Virtual Reality
Top session and pit players put our units to the test More and more players who perform in West End musicals are turning to modellers for their libraries of useful sounds, flexibility and compactness. First, let’s establish which unit everyone uses… Nico Sabatini: “I use a Kemper, among other things. I haven’t given up on valve amps at all, but the case is increasingly strong for using modellers.” John Gregson: “I’m using the Axe-FX II XL.” Andy Jones: “I’ve used the Axe-FX a lot – I use a lot of these pedals because I do a lot
of work in town [on the London pit scene] – and I use the Line 6 Helix, [which] is only just coming into that scene. A lot of guys are starting to use it and I think it’s going to find its place.” What in particular makes modellers ideal for the work you do? Nico: “The gigs I tend to do are on in-ears and tend to be in quiet pits or really quiet stages, and in a small theatre gig a valve amp just doesn’t cut it.” John: “I’m not the sort of player who would be hired for his sound, necessarily, but every gig has a different stage requirement and monitoring requirement. And if an amp had to be boxed away or turned down, I’d rather use a modeller than use a nice valve amp at sub-optimum volume. That way you’re not compromising the sound.” Are you aware of arguments from other guitarists against using modellers? Nico: “There’s always this thing about, ‘I won’t use a modeller, because I won’t compromise’, but it’s a compromise anyway. Because the minute you have a powerful valve amp in a small venue and you have to turn it down, you’ve already compromised. So in that sense, there’s an increasingly strong case to use modellers, certainly for the type of work I do.”
Andy: “Dave Burrluck introduced me to the guys at Yamaha and I asked to try a Helix and when I did I thought, ‘I’ve got to buy one.’ I didn’t know what to expect. I’m not sure that I expected it to be equivalent to the other units, but there are a lot of features on it that make it easier to use.” How similar, from a feel point of view, is this current generation of modellers to playing through a good valve amp at a fairly hefty volume level? John: “Very similar. You can dial in the sag, you can dial in preamp, power amp gain and so on, so that makes it far more flexible. I’m not die-hard ‘amp only’ or ‘direct only’, but there are so many engagements I’ve done where, if I’d turned up with a 4x12 or something, then I wouldn’t have been able to do the gig.” Andy: “If it hadn’t cut the mustard sonically, I wouldn’t have been interested in it. The one thing with the Helix is that it’s much easier to get more functionality out of it. There’s a mode called Snapshot – and I believe the Axe-FX has a similar function. It’s just one keystroke to snap to this setting that’s like a scene on a mixing desk. Say you’ve got a Deluxe Reverb with a nice delay on it, that’s your basic sound. In Snapshot mode, you’ve got eight subsidiary sounds within that and it just explodes the usefulness of what you’ve got. You’re just adding to what you’ve already got, it’s a really powerful setting.”