I personally felt the sansamps weakest point was it's cab sim and I ultimately sold it and got a different preamp. To me analog cab sims have always felt too choked. I almost always have preferred using a properly dialed in di without a cab sim unless I have the option of moving up to a cabinet impulse response.
I agree with this, particularly speaking to Sansamp. The cab sims didn't seem to evolve too much beyond the first '90s offerings. 'Choked' is really appropriate...
Well developed analog cab emulation designs tend to be catered for guitar and sound similar to a good transparent DI. Over the past 10 years I have the opportunity to be included in a great deal of beta testing of them. For bass, some modified guitar cab version labeled 'bass' as an after thought seems about the extent, I have not been too impressed. For guitar, some very good choices and integrations. In the late 90's the Morely JD10 was my cab sim crush. I had met Jerry many times and was a big fan. I used that pedal on everything. IRs are a different convo. I have created my own IRs for fun, but they aren't any better than what I had. I currently use the UAOX, Fractal and Two Notes, mostly for guitar. Still in storage I have BlueBox, CabDryVR, and Chameleon Cab and probably a couple other pretty door stops.
But for bass, DI out is still king by a mile for me. And they vary as much as the colors in a crayon box.
Ya, the Beatles thing was a one off celebrating their 50th anniversary recording at Twickenham Studios (Get Back Sessions), we also combined the Show with the Stones as it was their Anniversary playing Eel Pie Island down the road.
We're mostly doing theatres and larger clubs now (with the occasional wedding etc,), hence the need to nail the tone a bit more as the theatres are a bit more unforgiving than a pub.
Funny thing is for the Beatles/Stones gig is I used a modded Ali Express "Walnut" Ric for some songs and it sounded great (granted I did have a real Ric neck pick up and harness in it). It was just damn heavy and the neck was a baseball bat.
I ran my Sansamp through a Rumble 500 for stage monitoring and then DI'd out to FOH.
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The heavy Chickenbacker sounded great! Yeah, pub/bar gigs are easy and fun. Here in Texas we have dancehalls. Big dancehalls made of corrugated metal, rust and old wood floors. Unless the dancefloor is packed, sound is brutal. You work it out. Weddings are all over the map as far as venues but there is always a great sound company, they manage alot of the bumps. Keep posting the vids and thanks for sharing.