Josh Scott: John Mayer And The Coming Simulacra:
There’s a video making the rounds right now. John Mayer is sitting in his studio, switching between his amplifiers — his actual 1964 Fender Vibroverb, his Dumble Steel String Singer #002, his Two-Rock prototype — and a software plugin that a company called Neural DSP built by modeling those exact pieces of gear.
He’s playing. He’s listening.
He can’t tell which is which.
Digital amp modelers have come a very long way in the past 20 years.
The folks at Neural DSP have created a machine learning stack that will take in live audio from amps, and use that to figure out how to model the sampled amp. They have a neat (physical) harness that randomly moves the knobs on a guitar amp they want to simulate (watch this timestamped YouTube video to see the harness and an explanation). That captured data is then used to train a guitar model. So instead of analyzing schematics to emulate tube amps, they sample the real thing and create a model based on that.
By all accounts it‘s very good.
But there have always been purists, or detractors, or people who are so good at hearing and understanding guitar tone that these software amps just weren’t … true, for lack of a better word. John Mayer has always been in that camp.
But Mayer let the folks at Neural DSP into his studio, they sampled his setup, and then made a model off that. And apparently Mayer can’t tell the difference between the real thing and the model.
And now Mayer’s legendary rig (which includes the mythical Dumble Steel String Singer - an amp which is probably worth more than my house) can be in the hands of everyone.
It’s a moment in the guitar world. A giant shift, whether you believe it’s happening or not. A dream that many guitarists have been waiting for years for is finally here.
Modelers have certainly been very good for a while (I’ve been using one for years and loving it), but there’s something about this moment that’s like a quiet earthquake.
And Scott’s post on this goes into what this might mean going forward.