I don't mean to sound curt with my above response, so I will try to explain my feelings about modeling amps and pedals.
Like Enzo, Roly, Juan and a few others on this board, I am an older player (Medicare next month
) with going on 50 years of playing with just about any type of rig I have ever dreamed of playing, from small amps up to Marshall Superleads' back in the 70's, but have pretty much stuck with Fender amps the last couple of decades ever since my hearing could no longer take the SPL from the bands I played in back then. Think of 110+ db stage levels four or more times a week for several years. This was before hearing protection became common, and like a lot of players from that time period I do have tinnitus as a result.
My current collection has three Fender SS amps and a pair of old Blackface Fender Bandmasters. I have quite a few pedals in my collection (20+), the majority that I have built myself. I use these to modify the guitar signal to produce whatever tones I am looking for out of the amps, but will usually use no more than three to five of them at any one time, something you will find with researching various pro rigs is pretty common. Unless you are Frank Marino, that is.
With my rigs, I can produce the same sounds whether I am using SS or tubes for the amplification. It really doesn't matter to me.
I have tried out several of the Guitar processors that are on the market, and in my opinion (and that is my opinion, does not apply to anyone else) all of them suffer from a common fault. They all try to do everything and as a result they only achieve a certain level of mediocrity with nothing really standing out. I would much rather have them try to do just a few things and do those really well. Speaker and cab sims are really the weakest thing that modeling amps and processors try to do and fail to achieve. They may sound OK at low levels, but that does not scale at all well to gig levels. Think of it like a home stereo with the loudness button engaged at low levels to compensate for low base and high end. Works well at low levels but sounds like crap when the volume is pushed. Psycho acoustics comes into play whenever an instrument amp is pushed to the level where you are feeling the sound as well as hearing it.
I think that with the exception of AX-Fx, you will find that modeling amps and pedals are confined pretty much to the low end of the market, no matter how much power they push through however many speakers, and the resale of these amps kind of show that.
I do wish you luck with your endeavor, but expect to spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours and the money that entails in the programming of the dsp's and processors needed for the project. Then figure just what will be required to break into a market already dominated by the Line 6's, Boss, Digitech, Crate and others to get a small piece of that market. Admittedly, the beginner end of the market is the largest section of that market, but expect to have to produce a product that appeals to that segment of the market. And be prepared to make that product cheaply as a result for those beginners, as unless you are able to come up with something really outstanding, it will be hard to even get them into the local gig playing market. Forget the pros, it is hard enough to get them to use SS amps without modeling.
My suggestion would be to make your project as something that can be added to existing equipment. Looking at things from the maintenance side, there is nothing worse than a broken amp with a chip that was discontinued last year. All that can be done then is salvage the speakers, if they are worth salvaging, and the rest of it gets pitched into the landfill. That does not make the customer very eager to get your replacement product. Use common off the shelf components and keep as much of the programming off chip if possible, that way allows future improvements without having to pitch the previous generation. Look at the plug-ins available for DAWs for recording as an example.
I wish you luck in breaking into a rather small vertical market (figure less then 1% of the consuming population) that is becoming dominated by low end gear from China. You are entering the right end of the market, though. The only way to really make money in the music business is to sell to musicians, not playing music.
Like Enzo, Roly, Juan and a few others on this board, I am an older player (Medicare next month
) with going on 50 years of playing with just about any type of rig I have ever dreamed of playing, from small amps up to Marshall Superleads' back in the 70's, but have pretty much stuck with Fender amps the last couple of decades ever since my hearing could no longer take the SPL from the bands I played in back then. Think of 110+ db stage levels four or more times a week for several years. This was before hearing protection became common, and like a lot of players from that time period I do have tinnitus as a result.My current collection has three Fender SS amps and a pair of old Blackface Fender Bandmasters. I have quite a few pedals in my collection (20+), the majority that I have built myself. I use these to modify the guitar signal to produce whatever tones I am looking for out of the amps, but will usually use no more than three to five of them at any one time, something you will find with researching various pro rigs is pretty common. Unless you are Frank Marino, that is.
With my rigs, I can produce the same sounds whether I am using SS or tubes for the amplification. It really doesn't matter to me.I have tried out several of the Guitar processors that are on the market, and in my opinion (and that is my opinion, does not apply to anyone else) all of them suffer from a common fault. They all try to do everything and as a result they only achieve a certain level of mediocrity with nothing really standing out. I would much rather have them try to do just a few things and do those really well. Speaker and cab sims are really the weakest thing that modeling amps and processors try to do and fail to achieve. They may sound OK at low levels, but that does not scale at all well to gig levels. Think of it like a home stereo with the loudness button engaged at low levels to compensate for low base and high end. Works well at low levels but sounds like crap when the volume is pushed. Psycho acoustics comes into play whenever an instrument amp is pushed to the level where you are feeling the sound as well as hearing it.
I think that with the exception of AX-Fx, you will find that modeling amps and pedals are confined pretty much to the low end of the market, no matter how much power they push through however many speakers, and the resale of these amps kind of show that.
I do wish you luck with your endeavor, but expect to spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours and the money that entails in the programming of the dsp's and processors needed for the project. Then figure just what will be required to break into a market already dominated by the Line 6's, Boss, Digitech, Crate and others to get a small piece of that market. Admittedly, the beginner end of the market is the largest section of that market, but expect to have to produce a product that appeals to that segment of the market. And be prepared to make that product cheaply as a result for those beginners, as unless you are able to come up with something really outstanding, it will be hard to even get them into the local gig playing market. Forget the pros, it is hard enough to get them to use SS amps without modeling.
My suggestion would be to make your project as something that can be added to existing equipment. Looking at things from the maintenance side, there is nothing worse than a broken amp with a chip that was discontinued last year. All that can be done then is salvage the speakers, if they are worth salvaging, and the rest of it gets pitched into the landfill. That does not make the customer very eager to get your replacement product. Use common off the shelf components and keep as much of the programming off chip if possible, that way allows future improvements without having to pitch the previous generation. Look at the plug-ins available for DAWs for recording as an example.
I wish you luck in breaking into a rather small vertical market (figure less then 1% of the consuming population) that is becoming dominated by low end gear from China. You are entering the right end of the market, though. The only way to really make money in the music business is to sell to musicians, not playing music.
So between the Navy, 15 years of playing verrrry loud music and over three decades on a major freight railroad, well let's just say that I don't tune pianos anymore.