup. The room
acoustics, mic type, mic placement, mic preamp characteristics. There
is also the problem of playback room acoustics i.e. it will sound
different on your computer speakers than mine or even on my stereo or
DTS. It seems to me that you would need to have all the tests done in
the same environment. Maybe you could build such a thing in a van and
drive around the country to everyone'd shop or home and test there
amps in the "control environment" with the "standard mechanized
guitar". Using the same mic set up the same identical fashion and
recorded on the same equipments.
All this being said I must admit that at one time the above
was a goal of mine. After spending time figuring out how to eliminate
all the variables (I even made a "guitar picker" out of a cam mounted
pick on a rotisserie motor). I finally occurred to me that the testing
could never begin to reflect actual guitar playing let alone the needs
of an amplifier in a live performance(not to mention that I really
hate guitar picks). Small amp cranked tone for recording is one thing
and easily done if you have a reasonable studio space ( I bought my
house largely based on the dry basement spaces available we have no
problems practicing in the 13X27 foot room or recording guitar amps
for our CD's).
But lets say for an arguments that we can satisfy all the
reproducibility questions. I fail to see this having any relationship
to a live setting where the amp is required to produce a range of
tones and you need to have the ability to do rhythm sounds as well as
leads or even cutsy little noises. The above tests will probably need
to be so specific that we would be lucky to have even a single
correlation with real world.
My favorite guitar amps are never totally predictable. Vacuum
tube circuits in guitar amps have many temperature sensitive
components. Couple this with their variability of sound versus line
voltage especially when operated near their limits and you have a
living breathing sort of entity that will be difficult if not
impossible to totally quantize.
To end I think that the reason that the "amp gurus" have not
posted these clips you desire is because they realize that the
variables are too great. They have also heard the same amp sound
totally different when played by two different players even with the
same guitar. For me it was my first FX processor that showed me about
touch when I noticed that when playing with a pretty extreme patch
that I sounded very much the same to any other patch when my "touch"
took over (of course you can play to accentuate the FX but that's
another story). matt
Guitar Bum
If you want to hear amp tone, you have to hear it live. There is no
substitute. Period.