Beef up your Combo Amp with NAM Power Amp Models

The cost of choosing a combo amplifier instead of a head/cab rig is lost modularity, right?

Wrong!

As I explained in one of my previous articles, you can use the FX loop of an amp to record just the preamp tone and combine it with different impulse responses. As much as I thought this was a cool way to combine tube tone with the choice of different cabinets, I couldn't ignore the fact that the tone was distinctly thin without the power amp. But how can we add that back in? Neural Amp Modeler (NAM)!

It's incredibly easy to set this up in a DAW, although some care is required around gain staging. After finding a power amp model on TONE3000, you simply need to load it with NAM between the preamp and your IR loader.

Revisiting the initial test

First, here's the original audio again from my previous article without any simulated or real power amp (using cab 3 from Neural DSP Gojira as the IR)

Now I'll add the power amp sections of two bigger amps. First, here's an 100W el34 5150 power amp:

And here's it again with a Revv 120 Power amp:

Conclusions

At first glance, a 5W combo amp is a limited platform that doesn't give the same mix-and-match modularity of heads and cabs. In reality, we can model our preamp and power amp sections individually to unlock new tones. You can also use a preamp NAM capture in place of your real preamp.

Preamp + IR guitar tones can be useful and viable in many situations, but power amp models give you additional options for your tone.

Another limitation of my amp is that the reverb is good but you only get 1 knob, so I like using my full rig captures of my DSL5CR with my pedalboard in my Sonicake Pocket Master multi fx pedal (reviewed here) and use its reverb effects for more choice and control.