Recording guitar at home with your favorite tube amp is not as easy as you might think.
If you record a nice fat, sparkling and/or distorted guitar sound at home, you will notice that this is not possible at living room volume level. Almost all tube amps sound best at a reasonably high volume level, and many homes are simply not really suitable for this. The neighbors and the rest of the family won’t thank you if you put your Marshall at 10 in the middle of the night.
Record guitar at home without a massive sound wall
You have a number of options to create a good guitar sound without the associated massive sound wall. You can switch to a so-called amp modeler and get your beloved tube amp completely out of your setup. Well-known modellers are, for example, those from Kemper, Fractal and Line 6. You can plug your guitar directly (via a sound card) into your computer and use software. For a ISO box select, a loudspeaker locked in a cabinet. This often produces quite good results, although your loudspeaker will sound different in an ISO box than in the open air, no matter how well insulated the box is. Another possibility is to get rid of your tube amp and buy one that you can also put at half power (or even less). In addition, you can connect a loadbox/virtual cabinet to your amplifier that drastically (or completely) reduces the volume going to your speaker. Below I discuss a number of solutions from Two Notes, a company with excellent quality and affordable products that specializes in this.
Two Notes Audio Engineering
The French Two Notes Audio Engineering specializes in loadboxes/virtual cabinets and currently has three product lines: Le Preamp pedals, Torpedo loadboxes/amp DI/virtual cabinets and Software. The ‘Le Preamp’ pedals are real tube preamps in the form of a pedal. There are 4 different pedals, three for guitarists – Le Clean, Le Crunch and Le Lead and 1 all-round pedal for the bass players: Le Bass. The pedals all have a DI out that you can connect directly to your sound card. The sound of these pedals is astonishingly good and the ease of use is also excellent. In the video below by Shawn Tubbs you get an idea of the possibilities of the Le Clean pedal.
Torpedo C.A.B. M
In addition to guitar and bass pedals, Two Notes is mainly known for the Torpedo Captor products. These are made to give your tube guitar or bass amps a consistent sound both live and on stage. Eight years ago, the Torpedo C.A.B. (Cabins in A Box) introduced. The Torpedo C.A.B. M is a high-end cabinet simulator in stompbox format. You can use the pedal with your own amplifier, connecting the speaker output of your amplifier to the C.A.B. and the speaker-out of the C.A.B. connect to the speaker. Note the C.A.B. is not a load box, so you will always have to connect a speaker! As a result, whisper-quiet recording is not possible with this unit.
Record guitar at home without a power amp
However, you can use the C.A.B. You can also use it without a tube amp and connect it directly to your guitar pedals. The device has several different virtual tube amplifiers on board. Choose one of the tube amp models based on the tube type. You can choose from EL84, EL34, 6L6 or KT88. You can also choose between a class A or class AB amplifier and between a pentode or triode. The Torpedo C.A.B. also has 32 virtual cabinets, 8 microphones and 8 different rooms to choose from. You can also add your own speakers by loading the relevant Impulse-Responses (IR).
Practical use – remote software
You set the C.A.B. with two rotary and push buttons. It has a small display that gives you a reasonable overview of where you are in the menu and which parameter you are changing. Operation becomes easier if you use the associated remote software. There is software for Android and IOS devices and also for PC and Mac. The device also has a USB connection and Bluetooth. The software gives access to all parameters of the pedal. In particular, the placement of microphones in the room is a lot easier with the software. In addition, with the software you can also buy cabinets from the Two Notes Store.
Torpedo Captor reactieve loadbox
Whisper-quiet recording of guitar at home with a tube amp is really only possible with a loadbox. That is a device that can be used instead of a loudspeaker. The load box converts the power coming from the amplifier into heat and not into sound. For this, Two Notes has the Torpedo Captor developed. There are versions of 4, 8 and 16 Ohms. Connect the Speaker Out of your amplifier to the Speaker In of the Captor and you have a completely silent tube amp that you can set to 10. Connect a sound card to the Captor and you can record your shred parts in the middle of the night in a whisper. The Captor has 16 virtual cabinets, which you select via the Wall of Sound plugin, a speaker and microphone simulation plugin for Cubase, Logic and Pro Tools, among others.
Torpedo Captor X
On the past Winter NAMM introduced the Captor X. Two Notes Captor X is a compact reactive loadbox, amp attenuator, virtual cabinet and IR charger for home, live and studio use. It contains 32 virtual cabinets, 8 microphones per cabinet and 8 reverbs. Where you used to be a C.A.B. M and needed a Captor for it, is now in this all-new Captor X.
New Captor X capabilities
This X has two microphones per cabinet with which you can record stereo or double mono. With the Dry/Wet setting you can record both the signal from the virtual cabinet and the dry signal and choose another cabinet afterwards. This makes recording guitar at home very flexible! Also new are the Enhancer and Voicing buttons on the device with which you can adjust the timbre of the signal directly on stage. Furthermore, the device now also has a switch with which you have direct access to 6 presets and the X can also be linked to your phone, tablet, computer or MIDI controller and can be controlled remotely. Finally, a headphone jack has now been added to the Captor and a three-way switch with which you can adjust the volume of the speaker (if connected). Check out the videos below for the possibilities, ease of use and, last but not least, the sound of the device.
Direct competitor for OX and Waza Tube Amp Expander
The Captor X is a direct competitor of the (much) more expensive Universal Audio OX and the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander. The OX and Waza have built-in effects such as compression and delay and the Waza has slightly more connection options and more buttons on the device with which you can adjust sound directly. The ease of use of the OX and the Captor X is great, especially because the associated software works excellently and is very user-friendly. The suggested retail prices of the OX and Waza are currently around 1,299 euros, the Two Notes Captor X costs 579 euros and is available immediately. There are two variants of the Captor X, an 8 and a 16 Ohm version.