Can cab sims work as speaker in boxes?

[GrooveChampion]

Can I plug my amp into the input? Or does the cab emulator eliminates the need for that?

[Ciaran Haslett]

Depends on the kind you're looking at.

Most cab sims here work with instrument level signals.  Their purpose is to connect your pedalboard direct to a PA system with no guitar amp.  Plugging an amp into this would cause all sorts of problems.

Then there's the load boxes with emulated cab direct out.  You can still use an amp and this time with no cab.

Take a look and the Hughes & Kettner Red Box.  It gets some great reviews

[GrooveChampion]

Honestly i prefer simple solutions, so if i can plug my cab sim into a user interface and record a pedal i built and make it sound decent, i see no reason to use an amp.

[GrooveChampion]

Also, can cab sims work as balanced line outs?

[Ciaran Haslett]

Again...depends on what you're looking at.  The simple ones are literally just "EQ" pedals, attempting to emulate the freq response of a guitar cabinet.  In a typical live environment, you would place this at the end of your pedal chain.  This then goes direct to your mixer OR to a DI box...then to your mixer.  It's the DI that converts your instrument to balanced line for a mixers mic input.

If you see a cab sim that has an XLR output then it's likely balanced.  Or you could build an active DI box into a cab sim pedal.  There's a few on the main blog and here in the forum.

You could also add a dual opamp and a few components to "convert" your unbalanced cab sim to balanced.  There's plenty of circuit examples on the web of such.

If you do build something let us know.

Cheers

[GrooveChampion]

Actually I'd prefer to build a dummy load box with a line out, got anything you can trust?