Brief Summary

Recording guitars can be analogue, with amps and mics, it can be digital with plugins or hardware. Any of these can give excellent results and there has never been more choice. In this article Robbie Dwyer considers some of the options.

Going Deeper

Traditional Amp Recording

Recording amps has in principle always been a relatively simple process, take your favourite mic or a trusty SM57 and point it at the speaker. Centrally placed on the dust cap equals a ‘sharper’ and ‘pointed’ tone due to this being the ‘stiffest’ part of the speaker. Moving outwards, the tone begins to ‘mellow’ and become ‘warmer’. This is a very quick and typical approach, but what we haven’t taken into consideration is the space and size of the amp. Not everyone can fully crank their 50watt or 100watt amp to really find the sweet spot without rattling the house and the neighbors.  

What Are The Alternatives

One way around this problem is the load box or dummy load. The idea is that you can take your 50watt/100watt amp and run it into the load box, which is designed to attenuate the amps power so that you can run it harder into the sweet spot but at a lower volume. This is not a new thing but historically, load boxes are expensive. However, in recent years they are becoming far more affordable. (Prices are correct at the time of this article)

Some Examples Of Dummy Load Boxes

Bugera PS1 is £109 and is capable of attenuating amps up to 100watts. They have included 3 different inputs that vary in impedance (4, 8 & 16 ohms)  based on what your cab is. There are two pots, one for the amount the amp is attenuated and the other is the line output volume. There is a jack out to your speaker cab and then the other output is either line or XLR which has a preset mic emulation.

Two Notes Torpedo Captor series offer is more expensive at about £189. Their offer is more specific based on the choice of impedance. You need to choose whether you need a 4,8 or 16 ohm model based on your amp’s speaker connection. This particular loadbox, like the Bugera, has a preset Two Notesspeaker sim, however, this has a choice for both guitar or bass. There are two inputs, one is normal and the other is attenuating your signal by 20dB. This unit is capable of handling up to 100 watts but Two Notes recommends that you don’t run it at full tilt for too long. The other useful feature is that this unit can run as a DI box and can be paired up with an IR loader or run into a DAW, where you can use software IR loaders such as the Two Notes Cab M+. More on this later.

Staying with Two Notes, they have the more expensive Captor X, which comes in at around £429. Again, you need to choose the correct impedance (4,8,16 ohms) and it has a lot of the same functionality as the cheaper Captor series. The difference with the X is the fact that it can run Stereo which is very useful, which I’ll explain in a moment. The other bonus feature is that it runs Two Notes free Torpedo Remote software, where you can upload up to 6 different speaker cabs onto the Captor X. This software can be freely downloaded to a computer or mobile device (phone or tablet) via bluetooth. It enables you to edit the cab, mic placement as well as EQ and Reverb. Now, because the Captor X is stereo, means that you are able to run two cab sims to create a wider range of sounds. 

At the top end of the loadboxes are Universal Audio’s Ox Box (£1175) and Boss’s Tube Amp Expander Variable Active Loader (£1249 and a memorable name of note!). These two are extremely feature rich in terms of their connectivity and utilises their years of modeling and emulation technologies. Both of these units are capable of handling up to 150 watt amps and they have switchable impedances to suit any amp and cab combination. Both have a multitude of Cab sims and microphone choices to create studio quality cabs to compliment your amps.

What If You Don’t Want To Use An Amp, What Are Your Options? 

The technology for both hardware and software has come a long way in the last 10 years. 

If you want to stay with the hardware route and have the option to still play with knobs, then you can look at companies like the UK based Origin Effects company who pride themselves on making incredible pedals that replicate both guitar and bass amps signal flow in a format that can sit on your pedalboard. Most notable pedals in their product range for guitars is the Revival Drive, which is a two channel pedal that is very customizable and can achieve a range of sounds from classic Marshall tones, through to Vox and Fender. It is important to note that this pedal can work as both an amp or a drive pedal depending on how you want to configure it. Origin do offer other alternative amp recreations for not just Guitar but Bass too. 

The only downside to this pedal is that it needs a Cab IR simulator and these can start off relatively cheaper with examples such as Mooer and their ‘Radar’ pedal. The pedal comes with some basic Cab IR captures, but you are able to upload your own on to these. The editing is somewhat limiting on the pedal but it is a very neat way to get started.

Two Notes is another company that comes to the rescue with their CabM+ (£249), which incorporates their Remote software and is very flexible and customisable especially if you use it  with the app.

At the top end of the IR loader pedals is BOSS with their IR-200 which part of the 200 series of pedals, which gives an in-depth level of editing and is capable of receiving firmware updates via mini usb and is also capable of being controlled via midi, using TRS 3.5mm jacks (BMIDI-5-35 adapter sold separately). 

Other alternatives are provided by Strymon and their Iridium which is both an Amp and IR Cab simulator. The difference here is that you choose which amp sound you want to use ‘Round’ (Fender Blackface), ‘Chime’ (Vox) and ‘Punch’ (Marshall Plexi). This also have some functionality like you would find on an amplifier. With regards to the Cab IR, you can upload your Cab IR’s onto it, giving you more possibilities.

More recently, UK based Victory Amps have been producing pedal versions of their amps. One of these is just the valve preamp front end that can be used in conjunction with your own amp and using the FX loop, you can turn a signal channel amp into something more or you can use it as a drive pedal. These pedals cost around £450 and similarly to the Revival Drive, these can also be paired with a IR loader to create a full amp sound. 

However, Victory have also developed an Amp Pedal version where the preamp is paired up with a 180watt (4ohms) (90watt at 8ohms and 45watt at 16ohms) Class-D power amp that is inside. This means that you can connect to a cab and off you go and because it is Class D, you can use this without needing to connect the output to a load like you do with traditional valve amp. In addition to this, Victory have teamed up with Two Notes and they have effectively included the Cab sim portion from their Captor X to give you the ability to choose between 6 cabs. As well as the ability to add and edit the cabs using the ‘Remote App’, giving you lots of possibilities. The cost of these is around £850 and they come in different flavours depending on the type of amp you want.

What About Digital Hardware?

There are a number of options here, the early incarnations of these were the Line6 POD, which looked like a kidney bean on the desk. However, the technology has been changing rapidly along with processing and software capabilities. The market has seen many companies who are still relevant now such as Fractal Audio with their AXE FX (), who are now on their 3rd iteration of the platform and are used in touring rigs all over the world. 

Kemper Amps is another choice for both studio and live guitarist because of the ability to capture or ‘profile’ an amp's sound throughout the whole signal path from pedals to mic pre. These sounds are effectively ‘baked’ but it is fantastic to capture those moments and be able to recall them for another day without the need to set up mics again. It’s also incredible to think that the Kemper came on to our radars back in 2011 and is still a popular choice with a huge online community where people can share rigs their profiled rigs, as well as buy rigs created by companies such as Tone Junkie or Michael Britt (Lonestar).

In recent years, we have seen other brands such as Neural DSP come to the market with their Quad Cortex, which is almost like a hybrid of the Kemper and AXE FX and has the ability to profile amp sounds too. By comparison to the Kemper, the QC has a smaller form factor and it is a more modern process for profiling rigs. To know more about the differences, you can watch Rabea Massaad’s indepth take on them both.

In the last couple of months, IK Multimedia who manufacture both software and hardware, have also joined in with their ToneX pedal and Capture ecosystem. This is another alternative and by comparison a much cheaper way to enter into the fry of accessing a myriad of amps for both guitar and bass. IK’s approach is a little different too because they have split the ecosystem into different parts. Firstly, there is the ToneX pedal where you can select and choose your amps and this pedal fits perfectly on the pedalboard. It can be edited from the device or connected to the computer where you can go deeper into dialing the sounds. But, if you want to capture the profile of an amp or even pedal, you need to purchase the ToneX Capture box. This is the device that will take the impulses etc of your favourite amps and pedals. These can then be loaded up into the ToneX software and you can even use it in their Amplitube software, where you can take advantage of all the functionality within the software. Like Kemper, AXE FX and QC, they do have a platform for a community called the ‘ToneNET’,where users can capture and share their profiles with others. 

Software Alternatives

Firstly, the trusty DAWs now come with a plethora of amp sounds that can be dialled in to sound pretty good and in a dense mix and pass quality control. All you need to ensure is that you capture a great DI sound and you can shape the guitar sound whatever you want to be. 

They even have the ability to change mic choices and placements to alter the tonality of the amp, along with endless amp and cab combinations, not to mention the variety of pedal style effects too. 

There are some longtime stalwarts too such as IK Multimedia’s Amplitude and Native Instruments Guitar Rig which seem like they have been around forever and have continually evolved and improved with each version. 

Other Amp emulations such as Suffham and Overloud have also produced fantastic software alternatives that are more than usable.

The other change and shift with software is that there are more IR loading applications available. Logic is often forgotten about but the Space Designer Reverb is a Convolution Reverb and it is capable of capturing spaces and utilising them, but it can capture and load IR’s of guitar cabs. This can then be used in conjunction with real amps where you have captured the sound of the amplifier (which sounds hideous on its own). 

Two Notes ‘Wall of Sound’ is an ecosystem where you can buy and load dynamic IR captures of guitar cabs by variety of different companies and speaker manufacturers. It works on a very similar principle to the Two Notes Remote software, except that this is entirely software based.

Speaker manufacturer Celestion also has their own offering called ‘Speaker Mix Pro’ and they provide their own plugin platform where you can Dynamic IR’s and load them up and change mics and placements. It is presented in a more ‘mixing console’ style where you can explore the balances and load up various combinations of speakers too. 

Ignite Libra’s approach is again very different, as you can load up to 8 different IR’s which are presented in an Octagonal shape. You then move around a little orb to audition and listen to various combinations of Cab IR’s. If it is dead centre, then you will have all of them, but as you move the orb towards a certain IR’s, the sound and relationship of them changes. You can reduce this down so that you don’t have as many IRs to compare. The cool thing about this, is that Libra will export and create a new IR based on what you have chosen, so it is possible to convert 8 IRs down to a single IR, which can be then loaded up onto your pedalboard, such as the CabM+ or Mooer Radar.

Conclusion

Ultimately, guitar recording should be simple and it will always be about capturing the tone and performance of the player. However, the possibilities of achieving this are as you can see vast. I know that I have disappeared down many a rabbit hole looking for the best way to capture guitar sounds at home using amps but without disturbing the family or the neighbours for that matter. I feel that we now have it better than ever and there are plenty of ways to capture and record great guitar tones.