New studio gear - Line 6 Gearbox Gold Plug-in Bundle

I've always been intrigued by the idea of using Guitar Rig and AmpliTube hardware/software packages for PC-based amp modeling in the studio... while I never envisioned using it much for major recording projects, I could see how it would come in handy for putting down demos and scratch tracks. When the price recently dropped for the Line 6 Gearbox Gold Plug-in Bundle, I decided it was time to make my entrance into the world of software-based modeling.

The bundle consists of 3 components... a Toneport D.I. (essentially a guitar direct box with a USB interface), the Gearbox amp emulation software, and VST plug-in to use with recording software (e.g., Sonar). The Gold bundle has 72 guitar amp & 24 guitar cab models, 28 bass amp & 22 bass cab models, 80 different effects (including stompbox models), and 6 mic preamp models. Pretty comprehensive!

Installation was pretty easy... run the setup CD and plug in the USB cable. Then wait while Line 6 Monkey downloads software/driver updates for approx. 45 minutes over my pokey studio network connection. :) Plug in a guitar, load up the software, and let the gripes begin...

Gripe #1: The Toneport D.I. is designed to be its own audio interface... it has a 1/4" in and several 1/4" outs on it. Needless to say, I didn't buy it to use as an audio interface, since I've already got more Presonus & Focusrite preamp channels than I really need. The challenge... the Gearbox software appears to only be able to use the Toneport as its output. So unless I want to patch my studio monitors into the Toneport (not worth the hassle), I'm left with the following workaround... plug the Toneport's outputs into the Focusrite inputs, then enable monitoring through the Frontier Audio driver. This seems to work ok, but is annoying since I need to fire up the whole rack of preamps just to jam a little guitar. It also increases the potential for latency problems, mis-matched levels, and tone suck by doing more AD/DA conversion than is absolutely necessary. Grr...

Gripe #2: Once I figured out how to deal with gripe #1, I fired up Sonar to start experimenting with the plug-in. My first thought... why not use the Toneport input to record direct guitar tracks into Sonar, then use the plug-in to do virual re-amping, allowing me to tweak amp parameters on the fly during playback? Well, Sonar didn't like that idea... the direct tracks recorded with the Toneport are choppy and distorted--I'm sure it's an issue with sample rate/bit depth, but after checking both my Sonar audio settings and Toneport control panel, all the numbers appears to be in sync. I was able to record a couple direct tracks using the instrument-level input on the Focusrite and successfully re-amp those using the plug-in, but once again, I seem to be missing out on some of the benefits of getting the Toneport to begin with if I have to use the instrument-level input on the Focusrite.

Net of all this, the audio inputs & outputs on the Toneport are probably great if you don't have a decent audio interface; but if you do have a decent audio interface, be prepared to deal with additional setup & configuration time. (It's somewhat ironic that after adding the Toneport interface with one input to my system, I'm actually tying up three of my Focusrite inputs to fully interface with the Toneport!?!)

All griping aside, once you actually get audio flowing in & out of the plug-in, the software itself is pretty cool... bringing up any amp or effect model allows you to tweak parameters on a virtual control panel designed to look like the original (e.g., the JCM800 model has gold & black knobs on a gold faceplate, the Deluxe Reverb model has black knobs with white numbers on a black faceplate, etc.). Changing the order of effects and experimenting with mic placement is relatively straightforward. I can foresee using the effects pedals (e.g., chorus, delay, reverb, etc.) to add post-processing to tracks recorded with real mic'd guitar amps.

As far as the tone & feel goes, I'd say it's on par with anything else I've ever used by Line 6... gets maybe 80% of the tone of the original amp, but doesn't quite nail the dynamics of a real amp. Clean and high-gain tones are pretty good, but the in-betweens just don't have the feel. Again, for my purpose (recording demos/scratch tracks) it's probably no worse than the Behringer V-AMP Pro I just sold, but would it hold up in a mix next to a real mic'd guitar amp? Hard to say...

Having spent Tuesday night recording four tracks with Necessary Distraction, I will be doing some editing, overdubs, and mix-down over the next few days. I may sneak a couple of Gearbox tracks in the mix just to see how they fare with the real amps (Egnater JTM45 and H&K Switchblade heads).

--B

PS--What, no pictures? C'mon... it's a software plug-in. :)