Cab sim before or after little gem style amp?

[Hupla]

I was just wondering if the cab sim should be before or after, If it even matters?

I want to use this as a sort of pre amp for when im recording on my laptop so I reckon it goes after?

Also would the cab sim sound good running a small 8ohm speaker? I havent had time to put it all together and check but i was thinking it might tame all the highs I get off the little speaker. I reckon it would as people use a cap sim for head phones in a practice amp.

Are my thoughts at all right?

[compuwade]

I was just wondering if the cab sim should be before or after, If it even matters?

I want to use this as a sort of pre amp for when im recording on my laptop so I reckon it goes after?

Also would the cab sim sound good running a small 8ohm speaker? I havent had time to put it all together and check but i was thinking it might tame all the highs I get off the little speaker. I reckon it would as people use a cap sim for head phones in a practice amp.

Are my thoughts at all right?

The little gem is basically an amplifier. And a cabsim is basically a preamp. So the cabsim will always go before the amplifier.
I wouldn't use the little gem as a preamp connected to the computer. It will probably work, but it will most likely clip your computer inputs before you get any good sound out of it. What you can do is build the Condor from runoffgroove.com. It's a cabsim made to connect to your computer for recording. And it's a pretty easy build. Here's the link:

http://www.runoffgroove.com/condor.html

[Hupla]

I was just wondering if the cab sim should be before or after, If it even matters?

I want to use this as a sort of pre amp for when im recording on my laptop so I reckon it goes after?

Also would the cab sim sound good running a small 8ohm speaker? I havent had time to put it all together and check but i was thinking it might tame all the highs I get off the little speaker. I reckon it would as people use a cap sim for head phones in a practice amp.

Are my thoughts at all right?

The little gem is basically an amplifier. And a cabsim is basically a preamp. So the cabsim will always go before the amplifier.
I wouldn't use the little gem as a preamp connected to the computer. It will probably work, but it will most likely clip your computer inputs before you get any good sound out of it. What you can do is build the Condor from runoffgroove.com. It's a cabsim made to connect to your computer for recording. And it's a pretty easy build. Here's the link:

http://www.runoffgroove.com/condor.html

Yeah that's the one i was thinking of doing. But you see this is my basic idea;
I want to have a small practice amp that I can bring to college so i want it to have a small speaker and also a headphone output. I also want to use it as a preamp for recording because I use the Stealth Plug and it on its own is very bad.

I can build it so that I can take the output from the cabsim straight into the computer when I want to anyway. I suppose its all trial and error.

I dont fully see why you wouldnt have the cabsim after the amplifier? Is it not there to represent the frequency response of a cab? And that comes after the Amplifier

[compuwade]

I dont fully see why you wouldnt have the cabsim after the amplifier? Is it not there to represent the frequency response of a cab? And that comes after the Amplifier

It is..however it's meant to be used as a preamp into a headphone amp or mixer line in or a computer line in, to roll off the harshness of the pedals or other effects you plug in before it. An amplifier is meant to have a speaker cab of it's own plugged into it and requires a certain output impedance to function properly. It also usually has too much output power (wattage) for the cab simulator to handle. You can however, use a voltage divider on the ouput of any amplifier to make a line out and plug that into the cab simulator and then into your computer. This is how most amplifier headphone/line outs work. However they usually connect directly to the preamp out and then to some sort of cabsim. In the case of the little gem, it doesn't have a whole lot of power and will work connected directly to a line in, but you have to turn the amp up to get the distortion out of it that makes the little gem a cool little amp. When you turn the amp up connected to a line in, you will clip your line in well before you get the nice sound of the amp.

[goulashnakov]

Agreed with Compuwade.  The name "cabinet simulator" is really a bit of a misnomer, as it actually represents more than just the speaker cabinet.  A more accurate description would be "Cabinet-driven-by-a-power-amp Simulator."  So it's not a replacement for just the cab, it's a substitute for both your cab and your power amp (and in this case, your "power amp" is that beastly little 386 chip).  Whatever you feed into the "cab-driven-by-power-amp sim" should represent the pre-amp stage only (i.e. distortion effect followed by EQ/tone control, reverb, etc. etc.).