Why would you use traditional guitar rigs when you can get so much more for so much less with modelers?
Disclaimer: This post’s content is something you might call ‘infotainment’. While the arguments presented here are based on real life experience, they are slightly exaggerated for entertainment purposes. Share your opinion in the comments below but be kind to each other.
To see me argue the exact opposite, check out the post here: https://www.isthisgeargood.com/5-reasons-why-real-amps-and-pedals-are-better-than-modelers/
1. Modelers are more affordable
I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone, but modelers are way cheaper. You can get a great one for few hundred euros. With real amps you need to get the amp, then maybe a cabinet as well. To connect the two, you’ll need a speaker cable. And if you want to have a pedalboard you will need to get that plus a power supply, velcro, patch cables etc.
Before you know it, the price of your setup has skyrocketed and you’re eating noodles for the next two months.
Whereas modelers are self-contained and can be your full guitar rig. As I have demoed with the Line6 POD Go for example, you can get a fantastic professional sounding rig for under 500€. And you can use for not only electric guitar, but acoustic guitar as well. (You can find the tutorial on how to do that here)
And if I was in the market for a premium modeler, my choice would probably be Neural DSP’s Quad Cortex. I like the user interface, it’s smaller footprint and the fact that it’s a Finnish company. (In case you didn’t know, I’m a Finn)
2. Modelers are small and portable
One of the benefits of a modeler is that they don’t take up much space. Many of them will fit into the pocket of your guitar’s gig bag, which makes for example commuting on a bus easy.
This is not the case with real amps. I have done small tours with an amp head + 1×12 cabinet + pedalboard rigs and unpacking and packing that rig several times a day was not fun.
And it’s not just touring with the gear: storing your amps and cabinets can also be a challenge. They take up lot of space and many amps and cabinets are heavy, making them difficult to move around when needed.
3. Everything You Need In One Unit
Most of the modelers nowadays contain everything you might need. Not only you’re getting amps, pedals and cabinets, but most of them have things like looper in them as well and most of them also work as an audio interface. Some of them even have a snake game in them.
With real amps and pedalboards, you have a lot of moving parts meaning a lot of things can go wrong. One of the most annoying issues with a pedalboard for example is hunting for that one faulty patch cable.
And if you want to record your rig, you will either need to have microphones to capture your amp’s sound or get a loadbox with IR capability, which adds to the overall cost of your setup.
4. Easy Switching
This might be my favourite thing about modelers: you can program incredible number of changes behind just one footswitch. With a single click you can for example go to a different channel on your amp, change the cabinet and have your tremolo and delay set to the tempo of the next song.
Whereas with real amps and pedalboard you might look like a tap dancer trying to take out the delay and reverb and switch the amp channel before the second verse of the song starts. As someone who also sings while playing, the tap dancing aspect of it all is especially fun.
5. Get Sounds Made By Others
I’m a big fan of getting tones created by others. While I know how to get great sounds out of some of the amps, others are a mystery. That’s where presets made by others can really help.
I also like the ‘tone matching’ thing, where someone has a great sounding (and many times unattainable) amp that they know and match the modeler to sound as close as possible as the real deal. These patches often come with matching impulse responses as well making sure you’ll get exactly the tone patch’s creator intended.
With real amps you can obviously look up for recommended settings online, but your guitar rig will limit how close to that sound you can get. For example, the person who recommended to set the amp in a certain way was using a 4×12 in their studio, but you are limited to a 1×12 speaker cabinet in your student apartment. Those two setups will sound very different.
Conclusion
So those were my takes on why modelers are better than real amps and pedalboards. But what do you think? Leave your comment down below and let’s discuss.
Btw I also have a post where I argue exactly the opposite and that one you can find here: https://www.isthisgeargood.com/?p=1405
If you’re interested acquiring your own POD GO and supporting what I do, you can find affiliate links here:
►►Get Your POD GO At Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/483547?offid=1&affid=394
►►Get Your POD GO At Sweetwater: https://www.sweetwater.sjv.io/5ga6do
►►Download My POD GO Acoustic Patch And The Jam Track: https://www.catpickstudios.com/
Leave a Reply