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Archive for March 8th, 2007

Do Solid State Amps Really Suck?

Posted in amps, Guitars, Music, recording on March 8, 2007| 5 Comments »

A lot of tube amp purists seem to think so, and for the most part, I’d have to agree. But on the flip side, solid state amps have their uses. For instance, under some conditions, a solid state amp actually makes more sense to use than a tube amp. When I gig, I bring two amps with me: A re-tubed and modified Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, and a Roland Cube 60. I play my electrics (ES-335 and Strat with Tex Mex pickups) through the Hot Rod, while I play my Ovation Elite acoustic/electric through the Roland Cube. There’s a practical reason for this in addition to a more personal reason. The practical reason is that I have effect boxes that are specifically geared towards shaping my electric guitars’ tones on the Hot Rod. Having to dial in the effects for a third is just too impractical.

On the personal side of things, I found that my Ovation actually sounded better (to my ears) on the clean channel of the Cube. I wasn’t expecting it, but I think the brightness and high touch sensitivity of the Hot Rod actually made my ovation too bright – it’s already a bright-sound guitar unplugged. With the Roland, I could dial back the brightness of the amp to bring out the Ovation’s natural brightness, and with the built-in chorus, add some subtle overtones that was very pleasing to my ears. I also “cheat” a bit by running a Presonus TubePre right before the amp, and that really warms up my signal. And by the way, the Cube 60 is a VERY LOUD amp; so loud, in fact, that I actually use the tube pre-amp as a gain limiter to control the amp’s volume – otherwise, I’d have to play the amp at around 2.

I also own a Line 6 Flextone III Plus that I use extensively in my recording work. Why? With its controllable direct out, I can get a nice even signal coming from my amp and go directly in to my recording unit. Furthermore, because it’s a modeling amp, I can tweak a lot of different things to create a unique patch that I couldn’t achieve without a lot of signal processing (read: effect boxes) on my tube amp. Note however, that the guitar parts that I play through the Flextone III typically play a supporting role in my songs, but even as support, they play a valuable part.

Another important point that I’d like to make is that with a modeling amp, you get a very consistent tone. In a lot of cases that consistency can equate to “boringness,” but for my uses, I can create a background guitar part knowing that I won’t have to do much with it in my recording software. Also with respect to consistency, once I’ve dialed in a tone on my Flextone, it sounds pretty much the same throughout a wide range of volumes. That’s very useful.

The downside of a modeling amp is that, well, your sounds are models. While modeling technology has certainly come a long way, you can get close to a particular tone from a tube amp, but it’s not quite the same. Another thing that I found is that with a full-blown modeling amp like the Flextone III, it actually sounds horrible on stage; especially if you’ve introduced distortion into the patch. There’s a lot to be said about the interplay between pre-amp and power amp tubes in producing a distorted signal. Modeling amps just can’t capture that 100%. But I will say that played clean, it’s tough to distinguish between the two types of amps, especially if you put a tube pre before a modeling amp, like I did with my Cube 60.

So the moral of the story boys and girls is that modeling amps don’t suck. For me, they’re very useful for specific purposes. In all others, I’ll take a tube amp any day.

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Review: The Taylor T5 ~ Is it an electric? Is it an acoustic?

Posted in gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, Guitars, Tone on March 8, 2007| 140 Comments »

A friend of mine recommended that I try out a T5. He was raving about how cool it looked, and how you could switch from acoustic sound to a full-blown electric. I was a little dubious, considering that that’s really just modeling, and frankly, it was nothing new to me). Parker Guitars did this with “The Fly” well over a decade ago. But to be fair, I went down to my local GC to check one out and see what all the hype was about. So, under the guise of “Honey, I need to run some errands. I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” I ventured to my local GC, and played it for over an hour. The following is the result of that session with the Taylor T5:

Oops! Before I start on the actual review, I played the T5 through three amps: A Fender Acoustasonic Junior, a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, and a Roland Cube 30.

Fit and Finish:

All Taylor guitars look great, and the T5 is a real beauty. I played a T5 with a beautiful royal blue finish – very sexy. The T5 also lives up to the Taylor standard of construction – all their guitars are very well-built. As far as acoutrements are concerned, personally, I’m not a real fan of low-profile knobs (when I’m in the middle of a song and want to make an adjustment, I want to be able to feel the knob – ooh, that didn’t sound good), but the knobs on the T5 fit in with its design nicely.

Feel and Playability:

The T5 has a nice narrow neck – very similar to my Strat and Ovation Acoustic/Electric – which I love, so moving around on this neck was amazingly easy and very comfortable. Acoustic players who are accustomed to wider necks will need a little time to get a feel for the neck, but should adjust pretty quickly. I had an easier go of it myself from playing my Ovation. When I first got that guitar, I had a bit of a break-in curve, but now it’s the type of neck I prefer.

Sound:

I know that I may piss some people off when I say this, but as far as sound was concerned, I was a bit disappointed. Based upon my conversation with my friend who raved about it, and lots of glowing reviews I read on Harmony Central and Musicians’ Friend, I was expecting a lot more with respect to tone – especially since the T5 starts at $1999, and goes up from there. I used the same evaluation process on the three amps I played the T5 on: On both amp and guitar, I started out by setting all the tone knobs to the mid settings. Guitar volume was set to midline, and since I was in a shop, I had to set the Fenders pretty low (they use logarithmic volume pots), while the Cube 30’s gain could be cranked while leaving the volume at a comfortable level. From there, I played the guitar in three different ways: 1) Fingerpicking; 2) strumming (using a straight sweep strum, and a percussive, attacking strum); 3) Then just playing various lead patterns in clean and high-gain modes.

Played clean with fingerpicking and lead playing, the T5 was very nice on all the amps; great clarity and sustain, though I really had to pump up the bass and turn down the treble on the amps to achieve a rich sound – especially on the Hot Rod Deluxe which, even with brightness off, plays pretty bright. Strumming in clean mode was pretty ugly on the Fenders – the guitar sounded like an acoustic plugged into an amp – very flat sounding, and no amount of EQ tweaking or reverb helped. Plus, when using a percussive strum pattern (think Michael Hedges), I would get an annoying popping sound. Probably has to do with the very touch-sensitive pickups, added to the touch sensitivity of the Fender amps. On the Cube 30 though, since I could apply some chorus, the tone cleaned up quite nicely, and helped dissipate the high end. If I was to use the T5 clean with a straight tube amp or acoustic amp, I’d run it into a compressor, a chorus, and then run the entire signal thorough a sonic maximizer – and possibly add an EQ pedal to texture the sound better.

In high-gain mode on the Hot Rod, the T5 actually sounded very nice. Even though I had to play at a lower volume, I could crank the drive and get a real nice distortion out of the T5. I think this is where the body vibration from the hollow body comes into play. It actually sounded a lot like my ES-335 in that mode; very pleasing to the ear, with a big, rich sound. With the Roland Cube 30 in the modeling channel, the T5 performed great with the gain at about midway, using the all the non-acoustic amp models. In the acoustic model on modeling channel, the T5 actually sounded VERY good, but then again, that’s a modeled sound.

Overall:

The Taylor T5 is a pretty nice guitar. Would I pay two grand and up for it? I don’t think so. I look at this guitar as being similar to a Line 6 Variax 700, which has a lot more features and guitar models built into it, and costs more than half the price less (I know, the T5 is NOT a modeling guitar)! Then again, I wouldn’t buy a Swiss Army Knife type of guitar period, mainly because even though it may sound real close to what it’s modeling, it’ll never get the exact voicing that the original gives you. For instance, if I want a thin, single coil sound, I’ll use my Strat. If I want a richer, boomier presentation, I’ll use my ES-335 (I’m also in the market for a Les Paul Double Cutaway, which I just adore). For acoustic/electric work, I’ll use my Ovation shallowbody.

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