One after the other, it appears the amp purists are falling. A few of rock’s most notable outdated guard – who are inclined to favor tube amps over their modern-day digital counterparts – have been experimenting with amp modellers as of late, and have been mightily impressed with the outcomes.

Take Joe Bonamassa, as a chief instance. The blues maestro is an avid collector and lover of classic gear, a lot in order that he has two museum-style places in Nashville and LA – Nerdville East and West, respectively – devoted to the stuff. However even JoBo not too long ago revealed he’d made the change to digital, no less than partially, after sharing that he’d been utilizing Fender Tone Grasp amps on tour.

“After I first plugged into it, I realised this s***’s good. I actually needed to dislike it! However I couldn’t,” the guitarist mentioned final month. He additionally revealed that he was ready to “take a whole lot of s**t” for his adoption of digital modelling gear.

Deep Purple guitarist Simon McBride has additionally made the change to digital, and like Bonamassa, acknowledges followers who would possibly criticise him for doing so.

“I’ve a whole lot of amps, however for many of the Purple stuff I exploit my stay rig, which is the [Neural DSP] Quad Cortex,” he tells Guitarist in a brand new interview.

“I can hear a whole lot of Ritchie Blackmore followers crying out, going, ‘No! He’s utilizing digital stuff!’ But it surely’s good.”

As for why he selected to include a Quad Cortex into his rig in 2025, the choice in the end got here right down to a need to streamline his setup.

“I needed to change my sound a bit since you’re coping with Don Airey, who performs keys, the Hammond and Leslie, and a Marshall head and cupboard,” McBride explains. “He’s in a really comparable frequency vary to [my] guitar, so I needed to determine one thing out to make the guitar sound extra highly effective.”

Guitar World notes that McBride requested Engl – who made Steve Morse’s signature amp and gave him his personal Artist Version head – to tweak it and provides him extra energy to occupy his personal areas of the frequency spectrum.

“I requested them to tweak it and put much more energy within the decrease mids and low-end. I knew the Leslie and Hammond didn’t have that, in order that could possibly be my little house and would reduce by way of but in addition make me sound highly effective after we play a riff collectively.”

GW notes that whereas the guitarist doesn’t explicitly say so, he insinuates that his Engl amp has been captured and integrated into his Quad Cortex.

Many high-profile guitarists have now adopted amp modellers, together with James Hetfield, Nita Strauss and Mike McCready.

Sam is the Affiliate Information Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Completely immersed in music tradition for almost all of his life, Sam has performed guitar for 20 years, studied music expertise and manufacturing at college, and likewise written for the likes of Guitar World, Complete Guitar, Metallic Hammer and MusicRadar.