Tone. At Home.
The magical beast that turns potential into sheer tone!
Shane’s been teasing us about the Kemper Profiler that he borrowed from Sky Music of Melbourne … and now we have his thoughts on it.
I’m going to save my thoughts on the Kemper until I’ve had time to sit down and record my own Kemper demos. For now, I agree with what Shane thinks about the Kemper – especially when it comes to pedals – but I have a lot more to share about profiling accuracy soon!
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Shane’s video.
Leo from Frog Leap Studios has posted a demo of his Line 6 Shuriken Variax, and how it enables him to perform his famous metal covers live.
It’s really cool how far the Variax has come from the early days. I had the original Variax – boy was that a long time ago – and it was so bad it ended up in the recycling. I couldn’t even give it away. But the Shuriken – especially paired with the Helix – looks worlds apart. Check out Leo’s video to see just what it can do.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Leo’s video.
What would a wall of 100W Marshall heads, with eight 4×12 cabs, sound like at home? Johan Segeborn has found out for us, so that we don’t need to upset the neighbours.
I swear that you can see the camera shaking from the amount of air that these Marshall stacks are moving!
I think it sounds glorious too. The room looks (and sounds) very lively – it’s adding a lot of reflections to the recording, because Johan’s using a room mic to capture this. Treat the room to take some of that away, and it would sound truly immense.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Johan’s video … or if you’re just jealous that he has somewhere to do this 🙂
Henning’s just put up a quick demo of a very interesting piece of gear – a 40W that sits on your pedalboad. Not a drive pedal – a full-blown amp, complete with FX loop!
If you’re a gigging musician, having a backup amp of some kind is essential – especially if you gig with real valve amps. Lugging a spare amp around isn’t fun. And depending on what you buy, that’s a lot of money tied up in it, especially as you hope to never actually have to use it.
Some kind of backup that can sit on your pedalboad – just in case – has a lot of appeal.
And for us home tone chasers, if you can’t have / don’t want a traditional amp at home, this kind of thing is well worth looking at as an alternative to using modelling amps or software amp sims.
I’ll post the full review when Henning uploads it. This could be one to watch.
Please head over to Henning’s channel to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Henning’s video.
Pete Thorn has posted a demo of Mercuriall’s Spark Marshall amp-sim plug-in. Check out these tones!
The Spark plugin models 4 classic Marshall amps: a Super Bass, Super Lead, JCM 800, and the AFD. The JCM 800 and Super Lead heads are still in production. Looks like the Super Bass isn’t made any more. The AFD was (if memory serves) a limited run – Captain Anderton did a video about his.
Amp plugins are well worth looking at if you can’t afford a real amp, don’t want the hassle, or don’t have the physical space for a collection of big and heavy vintage amps. They run inside your DAW software (I always recommend Reaper – it’s great) and all you need is an interface (like the Focusrite Scarlett) to plug your guitar into.
And, as you can hear on Pete’s demo, they offer very usable tones these days.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Pete’s video.
Chappers and the Captain have posted the 2nd part of their high-gain amp blindfold challenge. This time, they’re looking at 7 amps at £1,000 or below.
These kind of videos are a great opportunity to hear a bunch of amps side by side. Exact same guitar, exact same guitarist, and it looks like they’re running each amp into the exact same cab (so they’re all mic’d up the same). The only difference is the amp itself.
And these aren’t aspirational boutique sell-a-kidney amps. These are the kind of amps that you’d be looking at if you want a real valve amp for home and gigging.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed this video.q
Fluff has just posted a demo of Positive Grid’s new Bias Amp 2.
Bias Amp is guitar amp emulation software that you run on your computer. You plug your guitar straight into your audio interface – no real guitar amp required. If you don’t want a real amp, it’s definitely an option to consider.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Fluff’s video.
Paul Davids (and … er … Paul Davids) is back with a video comparing his first rig to his current rig.
We don’t learn how old his Squier is, so please don’t refer to this when trying to decide whether or not to buy a brand new Squier today! These kinds of videos are meant to be a bit of fun 🙂
Hopefully Paul will post a follow up where we hear both guitars into the Tone King.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Paul’s video.
Sam Coulson has posted a short video, showing us the rig he’s using when he’s giving guitar clinics this year.
He’s running a modded Charvel into a Helix, out to the Yamaha THR-100HD. The Yamaha’s setup as a clean platform for the Helix. It’s a simple rig that looks very easy to load in and out without a lot of effort.
I’ve got the Yamaha THR-100HD myself, and for a couple of years it was my main practice amp. It takes pedals better than any other modelling amp did at the time. You can run two amps at once out into different cabs, and that gives you a taste of that two-amp blended tone thing.
My main complaint with the THR-100HD is that it felt like Yamaha abandoned it to a large extent. It’s been a couple of years since the last firmware update, and they haven’t added any new models – or improved the existing ones – since launch. It’s become a very much take-it-or-leave-it amp.
But – unlike some modelling amps – you can use it as an amp, without hooking it up to a computer. Which means that they’ll continue to be usable long into the future.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Sam’s video.
Matt and Rabea are back with another Sounds Like video for Andertons – and this time they’ve built a generic rig for modern high-gain tones.
If you haven’t come across it before, the Sounds Like series is a great way to see how to build a rig to achieve a given sound.
Many of the videos stick to a budget of £1,500, and it’s been educational to watch just how much prices have gone up since the Brexit referendum.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoy Matt and Rabea’s video.