“The biggest challenge for digital products is not the tone”: John Petrucci, Tosin Abasi and Devin Townsend explain what modelers don’t do as well as amps – yet
John Petrucci, Tosin Abasi and Devin Townsend form the line-up for a dream prog metal guitarist roundtable in Rick Beato’s latest interview – and they offer the most insightful discussion on the 'digital modelers versus real amps' debate we've heard in a long time.
The three guitarists are currently in the final throes of a tour together as part of Dream Theater’s travelling prog metal festival Dreamsonic and stopped in to chat with the YouTube veteran. As you might expect, the conversation inevitably turns to tone – and, in particular, the limitations of digital products.
“The biggest challenge for the digital products is not the tone,” says Petrucci [around 34 mins]. “It's not the things like gain and overdrive and stuff like that, it's how the amplifier physically pushes air through the speaker, it's the feel thing… It's all happening very randomly, nothing happens the same.”
In particular, it’s what Abasi – who has recently equipped his backline with Bad Cat tube amps – later labels the ‘chaos element’ that is missing when it comes to a modeler’s output.
“If you're playing through an amp with a lot of distortion and you play an A [chord] and then you play that same A again, the way that it interacts with the amplifiers components and comes out the cabinet and the speakers is totally different,” explains Petrucci.
“It's a totally different moment in time, but with the digital products they can never randomize that again… That's always the missing piece to me: that randomness and the way that things are happening in physical space that you can't reproduce.”
Petrucci, perhaps unsurprisingly given their close working relationship, credits Neural DSP with getting closest, but posits the solution to the random element may lie in AI.
Abasi, agrees, for the most part – later labelling the “violent” experience of a loud amp as “quintessential to the electric guitar”. However, he also notes the present period is “a golden age” for guitar software and notes that, sometimes, the reverse is true – that players who have developed their ear on optimized modeling tech can sometimes find the real-life alternative disappointing.
“In the early Fractal days, it'd be idealized versions of like a 5150 or like a Mark IV,” recalls Abasi. “And then you get the real amp and you don't sound as good, because it's all compressed in the modeler… so, the chaos thing you were describing, where there's an unpredictability [that can play against you]. There's a life to real amps – for better or worse – meaning they're harder to play through in some ways.”
Petrucci says he increasingly believes the answer ultimately lies in focusing on IR developments and speaker/room emulation – as evidenced by his recent Tonemission IR launch. However, even that still has its limitations, as Townsend astutely notes.
“Your IR is pretty much 99% of what you had in your rig,” observes Townsend to Petrucci. “So then I guess the experience of playing the live amplifier, it's an intangible part of that process that you find inspiring?”
“It is inspiring,” reflects Petrucci. “It's really inspiring because it's reactive. Everything digital is recreating something. They're all moments in time but real life is happening right now. So [with] real amplifiers, everything's random: how the notes interact, what's going to happen… the resonance of the stage and the room, the house, and how loud it is. Those are all things that are unpredictable… [they’re what] make it reckless and rock and roll and cool, and it makes your performance different every single night.”
Watch the full fascinating interview above and subscribe to Beato’s channel on YouTube for more tonal geekery, before you bone up on Petrucci’s new software brand – its first launch replicates his exact signal chain.
