One by one, it seems the amp purists are falling. Some of rock’s most notable old guard – who tend to prefer tube amps over their modern-day digital counterparts – have been experimenting with amp modellers as of late, and have been mightily impressed with the results.

Take Joe Bonamassa, as a prime example. The blues maestro is an avid collector and lover of vintage gear, so much so that he has two museum-style locations in Nashville and LA – Nerdville East and West, respectively – dedicated to the stuff. But even JoBo recently revealed he’d made the switch to digital, at least partially, after sharing that he’d been using Fender Tone Master amps on tour.

“When I first plugged into it, I realised this s***’s good. I really wanted to dislike it! But I couldn’t,” the guitarist said last month. He also revealed that he was prepared to “take a lot of s**t” for his adoption of digital modelling gear.

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Deep Purple guitarist Simon McBride has also made the switch to digital, and like Bonamassa, acknowledges fans who might criticise him for doing so.

“I have a lot of amps, but for most of the Purple stuff I use my live rig, which is the [Neural DSP] Quad Cortex,” he tells Guitarist in a new interview.

“I can hear a lot of Ritchie Blackmore fans crying out, going, ‘No! He’s using digital stuff!’ But it’s brilliant.”

As for why he chose to incorporate a Quad Cortex into his rig in 2025, the decision ultimately came down to a desire to streamline his setup.

“I had to change my sound a bit because you’re dealing with Don Airey, who plays keys, the Hammond and Leslie, and a Marshall head and cabinet,” McBride explains. “He’s in a very similar frequency range to [my] guitar, so I had to figure something out to make the guitar sound more powerful.”

Guitar World notes that McBride asked Engl – who made Steve Morse’s signature amp and gave him his own Artist Edition head – to tweak it and give him more power to occupy his own areas of the frequency spectrum.

“I asked them to tweak it and put a lot more power in the lower mids and low-end. I knew the Leslie and Hammond didn’t have that, so that could be my little space and would cut through but also make me sound powerful when we play a riff together.”

GW notes that while the guitarist doesn’t explicitly say so, he insinuates that his Engl amp has been captured and incorporated into his Quad Cortex.

Many high-profile guitarists have now adopted amp modellers, including James Hetfield, Nita Strauss and Mike McCready.

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of Guitar World, Total Guitar, Metal Hammer and MusicRadar.