Say if you record at your rehearsal space where several people have access: You’ve miked your cabinet and you just couldn’t finish recording the song before you had to go. You turn up the next day, but somebody has moved the microphone. Where did it stay? Which angle? What distance?
There are several ways to capture the sound of an electric guitar. Even though it can be fun to experiment with a microphone, a speaker and the placement – Sometimes you only want to start recording fast and get a killer tone with no hassle. That’s where the cabinet simulator comes handy. You’ll end up with the same result every time and it could easily live inside your amp. A passive cab sim (as the Palmer on the photo) will let audio go through even though it’s not connected to a XLR cable. It will cost you very close to what you would pay for a Shure SM57.
It’s also very usable on stage. Another scenario: You’ve used thousands of $ on your gear, but you don’t have a clue how the miked cabinet sounds out of the PA system. You might have a different sound engineer from gig to gig, so your tone will vary in the hands of someone you might not don’t know.
If you want consistency, a cab sim of any type might be a nice tool to have.
Another variant is a load box with a cab sim. The amplifier needs a load.
Commonly, that would be the speaker and the result will be motion of the speaker and sound.
Bypassing the speaker, the effect has to go somewhere.
That’s not to harm the amp.
The load box has resistors that needs to be matched to your amps ohm value,
and the effect will end up in heat. You’ll then combine the sound of
your amp and the simulation of a cabinet.
you use IEMs on stage and don’t want the spill.
Or if you just want to listen to the audio from your DAW.
Both of these boxes above has a passive, analoge circuit. There are a couple of ways to vary the tone of the speaker, but not much. Koch make load boxes that comes with both a great price and a great tone. Suhr reactive load is also a great product, but it’s more costly.
There are other alternatives of active and digital solutions to recreate the sound of a speaker.
And you can implement them on your pedal board.
Mooer Radar is a cheap alternative and it offers a range of speakers and microphone simulations.
Neunaber Iconoclast or Strymon Iridium are other alternatives. They are a bit more expensive, but they have other features. You can hook up the Neunaber to your computer and make changes in the software.
The Strymon also have an amp sim.
Universal Audio Ox is also a great option if you have cash to spend. In addition it has both microphone and room modeling. And I would say it’s some of the best cab/mic simulator money can buy.
The last option to a microphone could be to plug your guitar directly into your interface and use software for every aspect of your sound. But then you won’t use that precious gear you’ve spent all that money on. And you don’t get the pleasure of physical knobs. You’ll probably also neglect some mojo!
So there you have it. Options to capture your guitar tone.