to people that have tube amps, especially amp head + cabinet rigs, anyone of you ever use a cabinet simulator for recording? I am considering a cabinet simulator to run my Mesa amp heads through it to record straight to disk on my DAW pero I've never used any of them since I traditionally used mics in front of my amps whenever I record. However, I just checked out a rundown of Joe Satriani's home studio setup and it turns out that he uses a cab sim unit (a Palmer PDI) to use his amp heads at home such as his JSX and Marshalls and Mesa Boogies. He recommends using a cab sim to get the most out of your amp heads this way so as to not kill your studio (and ears) with vibrations and noise coming from raging amps set on 11:) As it is, I can't even crank the Diezel and the Boogie Rectifiers past 12:00 without everything nearby rumbling and causing stuff on nearby shelves to start falling off.
I am considering 2 models, the THD hotplate and the Palmer PGI-04 or PDI-03. Note that I need something with the load feature so I can the amps through them since I also noticed that they sell some amp sim boxes without the load stage...which, i think, is very weird.
any feedback would be appreciated.