About CAB Simulation Setup

[jesinspirment]

Need some advise here.

Due to work, it's not possible for me to practice electric guitar at home with an amp. No matter how soft I set the volume to, it is just way too loud. Now that my amp is spoiled, I am considering a setup where I can practice with headphones. I don't want to get another amp just to use the headphone jack. Also, I may be interested in recording in future when I get better.

Hence, I am considering a pedal chain, which ends with a preamp pedal and a cab simulator. One example will be a Sansamp Blonde into Torpedo CAB. This can potentially be more expensive than buying a real amp, but it is ok to spend more. However, I have a few questions about such a setup:

1) Assuming that I purchase a cab simulator, such as Torpedo CAB, can I use it without a preamp pedal?
2) Supposedly I need to play at a gig, in which there is no amp there, with my pedal board setup, can I connect to mixing console directly?

3) How powerful is a preamp pedal? Can it actually drive a real physical power amp/cabinet?

I apologize if these questions are silly, but I'm only into electric guitar for a short while, hence I'm not knowledgeable in the gear aspect.

 

[zesn]

1) A preamp is not necessary, but is useful to have to shape and colour your tone, eg. the Sansamp Blonde you suggested. The Torpedo C.A.B has line in, power amp, cab, mic, eq, line out, all with parameters you can adjust, i suppose you could juice up your input signal with the various settings before it goes line out.

2) If you're using a cab simulator, you can go direct out from a cab sim to the mixing console. The downside is if the house engineer doesn't know what he's doing, you may not get to hear yourself at the right volume on the monitors. It might be better to just plug into a amp for live, and skip using a amp sim or a cab sim into the amp because it's not gonna sound nice unless you turn the simulators off.

3) A preamp pedal is unable to drive a physical cabinet because of the way the output is designed. The only pedal I can recall that can do this is the EHX .44 magnum which runs on 24vdc and outputs 2A of current. So essentially this pedal isn't even a preamp, it's a power amp stage which has enough power to drive the speakers.

In theory, any overdrive pedal can be classified as a preamp, anything that's before the amp stage can be sort of called a preamp. But what you need to have to drive speakers are power amps that can handle lots of speakers.

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After all that technical talk,
I would advise that you keep your pedalboard whichever way you want it, and use a Vox amplug for practice. (~$50, plugs into your pedal/guitar, headphone out)

If you own a iPhone you can even get the Amplitube iRig or any relevant iPhone apps that support guitar amp emulation. Guitar plugs into a peripheral which goes into iPhone and headphones out.

But since you're looking at practice,live, and recording, you might as well invest in a POD HD series which contains amp sims and cab sims and effects pedals and probably everything you need all in one digital giant stompbox.

 

[draven07]

The sansamp blodne already comes with a cab simulator if i'm not wrong.. i'm using the deluxe version so as to have some presets available. It is supposed to let you connect direct to PA without an actual amp (i've yet to try it though).

Need some advise here.

Due to work, it's not possible for me to practice electric guitar at home with an amp. No matter how soft I set the volume to, it is just way too loud. Now that my amp is spoiled, I am considering a setup where I can practice with headphones. I don't want to get another amp just to use the headphone jack. Also, I may be interested in recording in future when I get better.

Hence, I am considering a pedal chain, which ends with a preamp pedal and a cab simulator. One example will be a Sansamp Blonde into Torpedo CAB. This can potentially be more expensive than buying a real amp, but it is ok to spend more. However, I have a few questions about such a setup:

1) Assuming that I purchase a cab simulator, such as Torpedo CAB, can I use it without a preamp pedal?
2) Supposedly I need to play at a gig, in which there is no amp there, with my pedal board setup, can I connect to mixing console directly?

3) How powerful is a preamp pedal? Can it actually drive a real physical power amp/cabinet?

I apologize if these questions are silly, but I'm only into electric guitar for a short while, hence I'm not knowledgeable in the gear aspect.

 

[Vax]

I've gone through the exact same situation before and I settled on a Carl Martin Rock Bug, which I personally use and I find immensely helpful to practice silently. I have this at the end of my pedal chain, use an RCA/stereo cable to hook up my iPod, wear a pair of headphones, and I can have my personal jams at 2am in the morning without waking the wife.

The headphone out also works as an "amp out", so if you gig with this, you could send the XLR out to the mixing desk, and connect the headphone out to a keyboard amp. A keyboard amp is full-range and flat, so it will reproduce the EQ coloration of guitar cabinet simulation.