If you do more than one thing, this is a neat time to be alive. The 18 year old version of myself, back in 1983, would have loved a recording studio with unlimited tracks and synths, worldwide music distribution, etc. What would have been a huge success in 1983 is pretty much a mildly successful hobby in 2020.
I have 4 albums out. I’m on Spotify, Apple Music, all that stuff. I get royalty checks. They’re small. For a while, I was doing solo gigs, playing my own music. And a funny thing happened – I got tired of playing the same old songs. It got old. It got “not fun.” I started doing covers, and I ended up making more money but it got to be a drag, so I stopped.
But I miss it. I miss performing in front of people I don’t know. I miss being an actual musician. If you want to be an actual musician, you need to perform, in my opinion. So I’ve been buying PA gear and practicing a real lot and I’m starting to do gigs again. Mostly covers, with some of my own music thrown in. If people were still buying CD’s, I would probably do mostly original and mix in some covers. But very few people to buy CD’s any more. Why would someone buy my CD? They can hear my music on YouTube, Amazon Prime, all the streaming services, etc.
Over the past few years I’ve been buying pedals. I watch the YouTube guitar gear channels. I see people going on and on about how great pedals are. I wanted to believe. But I ended up never using any of them, except my Keeley 4 knob compressor. And when I traded in my pedalboard towards a nice EV PA with a Yamaha mixer and JBL monitors, the only thing I kept was my Keeley.
I got rid of my pedals because they didn’t make any sense. For recording, the plugins I have sound better than the chorus/delay/reverb pedals. The distortion from my two tube amps sound better than any pedal I had. For recording, I only ever used the compressor.
For live gigs, I need a system that can change sounds via MIDI programming, emulate a lot of different amp sounds and effects, and not cost a fortune. When I used to gig, I used a Line 6 Floor POD Plus. I dug it back up, and right now, it’s what I’m using. Does it sound as good as my tube amps? Not even close. But does it do a bigger variety of sounds and can all of the patch changes be done automatically via MIDI? Yup. I trigger patch changes from Ableton Live, which handles backing tracks for my “one man band” shows.
Would I record with the Floor POD Plus? I have before. My first two albums were all POD. But I did switch to using tube amps for recordings. Why not just get rid of my tube amps and buy some type of Helix? Because I’d be pissed at myself 5 years from now. Besides, the POD Go is coming out in a month or two, and it’s $450 and it has all the Helix amps in it. It’s not anywhere near as powerful as a Helix, but if you want simple, it can do it. So that looks good to me. And I get to keep my tube amps.
But here’s a dirty little secret – the audiences I am playing for wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a Floor POD Plus and a POD Go. Nor would they care. Do I care? Yeah, I do. I want practicality, low cost, good sound. Whether I’m playing my own music or someone else’s, I want it to sound good. The Floor POD Plus sounds good. My tube amps sound great, but they’re heavy, and frankly the guitar sound needs to come from the PA with everything else, or it’ll sound like I’m playing along to a really nice stereo. Couldn’t I just use a direct out on one of my tube amps? Yup. Does it sound better? Yup. Can it do all the different sounds I need, triggered by MIDI? Nope.
If I were in a band, what would I do? I’d use a real tube amp. If I needed a ton of different sounds, I’d get a POD Go and plug it into my tube amp. But for a solo gig, where I have to carry all the equipment including PA, I like the idea of NOT carrying along heavy amps.
As far as using the ancient Floor POD Plus? Ha. I am the damn Budget Guitarist, you know. Says so on the website. And, to be fair, I’m plugging the ancient cheap ass Floor POD Plus into an EV/JBL PA system that would cost about 2 grand new. That does make a massive difference.
Tube amps will always be neat. I love mine. But the future is pretty obviously digital. At some point they’re going to sound better than the tube amps, and cost way way less money. We’re almost there now.
