Does anyone else hate their Cyber-Twin?

[revolead]

Cool amps, Lee. I only mentioned the comment about having tubes doesn't make it great because that's sort of the feeling I got after your last post, but I'm glad you will concede that.

 

I've had experience with tubes, but not enough to truly appreciate the difference. Everything I've heard has either been recorded or secondhand. I did have the priviledge of being exposed to all kinds of Fender stuff. My neighbor has a lot of the old stuff, including an original '65 Super Reverb that sounds incredible. He and I also have the same digital modeler, so it's nice to compare the two. Interestingly enough, he also has a Cyber Deluxe. From what he's said, basically, nothing beats original Fender tube right now (if that's the tone you like), but the Cyber Deluxe does a good job of emulating the Fender stuff. I'd agree. We fooled around with it and it got some great SRVesque tones, but the Marshall and Mesa sounds were just terrible. The DG Stomp does a much better job with high-gain stuff.

 

I agree that trying a modeler through a tube power amp does nothing. I've heard it and it is improved, but what I use my DG Stomp for is recording and headphones. In that respect, the thing is awesome. But I would never in a million years take the DG Stomp as a primary road tool. It's a home studio device, nothing more, nothing less.

[Lee Flier]

Originally posted by The Revo:

Its fine to have an opinion about the modelers, but saying they outright suck seems to be a little much of an overgeneralization to me.

Well of course it is. It's meant to be humorous, hence the smilies.

 

I do, in fact, think they suck... FOR ME... but it's fine with me if others feel differently. I didn't want Mike to feel alone in his opinion, though.

 

Like I said, it's all about experience. How long have you played guitar? How long have you been using your amp?

Next year it'll be 30 years playing, and I've had one of my amps for 25 of those years. Others have come and gone.

 

I've never had the joy of a real tube amp, so to me, these modelers still sound pretty good. The Line 6 stuff has never impressed me, but my DG Stomp as well as the Vox Valvetronix series sounds pretty damn good to me. I agree with you that nothing beats a tube amp, but I haven't been spoiled enough to claim all modelers suck.

Well, I have. Bought my first amp at 15, it was a Fender Princeton Reverb. A really nice tube amp. I then had a brief association with a Peavey (it was all I could afford at the time) which fortunately went up in smoke on stage one night, prompting me to seek out the Ampeg VT-40 which I still own today. Old Ampeg combos from the 70's can still be found pretty cheap, and their tone still rules.

 

For what it's worth, I've heard a couple tube amps that just suck.

Well of course. Having tubes in it doesn't make an amp great - the design and build quality have to be great. But like I said before... we all know there are a lot of great ones, so the sucky ones do not cause most of us to form a general negative opinion of tube amps!

 

BTW - What kind of tube amp do you have? I keep forgetting.

Besides the Ampeg, my main stage amp these days is a blackface Fender Pro Reverb. Also have a WEM Dominator (British made amp from the 60's/70's which sounds very similar to a Vox... actually our bass player technically owns it but it's in my studio, he rarely plays guitar, and possession is 9/10ths of the law ). I am about to buy another amp too (will post more details soon!) I've owned quite a lot of amps over the years, the majority of them pretty great, and if they weren't great I quickly sold 'em and got a different one.

 

I hope you get to experience the incredible joy of a great tube amp soon!

[Guitarzan]

Originally posted by Lee Flier:

Originally posted by WolfZan:

i wouldn't condemn modelers in whole unless i tried every one. this is a great place for information. but unless one has tried every modeler i would suggest comments like "modeling sucks" to be a preference and an opinion rather than a truth.

Well let's see... I've tried all the Line 6 stuff, the Yamaha Magic Stomp, Johnson J Station, Vox Valvetronix, and Cyber Twin. That's most of 'em. Suck, suck, suck, suck and more suck.

 

for what it is worth i am sure there are a large number of sucky tube amps in exsistance. but i wouldn't say tube amps suck.

No, because we've all heard many many tube amps that don't suck. I have not yet heard a modeller that doesn't suck. I've tweaked the patches, I've used other people's patches who are purported tweak experts, I've put tube preamps in front of them to get a better analog signal going into the modeler... in short, I've really, really tried to give these things a chance but well... THEY JUST SUCK.

well i don't care for the power amp/speaker simulations on most modelers as well. no punch. zero.

that is the main difference with my amp.

the dg100 is an AMP not a pedal.

POD is great for late night headphone jamming. but i like speakers.

i have played through a few big name tube amps and some are very nice and some i was less impressed with. one that got away was a Trace Elliot (pre gibson) Speed Twin). and i have always had a love of Marshall tone. when it comes to clean i lean toward the fender camp. so when i go tube it will be something that captures the personality of these type of amps.

so far the Traynor yvc 40wr seems very high on my list.

but there is no hurry for my amp doesn't sound like dog vomit to me yet

could it be the power section and twin celestion Vintage 30's?

[Dennyf]

'K, I'm chiming in even though I've never played or even heard a "Cyber" series amp.

 

But I never heard a digital modeller that I really liked. I maybe liked one or two a little in the store. But didn't *really* like any of 'em.

 

Except for one patch on one Line 6 that the owner had spent a lot of time on editing. He was playing a strat, and was playing with a guy using a Vibrolux and a strat, and the Line 6 guy's tone was holding up really well in a jam situation with the Vibrolux. But that was the first and only time I heard a pretty good tone come out of a modeler in a live situation.

 

And I can't make an amp-related post without saying "Tech 21."

 

(I'm no tube nazi, but I'm still an analog nazi.)

 

It's kinda funny, but 'way back in the late '80s-early '90s, a buddy of mine and I were thinking about building effects and preamps. The buddy was working for a defense contractor involved in digital signal processing for weapons systems, and we (well, actually he) had the idea even then of putting a broadband audio signal thru a good-sounding tube amp, sampling the output, and devising an algorithm to emulate the difference between the input signal and the output signal. But that's as far as we got. Oh well.

[The Bear Jew]

I wouldn't record with it either. Yeah I own a POD and I use it for the kinds of things Tedster suggests - working up arrangements and song demos at low volume, or for scratch tracks. When it comes to recording the "keeper" track though, I mic an amp, period.

Yeah, I hear ya there.

The reason I find the POD so wonderful for recording is that it allows us to track the entire band at once without worrying about amp bleed into the drum tracks. This is important if you have a small studio or use an improvised recording environment, as we do.

 

The POD is great for that... and I usually find the tone is decent enough to use for a guide or scratch track. However, I always wind up layering my real amp tone (miked Marshall JCM 900 w/4x12) as the keeper/primary guitar track. The POD mainly provides a reasonable facsimile of my real rig while we track, and it allows the drums to sound nice and clean in the process.

 

I have a friend who uses the Line6 rack-mounted guitar POD dealie with a power amp onstage. It sounds great for what he doesindustrial metal. I don't think he ever uses what anyone would call an "organic" guitar sound. He's one of those guys who uses massive amounts of delay, chorus and other FX shit for his clean sound, and then switches into mind-melt overdrive. He doesn't have the issues someone like Lee or I would with wanting to maintain warmth or tubeful goodness. The POD works great for him in a live setting.

 

However, he also thinks the CyberTwin is crap, and almost everyone else I know concurs.

 

I think we can all agree amp modeling units serve a practical purpose when recording (scratch tracks) and practicing, but pale in comparison to the real amps they attempt to emulate.... especially for slightly overdriven tones.

[doc taz]

You could try changing the preamp tubes, and hooking it to a different cab + speaker setup, before giving it up completely. Perhaps if you can score a good 50 watt tube power amp, and a different cab. That's a lotta dough, though.

 

Are you sure you can't get any good, dry sounds out of it? Meaning just pure amp type sounds without any reverb, gating, compression, etc.

[mstreck]

WOW! I take a few days off and come back to a second page of posts! I had no idea how strong you opinions were about modeling!

 

I figure I am "stuck" with the Cyber-Twin for now... only because I figure if I'm going to buy yet ANOTHER amp, I should make sure it is something that I really will like. The problem is that I really liked the Cyber-Twin when I first played it, but how can you really tell that something is good for you until you really put it through its paces? It took over 7 months of gigging and experimentation to make me come to the realization that it just wasn't the amp for me (I always just assumed that I didn't have it tweaked correctly and could "fix" it with a little effort ).

 

So, I've decided to start with a solid foundation - the guitar. I'm going to upgrade my guitar pups first and work from there. I'm putting Burstbuckers in my LP Standard (I already did the Strat pups last Spring). THEN I'll painstakingly search for my "ultimate" amp. The hardest part will be taking my time to find it. I already made one $1200 mistake, and I hope to avoid another. Hopefully, I can find an amp that gives me good tones no matter which of my guitars I use... but that's a topic for another thread.

 

Yes... my next amp will most likely be all tube. I'll miss the convenience of switchable presets, but I guess sacrifices need to be made. Who knows... maybe I can find something that even sounds good with my GNX3.

 

Thanks for the input! You guys rock!

 

Mike

[jjbraunius]

I concur with the statement that the Cyber Twin is crap.

I went on the market a year ago and out of everything modelling I tried the Twin was the worst, especially for the tube distortion tones I was after (The Mesa/Soldano/Laney over the top thrash metal distortion). I have to say that the clean and semi distorted were halfway decent. My take on the Vetta was pretty much the same. So what I ended up doing - got me a tube power amp and a Sansamp PSA1. I am still happy with my tone and the only thing I regret is that I had to stay on floor pedals due to the PSA1 only being a preamp without digital FX.

[mstreck]

UPDATE:

 

I installed the Burstbucker Pros and it made a marked difference! They were well worth the money. To be honest, I think I was blaming the CT when I should have first been considering the crappy pickups that were in the Les Paul.

 

Although the CT isn't "perfect", I've been using four (100% custom) patches to adequately address most of my needs: Clean, clean with chorus, overdrive, distortion. No real problems and no real complaints. (My Strat sounds OK, but is still too bright.) I don't see me unloading it anytime soon.

 

I don't even hook up the GNX3 anymore, but I will probably end up adding it back in solely for its "stompbox" capabilities.

 

Now I just feel like a doofus for making such a big deal about it.

 

Mike