So all of this early morning guitar recording has been with the guitar plugged directly into my USB audio interface. No microphones are being used because no speakers are being used. It’s a fully headphone setup.

I have been running the guitar through an amplifier though. My little Vox MV50 has a direct output on the back that includes cabinet simulation. Normally when you use a line out of an amplifier it sounds dog-shit awful. Not long ago the idea of digitally simulating a speaker cabinet and sticking it onto your line out signal has become a very helpful thing. There are all sorts of digital modeling amplifiers that do it now. Some are big rack mount devices, some are as small as foot pedals. My little Vox amp is an attempt at a tube amp in a pedal sized box. It uses Nutubes, which is something Korg came up with a few years ago as an alternative to normal vacuum tubes. They work off the same principals but they are extremely low powered. I think they sound okay in the amp’s pre-amp stage, but the power stage is still solid state so it doesn’t really feel like a tube amp. It sounds good enough to use, but it’s not really the same.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual tube amp with a line out that has a cabinet simulation? Wait a second… I think I actually have one of those! My Fender Bassbreaker 15 is a fully tube amp with exactly that kind of output on the back of the box. Why am I using the Nutube thing when I could be using the real sucker instead? Today I plugged it in and took the Fender’s cabinet sim for a spin. I think the Vox might sound better. I want to mess with it some more, but it doesn’t sound terribly good. It’s probably usable, but it’s a lateral move at best, if not a step backward. We’ll see.

I had completely forgotten about this, but when I first got the Bassbreaker amp I used the line out quite a bit for recording. When I got the Vox I used both of the amps in line out mode together for a two amp setup on an RPM Challenge. I think it was 2015 or 2016. It worked okay then. Maybe the thing to do going forward is split the signal to both amps and run with a two amp set up again. That could be fun. I mean, if I am stuck going direct again, maybe that’s something to keep things interesting. We’ll see. Next time I record rhythm guitars (tomorrow, I hope) I’ll use the Fender. Next time after that I might use them both. We’ll see.