Hello, I’m new to the forum so forgive me if this has been asked and answered before!
I’m interested in recording the purest and most accurate amp heads possible. I have a PS-2A and want to know if the tone is improved by having a cab connected while recording.
For my situation, it would be vastly more convenient if I didn’t need to have a cab connected while recording the heads, but if there’s a sacrifice in tone because the head doesn’t see the best possible load then I want to know.
The PS-2A is perfect for your situation. It gives you the ability to run the amp in the sweet spot while recording without having to run a speaker cabinet. If you are running into a good interface and have IR software, you can choose any number of impulse responses to get an accurate sound. There are IR programs from Spectre Digital and some incredible IRs from people like Big Hairy Profiles (Michael Nielsen).
I know the PS-2A will work in silent mode to record but my question is—is there a tonal difference between this method and using a real cab connected?
I’m looking to create head captures for ToneX, QC, etc. and I want to make sure I’m producing the most tonally accurate head captures possible, even if that means I have to do it with a cab connected.
There will always be subtle differences between a reactive load and a real speaker. Just as there will be differences between one speaker type and another.
You can get pretty close with the PS-2 at various settings, but it depends on how intent you are about replicating a specific combination.
If I have the space and the opportunity, I would start with a real speaker. Then I would try one with the PS-2. Then I could decide if the difference is an improvement one way or the other and which is better with respect to workflow.
There’s a great video by Tim Pierce that talks about recording at low volumes with the Power Station.
As far as recording with no cabinet and using a impulse response, we’ve all heard plenty of mixes in modern music with a similar setup and I doubt many people would say, “nope, that’s not a real cabinet”. I would definitely check out Big Hairy Guitars channel on YouTube as he regularly records with IRs and uses quite a few Fryette products to do so.
This is my log of experience in characterizing the difference in amplifier response given a reactive load (PL-IR) vs. a real speaker. in my experiment, the difference was noticeable (with the real speaker response sounding better to my ears), but it could be accounted for with post processing such that afterwards the difference was negligible.
