Computer plugins

Wgg: You have any favorite plugins that you use a lot?

Scott: Well, Enigma is really cool.

Wgg: The Waves plugin?

Scott: Yes, that's a really good one. You can make tons of cool sounds with that and River Run is really cool and let's see... the Rocket Science ones, Roger and Cindy, they are bubbly and expressive kind of vowel sounding plugins.

So there's lots of stuff out there and I'm hoping that on the next album I can get in there and really make some different sounds happen.

Guitar amp emulators

Wgg: Scott, what's your opinion about all the guitar amp emulators currently available?

Scott: I didn't have much luck with them myself. They haven't sold me yet and they are nowhere even really close to getting the sound of a real tube amp. You can experiment with that stuff until you are blue in the face. If you stick a microphone in a speaker, it's gonna win.

That's where it is now, but who knows... I mean they keep working on it and they may get it.

I have Guitar Rig, I have a Pod, I have all that stuff and none of it even comes close to the real deal. But it tries hard and it's gonna get there sooner or later.

The weak point of it is the dynamics, the compression. It's not breathing because it can't simulate what a tube does - the dynamics of how you pick. Everything is still real compressed and Holdsworth sounding. That's why Allan (Holdsworth) can play through digital amps and sound great. Because of his style, because he picks everything the same - very lightly, so everything comes out within the same range.

It works for a player like Allan. It works really great but if you are trying to play Blues it just doesn't work. There's no expression in the right hand. It's all left hand, no right hand.

Another weakness in it is their speaker modeling. So far it seems like to me from the programs I've heard - I've heard Guitar Rig, I've heard Pod 2.0, I've heard Ampfarm and I've heard Amplitube - from what I hear they are trying to emulate putting the microphone in the paper of the cone. Almost every sound tries to emulate that.

On the cone - huge tone

Well, I don't put the mic in the paper - I put it on the cone itself which is a completely different sound. It's more from the Jeff Beck school.

I haven't heard anything sound as big and when you put the mic on the paper you get a small sound. It's smooth but small.

When you put the mic on the cone it's a huge tone, but it has to be dealt with in other ways because it's also hairyier. You have to do things to calm that down.

Anyway, in these modeling programs I haven't heard them try to get that. That's why as soon as I put a mic in the speaker it just blows all the virtual shit away that I've heard so far.

But they'll get it I bet, sooner or later.

As they keep going it keeps improving and maybe someday I'll be walking around with a little box. I won't have a big guitar cabinet anymore or a tube amp and my back will be really thankful.

I've seen other guitar players do it. I've seen McLaughlin play with Dennis Chambers and Joey DeFrancesco and he was just playing through a rackmount system and hearing himself in the monitors. And for that tone, the tone that he gets - it works.

I wish I could do that.