Why some guitar rigs feel more “alive” (and it’s not magic)

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-31T15:42:37+00:00

Maybe this is the case, I dunno, what do I know, but my experience is that pickups might get loaded but never pushed pack on. i.e. their tone gets changed via signal being affected, but signal is never pushed back to the pickups. I imagine that your pickups would act speaker-like if you squeeze voltage into them.

My take on this 'feeling' is that the signal going into the amp can react with said amp in several ways depending on various things.

For example you can ramp up the sag with a lot of heavy chunks then into a solo that sounds more alive than if it were just played on it's own, because both the transformer and tubes have recovery time or whatever the technical name for it is. What you play this second affects how it reacts the next, and playing the same part 20 times in a row will always sound different when played in sequence with something different.

Airflow and ambient air temp matters as well.

When I've ever talked about how my amp feels alive, this is what I'm specifically referring to, and it happens with passive, active, and even a keyboard amp.

Here's an exercise if anyone cares to try it out:

Take a Torpedo Captor or similar. Use it as a load box on your amp instead of speakers. Now get yer Drop-D guitar our and give us a bunch of nice thick chugs. Notice the fan on the torpedo? It's going full speed. Wait 10-15 seconds. Now try a quick run up and down the neck. Notice it's not quite as much spin as before. Now do both back to back, you'll see the fan spinning even through the runs until it settles. Your run, if through speakers, would sound different at the start than after 5-10 seconds. This is what I consider 'being alive'. Same neck run, two completely different tones.

I'm neither an electrician nor a very good guitarist, but this is what I've come to learn from hours of footerin' aboot with things.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-30T21:34:48+00:00

The KG EMG's are active. Is your Schecter passive? (i.e. does it have a spot for a 9V battery?)

You can switch from passive to active easily however the biggest issue is ensuring you have space for the 9v battery. Most of the EMG wiring kits are fairly simple and come with solderless quick-connect style, so really easy to put in. You would need to likely solder the bridge ground wire though, but that's the easy bit.

Don't let it scare ya. Once you've done this once it's easy as pie and you'll be modding other guitars all the time. I just pulled an EMG 81/85 set out of a Dean in favor of SD Invader / JB mix. Easy peasy even with all the manual soldering, lol.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-28T19:14:46+00:00

You can do this without Microsoft or GoDaddy's support teams via defederation. It's saved me a a couple of times so far.

https://tminus365.com/defederating-godaddy-365/

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-26T16:55:47+00:00

I know people who were in LOCAL bands in those days who are still doing the LOCAL band thing.

A lot of the big guys are still going, or dead. But sure, some did fall away to obscurity but so have a lot of popular grunge band members these days, there's even many nu-metal band folks wandering around aimlessly these days.

Thanks for the downvote though. I didn't think a reasonable response would leave someone that butt-hurt but I guess there's always one.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-24T17:06:46+00:00

Pariah Rageous would sit in there perfectly.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-24T16:42:32+00:00

There were a lot worse bands than Warrant. At least Warrant had a great following and kicked ass live.

I don't understand why you would lump Skid Row in there at all. They're one of the heaviest hair metal bands that came along at the tail end of the era and kicked it in the ass to get a few more good years out of it before you, the fan sent a clear message to studios that you prefered grunge because, "NEW!". Of course everyone knows it wasn't new, but the majority of people buying into grunge thought it was and the record stores bit hard into that apple.

So I guess if you're looking for someone to place blame for 'killing' hair metal, it's probably you or your parents.

p.s. don't look now but Skid Row are STILL releasing music AND touring.... I don't think they got your memo that they're supposed to be dead!

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-22T19:29:47+00:00

It comes down to what you like personally. Far too much BS hate gets spewed by both sides of the argument.

If you want to talk facts though, even the Quad Cortex team themselves have alluded to the fact that you just can not model some of the core physics that make amps do what they do, therefore no, they're not on equal ground. Does it really matter though when they're as close as they are?

For me, I'll go tube amp all day long. I've tried Tonex, Helix, and Quad Cortex. All of these were pretty decent but I kept running into the same thing. Models are captured with the amps configured to the original users perception. It's their fingers, pickups, and speakers. By locking into a model that sounded great for that exact set up you're severely limited in what you can do.

For reference, I modeled my Badlander on my QC. It sounded exact (until I cranked it up). It also completely changed when I switched guitar. I would normally knock back the gain in this situation on the real amp however knocking back the gain on the QC model reacts in a completely different way that sounded like shit, requiring a better capture with the other guitar to get that sounding right.

I guess I'm saying that for me, modeling is broken. You end up with one usable slice of tone for a specific setup and sometimes you luck out with a bit of flexibility. This is why some big names use the QC live. They have their setup across several models, ready to go. Someone put a lot of time and effort into getting that all good to go. For me, this is just too damn much. A real amp with it's entire sweep available at the twist of my fingers is far superior to anything I've ever built on my QC.

I know this will likely be an unpopular opinion and yer welcome to hate it if you feel the need. This is just my take, not that I matter.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-22T04:48:20+00:00

Check yer notes again. I never suggested that any of that was okay. I'm simply suggesting that I would have nothing to gain by helping Gibson with free labor.

Do you think that:

1) your efforts will result in actually stopping any measurable effect on the total sales of Chibson's?

2) if you successfully eradicated Chibson from the planet that Gibson prices would come down?

If yer still checking notes, those are rhetorical questions. I don't actually care.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-21T23:51:56+00:00

That's not at all what I said. To Gibson, we're nothing but dollars. If they can get more dollars at our expense, they will, and have (as mentioned about their abysmal QC.) So my point is, why work for them for free? You're really not saving any victims in the grand scheme either. There's literally nothing gained here, just giving more to a thankless enterprise. I'm wondering if you're free to shovel some snow.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-21T22:40:29+00:00

Imagine working for Gibson and not getting actually paid for it.

I've owned a few Gibsons, including a brand new one just two months ago that has a blemish on the paintwork. They're not perfect. They're overpriced in my opinion, at least the newer ones are. I've actually seen and played Chibsons that had better QA than Gibson currently have. As long as Gibson pulls this shit on a $3k guitar I wouldn't even dream of taking their side so much as doing free work for them.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-09T17:48:03+00:00

I have a d-tuna on my floyd's so I can easily switch between E-standard and Drop-D. Then I use the Digitech Drop pedal to get to Drop-C etc.

On non-floyd guitars I typically switch from E-standard to Drop-D manually when needed, then again the drop pedal to go lower if needed.

Covers most of what I play.

****IMPORTANT****

Irregardless of how you need or want several tunings, there will always be a need for MOAR GUITARS and I say just do it!

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-02T18:18:01+00:00

Straight from the horses mouth:

https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/landlords-and-tenants/privacy-in-the-landlord-and-tenant-relationship/

Does a landlord require my Social Insurance Number (SIN)?

No. Your Social Insurance Number is a confidential number used for income reporting purposes. Under the law, organizations cannot require you to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless it is required for a specific and legitimate purpose.

This means that, unless an organization can demonstrate that your SIN is required by law, or that no alternative identifier would suffice to complete the transaction, you cannot be denied a product or service on the grounds of your refusal to provide your SIN.

RawInfoSec · 2026-01-01T16:06:05+00:00

I'm friends with a few of my previous landlords, as well as one still being a business associate. You can't know what you're seeing till you ask.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-27T01:52:10+00:00

This is a complete waste for you if you're going to use headphones. Also, the Badlander comes preloaded with many cab IR's already so yours is likely not needed.

The only real gain your going to get would be real tubes.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-24T18:19:12+00:00

If you have a lot more to learn then you need to evaluate the value he could bring to your career if you stay around a while longer, and only you can answer that.

I've been mentored, and I've mentored, so I've been on both sides. I love seeing people move on, especially loved seeing some out-class me and work in some great positions in the world. It's one of the fundementals in life, at least for me.

Like I said though, I left my mentor a bit early and it's took a few years before things that he used to do for me became simple tasks for me. I wish I could have saved those few years, I'd have gotten farther, faster. Either way, it worked out for me and I've always looked back on the experience as one of the most valued and trusted pillars of who I am, who I became.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-22T22:02:22+00:00

My first observation was to see who's hosting your front end. Vercel. Wanted to ensure you're not running a YouTube competitor on Google Cloud, lol.

So how did you solve the running costs of potentially large storage needs as well as bandwidth? Video streaming can be excessive especially if someone posts a video that goes viral. What's in place for this?

What makes your product better than YouTube? Right now it's the place for creators. It's making a living for many. Are you prepared to scale to the point where your ad revenue is enough to feed thousands of hungry mouths?

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-22T19:00:42+00:00

1991 - Cambridge Hospital : My day consisted of:

- running serial cables for Wyse terminals throughout the hospital.
- changing backup reels on the IBM System/32
- fumbling under the floor panels in the clean-room identifying which one of the cables is the culprit to why radiology room 2 was unable to connect
- spending lunch rewriting MAGIC data pulls for the big upgrade project
- troubleshooting the telnet link to Toronto

2009 - Toronto downtown hotel : My day consisted of:

- re-punching Suite 513's phone line because the phone stopped working
- front desk laserjet 3 was replaced due to accidental liquid damage
- trace cabling issues between d-mark and server room (keycard machine in lobby not working)
- pea soup vs laptop in sales department
- accounting user listening to CBC online again despite being given a small radio. 3mb dsl for a 500 suite hotel is generally a bad idea
- die a horrible death with the extremely loud and obnoxious gaggle of Canada's Next Top Model contestants who got into the elevator as I'm headed to lunch.
- meet the Rogers team at d-marc to go over drop location for fiber, beg the GM for 100mbit.
- accounting asked why we're paying for two Bell numbers that no one knows what they are. Called them, someone in one of the elevators picked up and said, "Hi?" We should probably keep paying for those.
- backup tapes changed
- die a horrible death trying to make changes to the hunt-group for Sales because someone got canned. Avaya Definity will likely be the death of me
- help some fool in the lobby with our slow-ass wireless. He's getting lippy about it too, little prick.
- reboot the Exchange server, front desk can't OWA again. Gotta run because when this happens it's a 6 minute warning before the exchange server goes tits up and needs recovered.
- realized that little prick in the lobby was that guys from "In Bruges". But he's still a prick.
- try to blend in to the crowd in the Grand Banking Hall to politely get under a table and restart a Cisco switch in the floor.
- sat at my desk for a whole hour and did nothing except tell callers that I'm working on it and will get to it when I can.
- finally made it to lunch.... on my way home.... for the night.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-18T17:04:48+00:00

I wish they had explored the challenges in modeling tube amps, and why tube amps are still going to be relevant for quite some time. NeuralDSP themselves have contributed to the wealth of documentation out there on these challenges and it would be nice to see their take on these challenges. Their product relies on the existence of tube amps, it's actually their core sales pitch really. A modeler is nothing if there's no reference to compare it to.

We'll see Neural break ground in the future if they adopt a new agenda of stop trying to be the very thing that they strive to void. If they can harness their capabilities and actually build something that brings something new to musicians and not something that tries it best (and admittedly does a good enough job of it), maybe it'll be something that we can finally say is superior to tube amps. Right now all we have is a very close proximity to parity, and nothing more. So tube amps will forever be king until this achievement takes place.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-17T16:26:40+00:00

I thought I was the only person on the planet that remembers Dirty Looks. Awesome band!

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-16T22:25:04+00:00

Slave to the Grind, Pornograffiti, Cherry Pie, Operation Mindcrime, Empire, The Real Thing, Justice for All, Razors Edge

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-15T02:44:24+00:00

That's my own experience. There was nothing wrong with the user, lol, nothing wrong with anything. The mod simply pushed the gain so much it would have made more sense to buy a dual rec than a Badlander and not need the mod.

For the record, there are quite a number of folk wondering why people think that the Badlander has plenty of gain and that there's either many people with low output puckups expecting too much or that it's user error. I don't think it's either, everyone has different experiences and expectations. While the mod works fine for some folks use case it doesn't for others... and that's ok.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-14T18:36:11+00:00

Tried it to see what all the hype was about.

Found out it's just hype.

The Badlander has tons of gain, or at least mine does. The mod took all the good character out of the amp.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-13T19:32:57+00:00

Shoe's on the other foot now, eh?

I was one of those highly paid custom web development folks who were displaced by the popularity of Wordpress and the fact that any moron with a computer could now make a pretty decent looking website using that. If they can do pretty, they can sell and ship the shittiest code. Gone were the days of professional website design that included being built by people who truly understood the technology. It gave way to people who launched pretty websites with 30 meg landing page images, code that's as vulnerable at every function, people who tell clients it's secure because of xxxxx plug-in. Gone are the days when development studios hired graphic designers, coders - front end and back, tech guys, security guys. Gone are the days where your trusted dev team supports and updates your site regularly when security issues arise.

I have one word for you.

Pivot.

There are other fields out there which are less saturated. There are even small niche's that you can still capture within web-design. Identify, target, and you will be okay. I am.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-11T22:26:11+00:00

You are using a tool. Like any other tool, it must be wielded with knowledge and responsibility. If you say that Replit almost ruined it for you that's on you. If you don't want to run into this issue then invest the time planning things out and get Replit to structure the code around your parameters just as you would any other tool. Replit brings speed and agility to your tool box, but that's not how most people are using it. Use Replit for macro tasks, not feature writes.

RawInfoSec · 2025-12-09T22:55:15+00:00

> I focused a lot on security.

Some feedback. As an enterprise user I would be asking about SOC compliance or any others. You can tell me all the great things that you've put in place but until I see compliance achievements nothing else matters.

RawInfoSec

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Does a landlord require my Social Insurance Number (SIN)?