“It was indiscernible. No one could tell the difference”: Nita Strauss on why she made the switch to digital amp modellers

Guitar virtuoso Nita Strauss has voiced her love of digital amp modellers, saying oftentimes, “no one could tell” the difference between that and the real thing.

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Speaking to MusicRadar about the use of digital gear and VST plugins on her latest solo album The Call Of The Void, Strauss admits to being “extremely satisfied” with digital, saying “If I didn’t think it sounded as good I would have redone it through real amps.”

The guitarist adds that while she has “all the capability there” at the studio and at her home studio, “I just think that you can do so much digitally.”

“I don’t think it would have made the record sound any better if I had re-amped later through an analogue machine,” she says.

When the interviewer points out that “no one can tell,” Strauss replies: No! You really can’t. When we first switched to the Kempers on the Alice Cooper tour, we all had our Marshall stacks for years. And just in terms of weight, and ease of portability, management strongly suggested that we switched over to the modelling amps.”

“Before we did that, we actually profiled one of the guy’s Marshalls, and we walked out to the front, and we all listened as one of our guitar techs plugged in to them and didn’t tell us which was which, and it was indiscernible. No one could tell the difference.”

“So you are hearing that very classic Marshall sound from all of us – especially on the Alice Cooper tour. You are getting that classic Marshall sound; it is just coming from a different avenue.”

Strauss is far from the only guitarist espousing the virtues of ‘going digital’ in recent times. Of late, Prog-rock musician Guthrie Govan has spoken about how embracing the “fully digital” route on stage has forced him to “think in new ways”.

Pointing to his weapon of choice, the Fractal Audio Systems FM9, Govan says that he’s got the unit handling pretty much everything during his shows, along with just “two expression pedals”.

Nita Strauss’s new album, The Call of the Void, arrived earlier this month. It’s packed with a host of stellar guest spots, including, most notably, one from former Megadeth man Marty Friedman. In an interview around the time of the album’s release, Strauss recalled working with Friedman on its final track, Surfacing, calling the guitarist a “perfectionist”.

July 7 – the album’s release date – was a big day for Strauss; not only did she perform at the famous Sunset Strip venue Whisky A Go Go to promote the record, but the night also saw her longtime boyfriend Josh Villalta pop the question.