Are digital guitar effects lame?

It's easy to understand the charm and beauty of analog goodness. But too often we take sides radically, ruling out any positive attributes of the losing side. I think it's silly to assume digital processing can't be used as a successfully artistic tool. It just takes the right person to come along and learn how to say something with it.

(This, after spending the previous few hours shopping around for old analog equipment. =) )

You always know what you're going to get, sound-wise. They sound the same at 1 or at 10, so you can go TOTALLY overdrive in your bedroom and not piss off the wife/neighbors. They allow a whole large bunch of effects to be bundled in one package (see Line 6) for a year's salary less than the original analogs would.

If you have a problem with them, don't use them. I have had a lot of fun with mine, and I think everyon should at least give them a try.

definitely steer clear of the Pod and its ilk (the Vox equivalent is slightly better).

ultimately, it depends on what you're trying to do - what kind of space you want to construct in your songs. some music (hell, a lot of music) simply does not require the OMG-a-marshall-stack-just-landed-in-my-room presence of a real amp. some reggae and r'n'b makes shitty DI guitar sound interesting in its very shitty DI-ness.

That said, I loved the ability to measure out precise BPM for delays. I use a floorboard live to trigger samples, so I just hooked it up to the POD to dictate the proper delays - one touch would send a note-on signal to start a sample and a midi command to switch on a POD preset. That was pretty damn cool.

I have a feeling this thread should have been on I Make Music.

but a good number of the digital things sound terrible. i played a line 6 amp once..horrible

the POD was the case of trying to cram a bit too much in one box, though.

I think digital guitar effects are fine, it just takes more trial and error to find ones that work for you, and further trial and error to tweak them to get appropriate sounds. I've tried virtually every software guitar amp simulator, and for the most part, they leave me cold. Guitar Rig isn't so bad, but it requires a lot of patience and customization.

Izotope Trash is a phenomenal distortion vst, but it seems to work best on guitars that have been miked.

My goal for several months has been to find a batch of vsts that i could use to create my own mangled/mungled guitar sound. It's a LOT of work, and it's hard to find approaches that haven't been used by the likes of Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Oren Ambarchi, etc.

But it's fun.

*this statement applies to everything, not just digital guitar effects

where the hell am i going to find an analog reverb pedal that has anywhere near the functionality of the Digiverb/Boss reverbs?

There's no inherent reason why digital has to be crappy. There are lots of terrible horrible analog pedals out there too.

this is the best gear set up ever!

*this statement applies to everything, not just digital guitar effects "

You rule, Matt. Long live the grey area.

The phases and flanges in the Line 6 Modulation Modeller are thin and characterless.

I think there will be some serious innovation in the next few years with digital effect modelling. It would be great if someone would create a digital distortion pedal that gave you some of the aggression and break-up found in the VST plug-in world.