Hi Guys i am looking to buy a speaker simulator to record with ay home. There is many debates online about the Palmer PDI03 and the PGA04. Does anyone have any first hand experience of these units and any words of wisdom.

The problem is no shop i can find stocks these items they are all ordered in.

Thank you
Matthew
p.s i am basically recording clean and dirty rock guitar.

Buy the cheapest box you can to provide dummy load and a clean speaker out from the amp. Then use the speakers in an amp sim plug in. You'll have a better result and more flexibility than any of the analogue speaker modellers.

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www.jackruston.com

Hi Jack, thank you for your answer but I don't know anything about the software side of this....I'm using logic pro9 but have never got into anything like this before.

I would still like to know too if anyone has had experience of either of the two units in case I do still decide to go down this route...also it would be a useful tool live.

Thanks guys
Matthew

Hi Matthew,

I agree with Jack.

On the software side of things, all you need in your DAW is something that can load an impulse file. There are loads of guitar cabinet impulses out there. Plenty free, also some very nice commercial ones.

My amp has a direct out WITHOUT any cabinet modelling hardware on it. All it is is a chunky monkey of a resistor and a jack socket coming out of the back of the amp I take this direct out straight into my recording interface and then use the cabinet sims. It's very good indeed IMO and certainly outdoes the hardware cabinet sim built into the Blackstars (my only experience of a hardware cabinet sim).... My little Blackstar is a great little amp for what it does but the 'direct out' is a poor imitation of the actual amp sound. My main amp 'direct out' plus the Redwirez feels like far less of a compromise and I can VASTLY alter the tone with those impulses. With the hardware solutions, you get what you're given and then the fighting starts

For impulses, I use these http://www.redwirez.com/ They have a freebie Marshall cab to get you going so you can see if this kind of thing works for you.

I take your point that the hardware solution is handy for live. If you can get a box that gives you the simulated out and just a plain old line out whilst keeping your amp happy then you've got the best of both worlds

In most of the amp modelling plugins you can just activate the speaker model rather than the whole chain with an amp etc.

With the hardware you're basically just applying a filter and its not realistic. You can get one of the palmer 3's or an elemental to provide dummy load and output (via the fx send on the elemental)
There are other, cheaper units but harder to come by. There's a guy in the US making a dummy load with direct output for exactly this purpose. It's much smaller and cheaper than the other two. But it's just some private guy and I and I can't remember more. Have a search around.

J

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www.jackruston.com