Hello!

For quite a few years now, at home, I've been recording my 'Practice' lead guitar tracks with various VST plugins, for convenience.
Lately though I'm becoming more and more frustrated with the "thin-ness" of the recorded track even post EQ - they're just not beefy enough, as in they don't sound "driven" or powerfully organic when I A/B a reference track recorded with an amp and desk. I fully understand the limitations I'm dealing with and shouldn't expect the same quality - I'm just wondering, because my input chain lacks a power amplifier, would that make a difference whatsoever?

My signal chain is Guitar-UAD Apollo Twin X-DAW.

I keep seeing ads locally for guitar-specific power amps and wonder if going into one of those before the UAD would liven up/fatten up these lead tracks?

Cheers

Could be insufficient loading presented to the guitar pickups by the interface…versus connecting it to an amp. Pickups usually like to see several meg-ohms impedance (which is typical of tube amps…or some specialist DI’s)….for full bodied representation of the guitar sound.

If they’re only getting 1/10 or 1/100th of that (ie…just a few kohms) it will give you a top heavy, rolled-off low end, thin sound.

Do an impedance-matching investigation….

Hi Studer58 and thanks for the reply! How would one go about doing this? I'm not at all handy with electronics.

Cheers

What plugins are you using? Are you using the gainstaging recommended by the plugin dev?

Putting a pedal in front of the interface can be helpful for tone sometimes. Nothing fancy! A gain pedal or even something like a tubescreamer to push it a lil

What you describe can be directly related to reading anonymous people on the internet tell you that amp aims and/or plugins are just “missing something” or that “real” players don’t use plugins or sims. Both assertions are ridiculous, by the way.

Hello Bgood!

I'm using the plugins as needed - Sometimes a UAD amp sim in the unison slot, sometimes an in-daw vst like Softube Amp Room or Amplitube 5, and others from cheap/free sims to expensive bundle type releases.

I've gone down the gainstaging rabbit hole and found that minimal gain, if any, is enough for the guitars i'm using.
For the current song I'm working on, I'm going into an original 1980's Marshall Guv'nor pedal, then into the Apollo Hi-Z at the front. Again, I'm not over saturating or line driving from the pedal too hard... all knobs apart from mid are around 1 o'clock.

I agree with what you say about anon comments - I've had absolutely fine results many times over just using plugins within a mix.
Then there's times like these where the guitar is the absolute focal point, so the tone is crucial.
Maybe i'm just being overly critical. It seems it's just easier to dial the tone I'm chasing into an amp than trying to control the tone digitally. I do have fairly old ears.

Cheers

Here’s some more detail on the issue….http://leonaudio.com.au/active.htm

Here’s a Radial DI specifically designed to address the loading needs for various pickup types…the recommended retail price will vary depending on your location…

https://www.ambertech.com.au/acousti...t-di-r800-3005