Well first, that’s because you only play through your modelers when you’re using your fleshlight in order to get to get the true ‘everything is fake but fuck it’ experience.
I think I adapted to modeling so easily because for nearly a decade prior to getting an AxeFX I was only singing in bands and teaching myself to record by helping my buddy in his studio recording bands, ALL the guitar I was playing/writing/hearing the majority of the time was coming through studio monitors, or I was fucking with mics in front of a cab to get an amp sounding good out of studio monitors. If I were in a room with a band, yeah, I’d absolutely want a tube amp in there (and ideally some way to capture a DI while doing so in case anything usable comes up) but for writing on my own in a DAW, I’ll take a modeler any day. And I will until I have a museum of amps already mic’d up and ready to go.
And I’m fully willing to concede that the context of this matters a lot, but it’s also why I give people shit for dismissing it. Yeah, a modeler isn’t going to recreate the feeling of standing in a room with a 4x12, it doesn’t change the way the laws of physics work. But can it make tones that are usable/inspiring to accomplish a final product? Of course, it’s been done for decades now. Dismissing it’s legitimacy as a tool is as dim as a contractor bitching about power tools because screwdrivers and hammers existed for years and did the job just fine.
I heard a ToneTalk earlier from 4 years ago where Friedman was dismissing modelers by saying it’s pointless to change pickups if you’re using a modeler because you won’t hear the difference. That’s not doing Dave any favors as someone who is to be ‘trusted’ with his ears, that’s more than demonstrably false and so many arguments against modelers are based off 10-15 year old arguments that no longer reflect reality.
