After trying many different plugins I came across the Tone King Imperial and it became my favourite amp plugin, love the sound.
I want to try and use it with a real guitar cabinet so I will use my Yamaha THR100HD as a power amp (plugging into the FX loop) and the matching 212 cabinet which has a couple of Eminence speakers which might be a good match.
Anyone using the plugin with a real speaker that can give me some tips?
Is there a way to disable the cabinet sim on the plugin?
All plug-ins have the ability to disable to disable the cab sim. Just right-click on the speaker symbol at the top of the GUI and youâll see it greyed out.
From there, you can send a cable from your audio interface output into your power amp. It works, and Iâve had good results with it. Maybe keep an eye on input/output levels on the plug-in vs. the interface.
Cool, whatâs the plugin and speaker youâre using if you donât mind sharing?
Can someone help me with how to correctly cable this?
My current signal chain is:
1 - if Iâm using my Yamaha THR100HD dual amp:
Guitar > pedal board > (guitar) input 1 in the front of the Yamaha THR100HD amp > Line out I and II on the back of the Yamaha THR100HD amp go into input I and II in the front of Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 > Then speaker cables out of the THR100HD into the THRC212 cabinet > Focusrite connected via USB to Macbook Pro M1
I also have 2 Yamaha HS7 studio monitors connected to the back of the Focusrite on the L and R balanced outputs. I use the headphone jack of the Focusrite to play with headphones.
The THR100HD is a dual amp in one so itâs stereo.
I know I have to connect to the effects loops send / return on the back of the Yamaha THR100HD amp, but what will change in my current cabling?
Image of the back of the amp for reference:
âBest practiceâ would probably be guitar (+pedals) into focusrite into NDSP, then out to the FX loop return to avoid doubling up preamps and the noise that will involve.
Youâll lose out on âtrueâ stereo like that though (unless the FX loop is stereo?). If youâre confident you can flatten the EQ of the yamahaâs preamp, and are careful with gain staging, you could run a stereo signal out of NDSP and into the two front inputs, to take advantage of the stereo delay.
At the end of the day âif it sounds good, it is good.â If youâre not getting loads of noise (and with tone king I guess youâre not chasing high gainâŚ?), Iâd imagine itâll sound sick.
The routing you described probably isnât ideal. The amp is going to impart its own tone controls onto the signal before it hits the Tone King plug-in.
Honestly, though, if you truly want/need stereo and only want to hear the plug-in (not tone controls from the Yamaha amp), then I would suggest a stereo power amp.
^^^ I have tried this with my setup (except I run mono signal into an Orange Pedal Baby and 4x12 cab) and it works great.
Thatâs what I meant by this:
But also
As long as the gain is under control, itâs just a post-amp EQ. It wonât be a faithful representation of the presets, but what does that matter if it sounds good? Obviosly if you need a crystal clear stereo amp, youâll have to buy different gear, but I assume thatâs not the idea hereâŚ
