Joe Bonamassa takes digital amp on tour; Paul Gilbert switches to digital amp...

[mentoneman]

reminds me of when the cybertwin came out and fender were shouting from the rooftops how it was the cat’s meow, all fender amps perfectly reproduced in one box, yadayada….
i played one and said it stunk and thus got booted from the fender forum.

i’ve played the super, twin and deluxe tone master combos and takeaway is no tubes, no thanks.

 

[JimAnsell2]

Vintage '70 SF Twin=$1200

Tech Fee+BF mod+routine maintenance=$500

Not being a digital douchebag=priceless

they're so easy to work on too in comparison to most other tube amps, and no one is teching their own digital gear. Buying a cheap, 70's twin is a great amp to teach yourself amp repair on.

 

[thegame]

Paul’s had severe hearing damage for a long time and more recently, Joe has had something similar happen to him as well. No wonder they’re satisfied with this digital shit.

 

[VonBonfire]

Paul’s had severe hearing damage for a long time and more recently, Joe has had something similar happen to him as well. No wonder they’re satisfied with this digital shit.

Joe ruptured his eardrum in Houston maybe five or six months ago. I'm sure he has dumbles permanently ringing in his ears so he probably thinks the TM sounds amazing.

 

[Jascoduende]

I totally get the migration to digital modelers for grinding out the tour. SO much can go SO wrong with valuable - if not arguably irreplaceable - tube amps (at least pretty damned hard to replace regardless of budget).

If I played for a living - and I don't - and if I could get 90+% there with any of the modelers, I would go that route for simplicity and consistency: exact same signal to front of house night after night after night.

You hear a lot about tube amps being more subject to breaking or needing more maintenance, but here's my experience.
I did 12 years on the road, 225+ days per year, with tube amps, and there were only maybe a half dozen times in that period I had to take an amp to a tech. And only 1 time I remember a dramatic amp failure onstage (but I always ran two amps so it didn't stop the show.)
The exception was the spring reverb pans. It seems like the springs would break from road vibrations about every 3 months. After replacing a few reverb pans, I just decided to play without any reverb, which I do to this day.

 

[PDC]

You hear a lot about tube amps being more subject to breaking or needing more maintenance, but here's my experience.
I did 12 years on the road, 225+ days per year, with tube amps, and there were only maybe a half dozen times in that period I had to take an amp to a tech. And only 1 time I remember a dramatic amp failure onstage (but I always ran two amps so it didn't stop the show.)
The exception was the spring reverb pans. It seems like the springs would break from road vibrations about every 3 months. After replacing a few reverb pans, I just decided to play without any reverb, which I do to this day.

I survived about 3 years of 150ish nights a year and had a pair of Mesa Mark-IIIs at the time. One main and one backup. I rotated them every week to distribute tube wear - but other than a fuse replacement here and there, those beasts were rock solid. I did have road cases for both. I really wish I would have kept those amps! As long as you have the budget and payload in today's era of largely 'fly-gigs' with house backline - I certainly can see bringing whatever puts you in the happiest headspace to play your very best.

 

[spawn802]

... you have to put in a lot of effort with post EQ to get it to sound remotely good.

I think this is the name of the game with the modelers I have tried. Every way I tried the Helix sucked until I put a couple eq's in the chain and tweaked them for a couple days. That got me 85% of what my Mesa Mark III was giving me at the time.