I’ve never had much luck with Software Amp modelling software in the past due to the fact that my main computer, my Macbook Pro generates so much noise and the CPU seems to crap out a lot. I also feel that it seems a waste when I have such an amazing sounding Class A Tube amp but as I found tube amps are not easy to record when you live in a small house with a newborn baby, the only real option is an expensive Speaker simulator or isolation cabinet which I can’t justify laying out the cash for. So when I was sent a copy of Waves GTR Solo, which by the way you can download and use for a full year free of charge, I thought I would give my wife’s new iMac a try instead, Bingo! I’ve finally had a chance to understand what everyone has been raving about.
I want to show the possibilities with the Clean amp so I loaded up a couple of BluesJamTracks.com tracks into Abelton Live. I chose the Total Blues BB King Shuffle and Stevie Ray Vaughan tracks and have tried to emulate their tone using my Ibanez JS1000. For the BB King track I boosted the Clean amp with the overdrive stomp pedal just using the volume and used the neck pickup. Check the video for the amp settings. For the Stevie Ray Vaughan style track I actually used all three pickup selections throughout but had the Split coil selector activated as well as the hi-pass filter on my guitar to get that SRV single coil sound and used the Overdrive stomp pedal to boost the gain and the volume up to 10 like Stevie used to do with his TS-808. I reckon I got pretty close to both and in my opinion you really can’t tell that you are listening to an amp created with software. The video didn’t upload to YouTube as well as I’d hoped, I tried to do a High Quality version but it seems it had other ideas so the settings for the Cabinet on the BB King track was a 12inchOpenBack and a Dyn409_onAxis mic and the Stevie Ray track was a 12inchClosedBack with a Dyn421_OnAxis mic.
I apologise for the video quality, I’ll make sure I get hold of a lamp to shed a bit more light on me for the next one and try and work out how to upload High Quality.
Aside from the clean amp there is a Drive Amp with 3 voicings, Edgy, Drive and Overdrive and a HighGain amp with 4 different voicings Crunch, Shredder, PRS Scorch and PRS Crush (Paul Reed Smith helped create and test the amp models using his favourite amps, check out “The making of GTR3″ in the Waves GTR videos section). I will try and do a video using these 2 amps too soon, I’ve already managed to create some great distorted guitars using a combination of these amps and the Distortion and Compresser/Gate stomp boxes.
I’m looking forward to trying just the cabinet simulator with the line out from my Black Pearl too!
