I Flew to Finland to Find Out...How Are Amps Modeled?

I've always wondered how guitar amps are modeled. What is amp modeling? Well, amp modeling is creating a digital representation of an actual amplifier, including all the knobs, volume, bass, treble, middle, presence, drive, effects, the speaker cabinets, and even the microphones used to record it. You've seen me use amp models in videos, like when I did a breakdown of Electric Sunrise by Plenny using his neural DSP signature plugin.

In fact, Neural DSP makes signature plugins of many of the people I've had on my channel, such as Matteas Assado, Tossen Abasi, John Patrrui, Tim Henson, and Misha Mansour. When I was on tour in Europe last month, I stopped by Neural DSP in Helsinki, Finland to visit my friend Doug Castro, who is a CEO of the company to learn how Neural DSP models amplifiers. Here's what I found out. Hey everybody, I'm here with Doug from Neural DSP.

We are in Finland in Helsinki at the headquarters. Doug, how are you? >> I'm good, thank you. >> So, show me around.

>> Sure. Well, this is our headquarters. We've been here for about five years. Yeah, we need a bigger office.

We had a very tiny one and it was just one space and it was just like guitars and people stacked on top of each other. So now we have a lot more room. So yeah, we can walk around and let's start from the beginning and we have the sign here. >> This is Rafa.

>> Hello. >> Brilliant electronics engineer, great guitarist, singer. Uh we used to play in a band together in Chile >> about 25 years ago. He started a message board online.

>> Okay. >> And he wrote articles on how to build your own tube amplifiers. >> In Chile, we didn't have tubes amplifiers. Yeah, it was hard to buy.

They were for Chile very expensive, you know, just to have like a Marshall or a Mesa head. >> So he started building his own. He's built his own guitars. He's actually helped me set up all my guitars.

He's like every time I have an issue with a guitar, he's like the the doctor. Um but yeah, so he started this forum and that's where it became the biggest Spanish speaking forum for do-it-yourself effects pedals and tube heads. So you had people from Spain and all over ...