Welcome to the forums.
I use a Line 6 Helix and Power Cab. I am still very much a student but feel dissatisfied if the sound is not to my liking.
I will repeat a few items said aboveā¦ You can get a lot of nice sound out of the EQ. Using the modelers gives you fast access to place some EQ where youād like it. Maybe you want to tighten up the bass? Then EQ it out before the amp and then either put it back with the amp tone controls or with another EQ after the amp. Maybe the distortion point you want to hit happens in the bass before it happens in the treble, then you can EQ a sloped signal into the amp to better control the distortion response. Modelers give you a lot of control here that a complex pedal board might be both costly and hard to manage.
As for accuracy of the sound, it is not trivial to match the sound that you hear on an album. I feel that the mix of the guitarists touch compared to your own as well as post processing are a little too hard to duplicate, but you can certainly make a song have āclose enoughā sound and feel. For example, trying to match Stevie Ray Vaughnās tone is very difficult, but there are some elements of it that I really like to hear and can bring those out in my signal chains on the Helix. An easier sound to match is ACDC. I use an SG and the same basic amp setups copied into the modeler and I am quite satisfied with the similarity.
Speaker selection is important. You wonāt get a deep heavy sound out of a 6-inch speaker and you wonāt get crisp highs of something like a flute out of a 15 inch guitar speaker. My cabinet has models for multiple sizes, models, and brands of guitar speaker (NOT cabinet models). I can hear the difference and select the model that suits what I want to hear. Your headset and stereo will reproduce the sound, but it can feel like it is missing something. Be sure to consider the cabinet when you make your selection. Listen for what is important to you and target that sound in your selection. In my case I wanted to have variety and crispness, so the powercab was a good option over some of the FRFR that sounded pretty good, but lacked the modeled speakers. Studio monitors were too generic for me and sounded uninteresting. The powercab has a lot more punch than the studio speakers I tried. I have a far more exciting experience with a guitar speaker than FRFR or studio monitors. I tend to run my powercab in native mode, so it is just a guitar speaker and does not use the tweeter that is there for use in FRFR mode.
One final thing that folks donāt seem to advertize or discuss on forums is the math behind the models. We hear about using IR to get the tone we want, but that is only part of the tone. an IR is only a single LINEAR frequency response modeled at a single power level. Music has a large dynamic range (power levels), so the IR falls short of duplicating the sound we are trying to imitate. What I hear when I listen to a āguitar toneā also includes the distortion that generates the additional frequency content that makes the sound pleasing. This distortion only comes from the model math and is as important as good EQ to acheive the ātoneā we like. Watch for a demo video that can showcase the distortion points or go fiddle a bit yourself in a guitar store. the amp/overdrive/fuzz/etc models must account for the way the original amp breaks up or it just wonāt sound close enough. This the non-linear portion of the modelās gain and is more complex to get right than simple EQ or IR can do. I donāt use IR. No need, so I could care less that something can do a bunch of IR. I want to hear the breakup which is what I feel separates the ok from great modelers. This is the case even if I am playing ācleanā because we still have an element of distortion. It is a fact of circuit design.
When I first started using the Helix, I did not know what the different amps sounded like. I took time to listen to the models with my playing and could associate each with some songs or styles of albums or bands. These are now my basis to get āin the ballparkā of something I want to try to replicate the sound of.
In general, I usually use something that Iād call āmy soundā, but is certainly does have influences from the music I like to hear. I am often thrilled by āmy soundā when the day is going well and my gear is producing very pleasing tones. It is certainly possible to get somethng you will like to play.
I believe that understanding how a sound is made is more important than getting it pefect. Understanding how leads us to alter and experiment to make something possibly new and gives us a way to channel artistic thoughts into somethoug our own. Having access to a variety of gear accomplishes part of this and a modeller is a satisfying solution without the cost or space needed for the dedicated amps, cabinets, and pedals.
But most of that missing thing usually comes down to volume and the reverberation that naturally occurs from having a loud speaker cabinet playing in a room. The opposite of that is playing through headphones, which many people donāt like the sound of. A (pretty good) middle ground is playing through studio monitors, which gives a lot more stereo width compared to headphones.
