Like everyone else, I'm waiting for 2.8 to drop (I was originally going to wait until it came out before dropping the hammer on getting a Helix, but......). While we wait for the hopefully imminent arrival of the Revv Generator/LaGrange/King of Tone/etc. models (and all the behind the scenes software unification of course), I'm curious about what other people might be doing that "breaks the rules" in search of filling in the gaps in modeling. More specifically, my mindset is that people who state "conventional wisdom" observations as absolute commandments not to break (e.g. "never ever run a modeler with amp models active into the front end of a tube amp, even if it is a clean as hell input") don't quite "get it". I've seen people say you are "never" supposed to run a pre-amp model into an amp model, or it will sound totally "lollipope". And yes, I'm running my Helix into the front end of a Fender 90s Hot Rod Deville low input........a bit noisy (yeah, I should really use more noise-gating), but it sounds live and present in a way that the FRFR demo at the Guitar Center when I bought it utterly failed to do.
Anyway, I've found that there's a few "holes" in the amp modeling lineup I'd like to fill, and that it seems that some "oddball" solutions seem to work. Here's some of my cuckoo Frankenstein experiments, so if you have any ideas of your own, let's share:
1. Selmer amps- for a while in the late 60's, David Gilmour's go-to amp choice during the post-Syd, pre-Dark Side era. My version runs the AC-30 Fawn Brt model preamp into a Whowatt amp, as I've read Selmers were sort of in-between the AC-30 and Hi-Watt.
2. Vox UL hybrid amps- The Vox Super Beatle and related amps were SS/Tube hybrids that not only were used by the Beatles, but also by Jimmy Page on Zep 2 (see "The Lemon Song" among others). While not really accurate to the whole SS pre/tube power design, running a Derailed pre into a Fawn Brt full amp seems to approximate some of the "overloaded gain in the pre, fed into a Vox power stage" explosiveness the designers seemed to be going for.
3. Sunn Coliseum PA- I think I may have gotten this technically wrong- going for a Mississippi Queen sound, I ran the "Stone Age" preamp into an SVT Beast amp (SS power section), but I think the Sunn was all tube. Maybe swap out the SVT for one of the Mesa all-tube bass amps? Still seems to really get that "I'm using the wrong amp for the job, but it sounds so right" thing Leslie West did....
4. Early-ish Soundgarden Peavey VTM series- complete guesswork where I reverse-engineered the concept that Kim Thayil was looking for a crude Mesa Boogie caveman (distorted but not smooth/too full on metal) sound, so I ran an Interstate Zed pre into a Cali Rhythm 2 amp.
5. Ampeg-ish sound for My Morning Jacket-they have a whole "thick mids, 70s Neil Youngish" thing going on, so I ran a Voltage Queen pre into a Tuck 'N Go amp for a thick, bassy sound.
6. Tony Iommi's classic Laney Sound from Black Sabbath's first album- I really really wish they had modeled a Laney Supergroup the way Digitech did for the RP-1000......but given that it turns out early Laney amps were essentially first cousins to Marshalls, the Brit P75 Brt model w/ a Deranged pedal model in front of it manages to hit the sweet spot, as the original Park amps were essentially Marshalls with a little higher gain "mutation" going on.
7. Generally speaking, I've found that the "on paper" idea of having drastically low tone/gain settings for the full amp model when a pre-amp is being fed into it, doesn't actually necessarily hold true. Pre-amps seem to work well with high channel volumes, and completely variable drive and gain settings for both pre and full amps. What's your experience?
Let's see if we can come up with some cuckoo ideas here. After all, the great real geniuses of rock didn't follow rules too strictly......that's why they became legends.
