The Neural Amp Modeler revolution has taken the guitar world by storm. Open-source, hundreds of thousands of free NAM captures,and a quickly growing number of pedals and plugins that support it: crazy times! Among those captures are many legendary Marshalls, Klons, or Mesa amps. But did you know TONE3000 also has NAM Captures of answering machines, cigarette-pack amps, and even bags of lentils? Let’s get weird!
Our Top 7
How NAM Captures are created
If this NAM thing is all Greek to you, I’ve written an extensive guide about all the ins and outs of this free, open-source format. A quick reminder: during the capturing process, the modeler “learns” how a piece of gear changes a signal by comparing signals of a test sweep before and after passing through it. Most people go through this capturing process through the workflow on TONE3000, the NAM site of all NAM sites for captures.
This process works for anything (literally anything!) that distorts, compresses, or filters the signal. That means it does not have to be an amp or a pedal. The internet being the internet and people being people, Tone 3000 is not only filled with NAM captures of unorthodox signal chains, boutique amps, and gear combinations you’d never think of.
And if you quickly want to try out these NAM captures, just head on over to TONE3000 and download their free TONE3000 plugin. It directly connects you to their database from your DAW, so you can load any of these captures right from your recording station. Or just go to each capture’s website and use one of the example audio files to get a first impression.
There are NAM captures of the weirdest things, and to get you started, we’ve picked the seven most out-there captures we could find. So, you can one day say: “This solo was played through a pack of lentils!”
1. Household Items
After this one, they can never claim they didn’t know what they unleashed. Because these captures were done by TONE3000 themselves. After seeing someone creating a weird distortion tone by putting some rice on an amp’s speaker, they went all in.
The team took a cheap Gorilla GB-30 bass amp, removed the grill, miced it up with an SM57, and started putting food and household items on the speaker: lentils, a stack of mail, cereal, literal rocks – you name it. And some of these tones… they might not have the bloom of a Marshall, but if you’re looking for a unique tone, start here.
How does it sound? The “SM57 – MORE ROCKS” capture through a MESA 412 OS impulse response sounds wonderfully broken. By comparison, “SM57 BIGGER ROCKS” with the same IR gets you in the broken amp sound area. Beautiful!
2. Answering Machine
If “let’s hear your demo over the phone” ever was in your imagination as a sound, look no further. User steppan explains in great detail how he modified his Sanyo answering machine from the 1980s in the profile. In essence, he soldered an input directly onto one of the device’s inputs and an output to the little onboard speaker, modified the preamp, and went on to create one of the most interesting-sounding NAM captures in all of TONE3000.
What does it sound like? You almost feeöl sorry for the little machine’s preamp at times. You can really hear it struggle at higher gain intensities. But that’s also what makes it unique. The capture with the highest recording volume and automatic gain compensation in the device deactivated is filled with that lovely, hard-clipped fuzziness. It’s a bit like a 424, but it’s also something entirely different.
3. Walkie Talkie
If you ever wanted that first-responder kind of feel, that ranger chasing lost campers in the national park kind of feel, check out these NAM captures. User gloo says that “I ran the sweep signal through one [of the walkie talkies], recorded it with an SM57, and got this abomination.”
What does it sound like? We’re in answering machine territory here, but the speaker seems even tinier and the sound even tinnier. But if you’re tired of all of your lovelly overdrives, why not try this one for that warm campfire sound?
4. Radiator Next Door
While digging through TONE3000’s experimental category, I stumbled upon this gem. The name alone made me curious. It’s just so random. Why not a radiator in this room? What’s in the other room? Is next door the unassuming neighbor waking up to his radiator blasting a Hendrix solo?
What does it sound like? It’s almost as if you’re literally in the other room. Or listening to your friend jamming in the basement from upstairs. It’s super noisy, distant, and it doesn’t really distort that well. But it captures EXACTLY what it says. Perfection.
5. Clipping Audio Interface
I love the idea behind this. Guitar distortion came first as an unwanted byproduct of cranked amps and then became the thing everyone wanted. Digital recording’s first obstacle was removing noise and preventing clipping as much as possible. Here, user dudepersonjr has driven his poor Focusrite Scarlett Solo (probably the audio interface more people start with than any other) into sonic madness.
What does it sound like? THIS. IS. CLIPPING. Based on TONE3000’s sound examples, I’d argue this of one of those NAM captures that might get you a square-wave-ish bass tone like no other.
6. Mignonette 66
By comparison, this one isn’t THAT weird, but still, an old transistor radio as a NAM capture isn’t really something you hear every day. It’s also made by answering machine expert and TONE3000 user steppan, so you’ll know you’re getting a properly captured weird NAM sound. These Telefunken radio transistor amps powered legendary living room radios called the Mignonette 66 and KID II, which were all over Italy in the sixties and beyond.
What does it sound like? I’m quite fond of the lowest of the four NAM captures called “tfk kid II Telefunken transistor amp -20”. There is a midrange-y crunch there that’s might need some top-end boost, but there’s quite a bit of depth and dynamic range.
7. Smokey Amp
This one is weird just from the looks of it. User neonradians explains that he bought this tiny cigarette-pack-sized device called “Smokey Amp” about 30 years ago as a novelty purchase. Looks like a practice amp before we had all of these practice amps! It’s all very tiny and colorful, just like the sound.
What does it sound like? Let’s just say, something this tiny won’t get you into wall-of-sound, earth-shattering territory. But it has a sound. Upper midrange, through the phone, unique character – maybe the secret ingredient to famous guitar tones?
Conclusion
This is the beginning. We’re at a point with NAM captures where it’s still a capture of a single moment, a single combination of parameter settings. But we’re already moving into parametric modeling type of things. Imagine a kitchen radio’s super-broken volume knob that jumps from nothing to almost nothing to EVERYTHING. Or the many nuances you’d get from a first-gen iPod’s headphone amp or a stadium speaker from the 30s.
Let’s get weird!
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