It’s a trend. Maybe a trend you like, maybe one you don’t, but a trend nonetheless. It’s where the location that you play, be it a club, coffeehouse or house of worship doesn’t allow you to have an amp that is producing sound. They all have a PA system that they manage and want to be in complete control of the audio level in their place and perhaps even have their own sound person riding the volume live.

For those of us who grew up before there were decent PA systems and the skill to use them, we were accustomed to the audience only hearing us if we were using an amplifier. With those opportunities decreasing, we have to come around to this new methodology if we want to play live, and our personal like of it or not, probably won’t matter.

The first thing we hear is this “benefit” to us. “Hey, it’s better because you don’t have to carry that really heavy amplifier up the stairs and around corners to get to where you will be playing.” Factually true but for those of us who came up or grew up playing through an amplifier we notice that in general we feel less connected and less engaged. Those who never played through an amp for most of their time, don’t have the same memories and may not know the difference. That psychological element is not dismissed lightly, although many pundits try to do so, and really that’s a topic for a different conversation. Today we are going to focus on the scenario where you will play live and will not be allowed to have your own sound reinforcement.

Acoustic players may be more accustomed to this, as most acoustics in the past did not have pickups and had to have a microphone placed in front of the guitar in order that the entire audience could hear you play. While some high end acoustics still do not include pickups from the factory (in my personal opinion, a good thing), the great majority do. Some of the pickups are really nice sounding, like what comes in a Maton, or where the factory installs any non-piezo system. Ask most musicians and most audio engineers and piezos will be classified as nasal, alcoholism inducing or just mike the darn guitar and ignore the piezo.

If your acoustic does not have a pickup and you want one, please read my discussion on the K&K Pure Mini pickup. It is an extensible design and what comes out to the PA sounds like an acoustic guitar with a good microphone in front of it. Again, a somewhat separate conversation.

In the past, we would bring our amps and let them be the delivery engine for our sound. Then as we moved to lower wattage on stage amps, we would put a PA microphone in front of the speaker and use the PA to deliver the sound. It still resulted in a lot of cabling, which could be a tripping hazard and if you are playing a show with many acts, this adds to setup and tear down.

Consider the Alternative

Let’s start with electric guitars. We know that if we run the output of the electric guitar into a High Z input on the PA, there will be sound. If we run the output of the last pedal on our board to the input on the PA, there will be sound. We won’t necessarily hear it on stage and if we have someone else “have schwang” TM and sit in the audience space, it’s likely that we will start crying because to be blunt, it will sound like crap. We expect the colouration that comes from a preamp, a power amp and a speaker, and that is not there in an FRFR PA speaker. I do encourage all players who will be playing through a PA to purchase a simple quality FRFR speaker for your practice location so you can get an idea what to expect and prepare for it BEFORE you get to the gig. You can spend a bomb on an FRFR powered speaker but it is not necessary. I have been very happy and very successful with FRFR systems from Headrush and JBL.

So what about the missing tonality of the amp?

This is where an amplifier and cabinet simulator comes into play. These devices have a single purpose. They take your guitar signal and modify it so it sounds like it has gone through an amp and cabinet. I am not talking here about digital modelling systems like a Quad Cortex, Kemper, Fractal or Helix. Those are amazing tools but in this article I want to keep things simple and not expect you to chuck your existing pedalboard and effects. This also keeps the cost of entry down. I will refer to these devices in general, but please know that I have paid for and use the Strymon Iridium and the DSM & Humboldt Simplifier for guitar. I also use the DSM&Humboldt Simplifier for bass and have used the Tech 21 2112 bass unit and am comfortable recommending either for bass players.

What Does the Amp/Cab Sim Do?

My personal preference is devices that are simple, meaning that they don’t try to simulate every amplifier and every cabinet. Better to do a few things really well, than many things poorly. The amplifier simulation options will be less about the preamps, and more about the amplifier as a whole, taking into account the type of power tubes to emulate, the output transformer and characteristics of the amp in general. The preamp sections, if they exist, are typically simple tone stacks. You will choose between the amplifiers that the device will emulate. It is common, and useful that the units that I mentioned do a good job of sounding like the amplifier section of a Fender, a Vox and a Marshall. I understand that there are tons of other amplifiers out there, but one of these will likely cover your needs.

The second half of the Amp/Cab Sim is the emulation of the sound of a speaker cabinet. Options typically include a 1x10 or 1x12, a 2x12 and a 4x12. We are not talking about the mass of choices found in a device like the Torpedo Captor X which is much more a recording device than a live device, in my opinion, but very good approximations of what you would expect from that type of cabinet.

I worry less about what the switch position says and more about whether or not I am happy with the tone.

Setup

This is pretty easy. In the most straightforward model, you plug your guitar into the input on the amp/cab sim box and send the output to an input on the PA over a balanced line. The Iridium uses 1/4” TRS balanced lines, the Simplifier offers balanced outputs over XLR or 1/4” TRS balanced lines. Personally I would always prefer XLR connections because it is easier to find long XLR cables and many locations that have their own PA systems, have lots of these cables about. I do not know why but I often find 1/4” TRS balanced cables to be more costly than XLR cables and there is no logical reason for that.

If you want to use your existing pedal board, plug the guitar into your first pedal and take the output from the last pedal and run it into the input on the amp/cab sim device. No secret squirrel stuff, it just works. You will of course, make settings on the unit for tone, and on some units like the Simplifier even decide where on the speaker cone the virtual microphone is pointed.

In the most complex system, you may have a preamp pedal that you want to use in front of the amp/cab sim. That works too. Set the amp/cab sim preamp section to completely neutral (typically all controls at noon) and place your preamp pedal where you want it in your chain. As I use tube based preamp pedals mine go between the output from the pedal board and the input of the amp/cab sim. It works best for me here, you should try yours in different positions and put the preamp where you think that it sounds best. It’s my opinion, that a separate preamp pedal always gives more flexibility than an amp/sim device with a generic preamp setup. Your mileage may vary.

Example Configuration

In my office, where I do my day job, there is an Apollo Twin X that I use for audio recordings, voiceovers for training and internal podcasts for clients. The microphone that is always connected is a Heil PR 40 and there are a pair of KRK G4 5 inch powered monitors. However, as I may be there for several hours, instead of wandering around, I might play a bit of guitar and so have a couple of guitars in that room.

My connections are very simple.

GUITAR -> Wampler Terraform -> TC Hall of Fame Reverb -> Effectrode Blackbird Tube Preamp -> DSM & Humboldt Simplifier -> Apollo Twin X

In this way I can noodle away and hear what I am playing through the monitors or plug in a set of headphones to the Apollo and listen that way. If I come up with something worth keeping, I just fire up Logic Pro or LUNA on the Mac Pro that the Apollo is connected to and I am good to go. If I do need to go play elsewhere, the whole system, sans guitar and Apollo go into a backpack and I can connect the Simplifer straight to the PA. Simple, finished, done. No muss, no fuss. It also means I do not have to tear up whatever is already configured in my studio room or practice space.

Acoustic Guitars

In this case, if your acoustic guitar does not have a pickup, a microphone connected straight to the PA is the easiest and cheapest route. However, you may want to keep the preamp functions closer to hand and perhaps add a modicum of effects to your signal. There are a multitude of acoustic preamp units in the marketplace and the big difference is that they are NOT trying to emulate an amplifier or speaker cabinet because you don’t want them to. You want as pristine a guitar signal as possible with minimal colouration. However you may want to manipulate the tone stack for the location, employ a notch filter to control feedback and perhaps add a bit of compression and maybe even a touch of reverb.

For this, consider something like, or exactly like the Tech21 Acoustic Fly Rig that I wrote about in this article. I like it very much. I own and do not like the Fishman Aura (too complex and it’s designed to colour the tone) and have tried pure preamps like the Radial units (superb preamps), but when the rubber hits the road as it were, the Tech21 Acoustic Fly Rig is the invariable choice. It can plug direct to the PA via an XLR cable and I just plug the output of the acoustic guitar into it. For my guitars with K&K Pure Minis it’s great and for those guitars like the Taylors having the Expression system, I can set that to neutral and use the Tech21. For guitars having piezos (spits on ground) the Tech21 has enough latitude to fix the nasal tone and lack of bottom end normal to piezo (spits on ground) pickups.

But How I Do Hear Myself?

The acoustic player may have a benefit in this case because the guitar is actually producing an audible sound, however my general recommendation is to take a tap off the PA board and run that back to a set of in ear monitors. These you should supply yourself of course. Depending on the venue and where you play, you may find that a set of wireless IEMs makes more sense for your use case. In the case of the Iridium, the Simplifier and the Acoustic Fly Rig, they all also have a headphone output so you can hear what is going to the PA, but some musicians want to hear what the audience is hearing from them and that’s when you want to monitor off the PA directly. I have bought IEMs from Sennheiser, Shure and Westone. The Sennheisers are to my ear the best sounding and have the best natural noise cancellation. The Shure IEMs are very good even though I bought the least expensive option. I am told that the high end Westones are good. I bought a set in the same price range as my Shure units and would never recommend them except as IEMs for a voice podcast without music, which is in fact where they have gone. They are permanently connected to my RODEcaster because music sounds horrible through them. Based on my experience with this one set, I won’t be spending on that brand every again.

My IEMs are all of the wired variety. This works for me, but if I was spending a lot of time gigging out, I would be definitely considering wireless IEMs such as the Shure PSM 300 system.

In Summary

The likelihood that those of us who play out will have to do so without an amplifier is only increasing. It’s not a catastrophic disaster if you plan for the eventuality and build a solution that you know and trust so when the call comes you are ready. You also won’t be running around like a head-less chicken trying to find answers at the last minute and consequently your talent will come through instead of stress. As always, thanks for reading and until next time, peace.