So I had a minor technical breakthrough over the weekend: getting completely lost in the sound and experience and just playing with my fully-computer-based guitar rig, including with nice amp drive / distortion. And with nada latency throwing me off.
I’ve always managed to get cool clean sounds, but was never happy with the sound or feel of the overdriven patches I built.
Until now!
The rig:
- Brand new shiny MacBook Pro 15" with not-quite-but-near-top-of-the-line specs.
- Apogee Symphony MK II (via Thunderbolt) or an Apogee Element for live use.
- Neumann monitors
- One guitar
- One human
- Logic Pro or Mainstage
Plugins:
- Built in Logic goodies (Tape Delay and that new Chroma reverb are excellent, amongst many others)
- Scuffham S-Gear
- NI Guitar Rig
- Valhalla Shimmer
- UAD, though they’re more for the mix / fine tuning stage once I’ve got parts in the can, due to increased latency.
I tend to more experimental guitar playing these days, and the above rig kills it, both for the clean and dirty tones.
So, a few plans, and things to try:
I’m not taking Neumanns on stage anytime soon (!), so I’ve got my eye on the Line 6 PowerCabs as a solution. They seem to get a very good wrap as something that is “FRFR” and with the oomph of a guitar cab, supposedly beating out Atomic CLRs depending on what you like. And they don’t cost the earth. The Matrix NL-somethings are appealing for their low weight too.
I also need some kind of stage ready, solid bluetooth expression pedal / switches to jump on so I can change patches on the fly, turn FX on/off, etc. Current contender is the KMI Softstep 2, but that’s not wireless.
And I haven’t quite settled on the perfect granular plug-in.
No giant pedal boards, no FX pedals, no looping stuff, just guitar -> interface -> PA or Monitoring system, with one wireless thingy to control it.
Fun times.
So what are other people tinkering with in Future Guitar World? iPads? Alephs? norns-es? Show us your Future Guitar Rig that doesn’t use traditional amps, cabs and pedals… (the other thread is for that)
ps : It’s also the modular rig, when I want structured song-based sequencing.