Plug In & Play
This month, Adrian Thorpe helps a reader play during the day and record her rig silently during lockdown
LAURA MICHAELS,
During lockdown I have been unable to make music during the day out of respect for my neighbour who is a key worker and works nightshifts. My usual practice location is closed, so I’ve been recording ideas through plug-ins on my Mac. This works to a point, but I miss my amp and pedalboard, plus some of the sounds I use aren’t available as plug-ins. I tried plugging my ’board directly into my interface, but it didn’t sound or feel right. Is this as good as it gets?
What you are chasing is the panacea for recording guitarists. It’s no exaggeration to state that, as guitarists, we generally want to have our cake and eat it. Recording a rig silently and hoping it will sound as good as if it were cranked and interactive is hard. However, things have improved markedly over the last few years so I can now recommend several solutions that, to my mind, are close to perfect.
01.
In short, no – this is not as good as it gets. But the difficulties you have integrating your pedalboard to your DAW continue to be difficult for many guitarists wishing to record their instruments and rigs.
02.
I’ll start by treating your rig as a whole and including the amp as the final part of your chain before it hits the DAW. This makes things easy in that the response of your amp to your pedals is no different to what you’re used to. The big difficulty with this, though, is that you can’t just plug your amplifier into your DAW. A valve amp typically requires a speaker to act as a load on the output transformer and prevent the amp killing itself. To work speaker-less your amplifier needs to be plugged into an attenuator or reactive load.
These come in very different configurations. For a straight up attenuator with basic DI out, try the Suhr Reactive Load. For a fully featured attenuator with enhanced outputs and effects, including a Class D power amp, the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander springs to mind. As you don’t need the power amp part I’d also suggest Two Notes’ Torpedo Captor X, a reactive load box with everything post-amplifier digitised and emulated through a digital plug-in. This lets you simulate a cab, mic placement, effects, reverb and so on before sending it to your DAW. This is essentially the golden bullet for your needs.
03.
Want to go one step further and dispense with your amp as well? Try a speaker emulator such as the GFI System Cabzeus or Neunaber
Iconoclast. In my experience, these systems will need a preamp pedal (ideally valve-based) to sit between your pedalboard and the speaker emulator to sound optimal. A compromise but a worthy one. That said, Two Notes’ Torpedo C.A.B. M offers all of the digitised functionality, including a simulated preamp, power amp, speaker cab and mics, enabling you to connect your pedalboard into a simulated amp and cab before being presented to your DAW. This is the least bulky option and gives you a truly silent rig that can be used live to go amp-less when you get back to gigging.
Whichever solution you end up choosing, you’ll be able to record your ideas rather than constantly tweaking you interface to fit a square peg (pedalboard) into a round hole (DAW). Good luck.