Top 10: Creative tasks with an iPad

10: Guitar amp

The guitar, in its numerous forms, is still the most played musical instrument in the UK, and so we thought it deserved its own section, with a wealth of apps and kit dedicated to pairing your old stringed friend with your shiny new iPad.

It’s probably not the done thing to take an iPad on stage if you’re the lead guitarist in a thrash metal band. However, if you can get over the incongruity of guitars plugged into iPads, it’s actually quite a successful partnership. It makes perfect sense for headphone-based practice, and if you’re in a band that plays synth-heavy music there’s a good chance you won’t get bottled off stage.

IK Multimedia leads the field with its iRig adapter (£22 from www.dv247.com) and AmpliTube for iPad app (£13.99). The iRig plugs into the iPad’s headphone socket and transforms the microphone input into a quarter-inch jack guitar input. It also includes a minijack pass-through socket for connecting to headphones or speakers.

iRig turns the iPad’s microphone socket into a guitar input

Its quality is limited by that of the iPad’s internal audio components. This can lead to noise and feedback problems, particularly when lots of distortion is applied and when headphones are used (plugging into powered speakers works better because their higher impedance reduces leakage from the iPad’s output back to its input). We’ve nothing against a bit of wailing feedback in its right place, but when it carries on after the guitar’s volume knob is turned down, that’s a bit worrying. The app does a good job of addressing these issues with a Noise Filter effect and a No Feedback button in the Setup options, but they’re not entirely successful and they interfere with sound quality a little.

There are other hardware options. The Apogee JAM Guitar Input (£80), the Alesis iO Dock and the astonishing-looking Digitech IPB 10 (£410 on pre-order from www.dv247.com) all connect to the iPad’s dock and so aren’t constrained by the headphone-microphone socket’s audio quality.

The AmpliTube app (£14) is based on the same technology that’s found in the Windows and Mac software of the same name, which sells for around £190. There’s a choice of 10 effects pedals, five amps, five speaker cabinets and two virtual microphones to put in front of the cabinet, with up to four pedals available simultaneously. The touchscreen controls are far easier to grab while strumming than they would be with a mouse or trackpad. It’s even possible to control the wah effect by tilting the iPad.

The AmpliTube Fender app produces deliciously raucous distortion as well as gentler blues tones

Sound quality is generally excellent, and the familiar controls mean that guitarists can quickly find the tones they’re after. However, we were less convinced by its clean and gently distorted tones than we were by its more distorted amp models. We’re told that, while the technology is the same as in the Windows/Mac version of AmpliTube, the algorithms have had to be made simpler because of processor power restrictions. Then again, a £14 app that gets close to delivering the quality of a £190 professional quality plug-in is no bad thing. It’s slightly annoying that there’s no compression effect pedal included as standard, though – but it only costs a further £1.99 as an in-app purchase.

Latency can be a problem in virtual amp software, where the small delay between playing and hearing a note can be distracting. AmpliTube gets this down to a reasonable 15ms, or 8ms in Ultra Low Latency mode. While this mode worked fine on an iPad 2, it introduced glitches on the original iPad.

Transform your iPad into a fully fledged stomp box with the Digitech iPB-10

There’s also AmpliTube Fender for iPad (£10.49), which specialises in Fender amps and pedals. The choice of modules is smaller than in the main app, but to our ears they sound better. The Twin Reverb amp captures the sparkle of gently overdriven valves, while the Fender Blender pedal produces wonderful gurgling distortion that sounds bang up to date – not bad for an effect that’s modelled on a 1960s classic. It also includes compression as a free upgrade on registering.

For the best of both worlds, the Fender modules can be added to the main app as an in-app purchase, as can a huge range of other effects and an eight-track virtual tape recorder. There are also free taster versions of both apps at the App Store.

The iRig’s noise and feedback problems and the fact that the Fender app crashed a couple of times during our tests – and not forgetting the high likelihood of ridicule from the baying audience – mean that we’d be hesitant to take them on stage. However, for rehearsing and song writing – whether it’s on the tour bus or on the sofa – we thoroughly recommend it.