The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    Quote Originally Posted by supersoul
    This is true.

    It took me a year or two or three of having a Sansamp before I realized you can put the drive on zero. It's not like the preamp knob on guitar amp that has to be on at least 1 or 2 for there to be sound. The drive can be on zero and it's just clean.

    Another thing about Sansamp-type analog preamps is that the controls are more sensitive than a regular amp. On the American Sound, the voice control is really powerful. It's like a completely different amp between 4 and 6, for instance.

    Below 5 the voice knob is cutting the mids inside the drive circuit, so it stays clean even if you turn the drive up a bit. Then you can add back in mids with the Mid tone control.

    I sound like a Sansamp fanboy, but I think they're rather ingenious little devices.
    The PDDI is a remarkably powerful tool for tone shaping. Also, it runs on 48V phantom power if you wish and you can put out line level signal through a balanced cable, which studios tend to appreciate (that's also helpful with PAs). The Joyo American seems to be designed to be in front of an amplifier, which may or may not be problematic in this situation.

    Another option is to go straight through a mic preamp such as the ART units.

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  3. #52

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cunamara
    The Joyo American seems to be designed to be in front of an amplifier, which may or may not be problematic in this situation.
    The Joyo has non-defeatable cab emulation, but works fine (in my experience) direct or into an amp. Later versions of the Tech 21 Blonde that the Joyo is based on actually do have defeatable cab sim. Versions with this option have a button with a little icon that looks like sound waves coming out of a speaker. I’m guessing the “cab emulation” for both products is just a hard-coded EQ curve.

  4. #53

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    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet
    How do these sound when compared to a software based plugin emulation of your favourite amp? Neither are ideal, but the latter maybe be ultimately superior...?
    I happen to have a Guitar Rig license. I use it sometimes. Mostly I use it for the crazy effects. The Psyched Delay is perfect when you need something crazy.

    Using the Deluxe Reverb on stuff I recorded with the American Sound opens up some possibilities. (And I go over the top rather easily :-)
    With the AC30 module you can dial in some real Scofield vibe (not the playing though ).
    The Mesa preset (Gratifier hahaha ) comes also use full for some stuff.
    I usually use their cabs, they sound pretty decent. That said, I still have tons of cab IRs on disc from the modeler days, I just don't see the need to use them.

    Would I buy it if I didn't already have the license?
    Probably not, but this software is still better than any single hardware modeler I've ever had (had a few!).


    Edit: I de-installed it see my new post in this thread.....
    Last edited by DonEsteban; 11-19-2022 at 06:51 AM.

  5. #54

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    Quote Originally Posted by Little Jay
    Next time I will try the Shure inears, I suspect/hope that will help me getting a much more controllable sound on my ears and might improve the ‘feel’ of my guitar that I’m looking for. I will also try using an additional DI- box, as those are cheap enough.



    Google Drive: Sign-in
    A good DI is not inexpensive! and it's a direct out from your guitar, no feel no EQ no room no reverb.....before you get the audio in and out of the DAW ....

    Rental pro audio/Studio gear shops usually have the gear you need so you can try it before you buy....

    And the loudest instrument on that Google drive link is the "DRUMS"...!! should be "goboed" or in a plexi cage....all the other instruments sound like an afterthought....

    S

  6. #55

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    Meanwhile I have read and seen a lot of reviews and I decided to give the Quilter Superblock US a try... it should arrive by the end of this week.

    I decided in favour of the Quilter SB for an extra feature it has: it is also a 25W amp that can directly drive a speaker. So it can serve as a backup for my tube amps that I like to gig with - if the amp fails I can use the QSB to drive the speaker of the amp (it is so small I could even store it in the amp cab). You do need to use te supplied power supply for that, but with an ordinary 9V supply it's a 1W amp and of course it has an XLR-out to send your signal to the sound guy so when you use good monitors it will serve as a DI with cab sim. So 3 functions into one small package, that gives me a bit of peace of mind for spending another 300 bucks.

    I literally did not find any real negative comments when it's used for direct recording: 3 different cab sims and 3 amp-type presets should deliver me enough flexibilty to get a good sound. I think it will solve the issue that the Joyo has: very difficult to get a totally clean sound without any hair on your tone. I can always put the Joyo in front of the Quilter if I want dirty sounds, but apparently the Quilter's dirty sounds are quite good as well. What's also nice is that is has it's own headphone out. So I can feed the signal with the rest of the band into the SB thru the return in and control my own level without being dependent of the master mix feed to all the headphones

    And on top of that all it has an onboard reverb that most reviewers praise as well.

    I guess I'll find out by the end of the week if it's my solution. I'll keep you posted!
    Last edited by Little Jay; 10-19-2022 at 03:21 AM.

  7. #56

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    The Quilter Superblock US arrived yesterday and I alteady did some testing with it. No direct recordings yet, but I used it as an amp and with headphones.



    First impressions:

    * I played it thru the speaker out over several speaker cabs: through my Blues Deluxe Cab with a Jensen NEO 12-100 in it, thru my 5F1 cab with Jensen P10R and over a Eminence ceramic of some sort (with a Blue Fender Label). I must say, as an amp it sounds really, really good! And plenty loud for a 25 watt amp! With the efficient Jensen NEO and Eminece it’s probably giggable in a not too loud band. Even the reverb sounds nice and very usefull. Of course the cab sims don’t do anything in this co figuration. So far I definitely prefer the “57” setting with the P90 equiped es-330 clone I tested with. With P90s, it gives off quite a bit of typically P90 60-cycle hum, more so than when using my regular tube amps. Could that be because of the digital switching power supply? My ES-333 with humbuckers is much quieter, but not dead silent either. It does take overdrive pedals also really well (I am in a bit of a blues revival mood lately and practicing John Mayer stuff….)

    *thru headphones (a pair of simple but good sounding Sennheisers - at least for hifi applications) it sounds okay, not spectacular. It still exhibits some of that sterile two dimensional directly-plugged-in-sound, even with the cab sim on. It’s better than the Joyo American Sound, but not a terrible lot better. But it does stay totally clean, so that’s good. It doesn’t have a terrible lot of volume when using headphones, I almost maxed it out. I expected- or maybe hoped - it would sound better. The reverb is nice to have though, it is usefull for quiet headphone practising (I should perhaps also test different headphones, maybe that makes a difference.)

    I’ll take it to the studio soon, together with the Shure inears to see how it works for that application.

  8. #57

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    So….. found out that my Shure inears sound much better than the Sennheiser HD 215 headphones for this application. Which surprised me, because the Sennheiser sounds great for hifi applications…

    But the most surprising discovery is that an ancient pair of Foster headphones I had laying around sounds the best! They are very mid-focussed and boxy when listening to music but apparently sound most like guitar speakers Recording in the studio without an amp (going direct)


  9. #58

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    Are the cab sims working? Do they make a differnce A-B-C testing them thru the hadphones?

  10. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by fep
    Are the cab sims working? Do they make a differnce A-B-C testing them thru the hadphones?
    Oh yes they do. I prefer the ‘normal’ sim, the ‘BRT’ adds more chime/brightness, which is nice with darker soinding guitars.

  11. #60

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    fractal and helix are the best for this IMO, helix gets the nod if you play bass as well as guitar.

  12. #61

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    Imho bleeding is a good thing in a jazz recording. What is the sense for a sterile recording and post recording sound design? Get your sound and let him record it. Just like Rudy van Gelder …

  13. #62

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    Quote Originally Posted by guavajelly
    Imho bleeding is a good thing in a jazz recording. What is the sense for a sterile recording and post recording sound design? Get your sound and let him record it. Just like Rudy van Gelder …
    That’s how I normally record, but not an option in this case. Otherwise I wouldn’t be looking……

  14. #63

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    Quote Originally Posted by jzucker
    fractal and helix are the best for this IMO, helix gets the nod if you play bass as well as guitar.
    I hear ya, but that’s a much pricier route than I’d like to go for now.

  15. #64

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    Haven’t been able to record with the Quilter and the inears yet, will let y’all know when I do!

  16. #65

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bop Head
    To add some more: The Tech 21 stuff has a very good reputation as well — at least in rock circles. But I do know if anyone has used it for Jazz where most of the time a (at least rather) clean sound is desired.
    You'll have to check with a reputable online store.

  17. #66

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    Quote Originally Posted by softjazz
    You'll have to check with a reputable online store.
    Just in case you want to presume something: I have used the first two generations of SansAmps myself in the early nineties — but rather for synths and drum loops than for guitars.

  18. #67

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    Try an Impulse Response. TwoNotes is good.

  19. #68

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Try an Impulse Response. TwoNotes is good.
    I’ll first try the Quilter ;-)

  20. #69

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    Quote Originally Posted by Little Jay
    I’ll first try the Quilter ;-)
    Yeah, I mean turn off the speaker sim and use a software IR. You can model whatever room, speaker and mic and mic positioning combo you like.

  21. #70

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Yeah, I mean turn off the speaker sim and use a software IR. You can model whatever room, speaker and mic and mic positioning combo you like.
    We've gone full circle now. In the original post Little Jay mentioned latency as an issue.

    I wonder if latency is really noticeable. With my setup with a 10 year old computer, I don't notice latency. The speed of sound is 1100 ft. per second, without a computer just my amp; the amp is about 10 feet from the chair I'm sitting in, doesn't that compute to about 10ms of latency? An acoustic in my lap about 2-3ms of latency?

    Hard to imagine a decent computer and interface would have noticeable latency given it's set up correctly and has an ASIO driver.

  22. #71

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    My rule of thumb is 1ft/millisecond so standing 10 feet from the amp is 10ms delay.

  23. #72

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    Quote Originally Posted by fep
    We've gone full circle now. In the original post Little Jay mentioned latency as an issue.

    I wonder if latency is really noticeable. With my setup with a 10 year old computer, I don't notice latency. The speed of sound is 1100 ft. per second, without a computer just my amp; the amp is about 10 feet from the chair I'm sitting in, doesn't that compute to about 10ms of latency? An acoustic in my lap about 2-3ms of latency?

    Hard to imagine a decent computer and interface would have noticeable latency given it's set up correctly and has an ASIO driver.
    Monitor direct through the output of your sound interface when you are recording. Alternatively, you can adjust it.

  24. #73

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Monitor direct through the output of your sound interface when you are recording. Alternatively, you can adjust it.
    It would be nice if the Superblock allowed you to specify a different speaker emulation for the headphones (in this case, Normal) and for the XLR output (in this case, FRFR). Monitoring an FRFR signal through headphones via the interface’s latency-free monitoring is gonna sound not great. Doable, but not great.

  25. #74

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    Quote Originally Posted by wzpgsr
    It would be nice if the Superblock allowed you to specify a different speaker emulation for the headphones (in this case, Normal) and for the XLR output (in this case, FRFR). Monitoring an FRFR signal through headphones via the interface’s latency-free monitoring is gonna sound not great. Doable, but not great.
    Yeah that’s annoying.

    probably what I’d do for electric guitar in a ‘serious’ recording situation that I’m having to ‘engineer’ is actually record the guitar completely dry and use the Superblock only for monitoring. Later on I would then reamp the dry track at my leisure.

    Usually when recording for YouTube etc I don’t even bother monitoring, just have the playback low enough so I can hear the acoustic sound of the guitar. What can I say, I’m lazy. The only problem is sometimes I can hit the strings a bit hard.

    In any case I can have the amp running in the room if I want, in which case I simply take the line out from the amp. as I’m just going straight in without any mics there’s no need for cans. I just mostly can’t be bothered to do that even and have gone back to running logic’s default amp sims which I think sound pretty nice for jazz (terrible for any drive tho).

  26. #75

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    Quote Originally Posted by Little Jay
    That’s how I normally record, but not an option in this case. Otherwise I wouldn’t be looking……
    I understand. I also go with the flow of the band – e.g. in our funk band I use a fly rig direct into the mixer as we do in-ear monitoring anyway. Nice solution for me cause I use public transportation or my bike (fiets) to travel to gigs whenever I can and my entire rig fits into the gigbag. The guitar is one of eight instruments here so I wonder if I would hear a difference if I'd use an amp or a more expensive solution. The band agreed that the guitar sound is good – so I'm set.
    OTOH in our organ trio (drums, organ, guitar) I use a tube amp because it gives me "the" tone and feel. As one of three instruments the guitar should sound the best it can. Our organ player insists that I use an actual amp here – not only for the tone but for the looks. It's also the most pragmatic solution in that context as we often gig without PA, so I have to bring some kind of "powered speaker" anyway – so why not the vibrolux.
    BTW: I also had the american sound, but our bass player "stole" it from me – actually he borrowed it and eventually paid for it. I just ordered a second one for myself because it's a great emergency backup. IMHO the fly rig or Harley Benton American True Tone do an excellent job.
    But I didn't try digital hardware (multieffects) on stage since selling my Boss GT-5 like 20 years ago. I tried the Kemper in a Music Store with headphones though and didn't think it was worth it – neither the extra size nor the investment. I also played around with the amp sims in logic – I may not hear as well as I did 20 years ago, but IMHO the analog sims like the American True Tone are just as good for clean tones. BTW – for a clean tone keep the "voice" control low.
    The Kemper and the amp sims in Logic still felt different than an actual amp. In theory it came a long way with the impulse responses since I last had a digital unit – but honestly to me it didn't seem better or worse than what I already have.

    I understand that you can't use your rig in the context. Honestly I have the impression that the drummer doesn't know much about recording a jazz ensemble if he insists on you going direct. It also seems kind of very selfish – does he use drum sound simulations?
    But if you want to do as he requires you'll have to find a DI solution you like. I can't understand why monitoring through amp sims in the DAW is not an option – very, very old computer? If you can't find your tone with either a plugin in the DAW or the American True Tone you'll have to invest in something else (the UAD pedals seem to be the latest craze btw.) BUT I wonder if (1) you'll be more satisfied and (2) if your investment will pay eventually.
    Tough call.
    Last edited by guavajelly; 11-01-2022 at 06:45 AM.