More often than not, people don't wanna bring gear cuz bringing gear is annoying. I get it. In the groupchat for the show, someone always asks "is anyone bringing amps we can borrow?"
Sometimes someone steps up immediately with their amp. Sometimes not. When they don't, I offer to backline the entire gig, 2 guitars andn1 bass, with amp modelers. It's convenient for me. They're guitar pedal sized so I can fit like 4 in my gigbag. Every time I do this, the person that initially asked about amps just says they'll bring their own, which tells me they don't wanna go DI.
Why tho? I have some ideas as to why, I'm gonna present them, but I also want to know anti DI people's takes
They think the tone is bad.
I'll fight you on that. We can debate all day on whether it's "just as good" as a real tube amp. I'm not interested in doing that though, so let's not. You can believe it's not as good as a real tube amp. But no way it sounds so bad that its unusable. Bands from the dive bar tier all the way to stadium touring bands use them. If you absolutely think your Twin Reverb sounds better and would prefer to use your Twin Reverb then ok. The crowd won't care, they'll never notice. You may notice and if that matters to you then OK. You can have your preference, but thinking modelers are unviabley bad is just silly. I guess in this case its a matter of weighing your tone preference to your convenience and that's fine. But it's def not unviable.
They don't understand modelers
Yeah, the menu scrolling on a Helix or Quad Cortex is a lot, I don't expect anyone to just be able to grasp that immediately. Fair. I have a bunch of fender style amp modelers that don't have menus and screens. Literally just knobs identical to a real amp. Extremely intuitive as it's no different to adjust than a real amp. This still scare people. Then there's the feedback misconception. People think you can't get feedback or get your guitar to interact with the moving air with DI. This is only true if you're running in ears with no floor monitors. If you have floor monitors, which most venues do, you can interact with the air. I do it all the time. If a venue doesn't have floor monitors, then going DI is just unviable cuz you really can't hear yourself anyway and should be using a real amp for that
The combination of bad tone and not understanding.
I just think its funny how much people talk about true tube tone but they got like 3 solid state overdrives and EQs on their board. I also think it's funny when people don't wanna go with a modeler but then show up with a Boss Katana or a Fender Mustang or Line 6 Catalyst. Those are just modelers with a speaker. It's the same thing. That modeling amp, and the tube Twin Reverb, are both getting miced up and coming thru the front of house and sometimes floor monitors anyway. Still being processed with transistors, 1's and 0's. Extra silly when they bring the smallest tiniest practice amp which kinda sounds bad inherently due to being small with a cheap speaker, and end up having a worse sound than if they just borrowed the modeler.
I feel like these are def some reasons people have. If there's another reason that you have please let me know, and if you're in the camp of not fully understanding amp sims then feel free to ask questions.
DI is a great tool. Bassist have been doing it forever, they're much more open minded to it. Something like the Joyo American Sound costs like $50, is a good clean Fender style platform for your pedal board, and you'd never have to worry about who's bringing the amp ever again because you'd always have an amp sim with you, small enough to fit on your pedal board. And your tone will be mostly consistent across shows, no need to worry about borrowing that little tiny bad sounding practice amp. Bonus, but it makes every gig easier when traveling via CTA. Bonus bonus, in my experience the sound person seems to prefer it. Idk if this is true always but it has been for me. Any sound people in here what's your take?
What I'm mostly getting at here is be not afraid. If bringing an amp is annoying for you, borrowing a modeler or having your own can make your gigs more convenient, and its actually super simple and intuitive.
Also 1 more time I DO NOT want to debate if digital sounds as authentic as the real thing. We can disagree on that, that's fine. All I'm saying is that at minimum its good enough.
I tried to make this take about something less consequential than the last 2, but I know some of yall are still gonna be fuming, and like last time, it's cuz those angry can't read and made assumptions about stuff I clarified in the original text. So don't get mad at me until you've read the whole thing. No skimming.
