Tone. At Home.
The things we can use to bottle up our tone and put it on display for all to marvel at!
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.
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.
Burgs has posted a short demo of Fractal Audio’s new? reactive load box, the X-Load LB-2.
This looks a little different to the other reactive load boxes on the market. There’s a voicing switch on the front, to switch between UK and American speakers. Presumably that changes the impedance behaviour?
I’d be interested in putting one of these up against the Captor, to hear how much difference there is in practice. I think that’d be the only way to understand what problem the LB-2 is trying to solve.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Burgs’ video.
Back in January, my wife bought me an 8 ohm Two Notes Torpedo Captor as a birthday present. (It was going to be a Christmas present, but Two Notes can’t make these things fast enough to keep up with demand!) And last week, I added a second one to my rig, to go with my ridiculously-overkill Synergy Amps dual-amp pedal platform setup.
The Two Notes Torpedo Captor is both a reactive load box and a fixed-level attenuator. There are three different models available: in 4 ohms, 8 ohms (the one I have) and 16 ohms.
The Captor is a completely analogue device. Unlike the Torpedo Live or Torpedo Studio, there’s no onboard computer to run impulse responses or power amp simulators. If you want to use it for silent recording, you’ll need to run a plugin in your DAW on your computer.
It’s the first affordable reactive load box to hit the market, that I know of at any rate.
Before this, there was the Suhr Reactive Load (currently £399, twice the price of the Captor) – extra software required! – then the Torpedo range (starting from £560 for the Torpedo Reload and then the Torpedo Live at £680).
That’s a lot of money to spend on a reactive load box for a single amp setup. For a dual-amp setup, you effectively had to budget for a third amp, and then spend that money on a pair of Torpedo units.
Priced at £199, the Captor is a game changer.
Those of us playing and/or recording at home often want silent recording – the sound of our amp on 10 into our computers, but not coming out of a speaker cabinet at the same time. And that’s where the Captor comes in.
Valve amplifiers need to be connected to a speaker cabinet, so that the signal generated by the output transformer has somewhere to flow to. If you forget to plug your amp into a speaker, you’ll blow the output transformer (if you’re lucky).
A load box like the Captor allows us to run a valve amp without plugging in a speaker cab.
Buy the Captor that matches your amp’s required output impedance, and plug the amp’s speaker out into the Captor. Now you can safely turn your amp on without blowing anything up.
From here, you’ve got a couple of choices on how to get the sound out of the Captor.
I originally got the Captor to use as an attenuator.
I’ve been making my own Kemper profiles, and I wanted to crank the amp as much as possible so that the source signal sounded as good as possible. Power tube saturation plays an important role in the overall quality of the tone, and to get it to kick in, you have to turn the Master volume up.
However, my little home project studio The Hermit’s Cave is just an ordinary room in an ordinary house. A cranked amp – especially my Blackstart HT-100 – will wreck my hearing in here. Not to mention the problems inflicted on my family and my neighbours!
That’s where an attenuator comes in.
An attenuator takes the cranked signal from your amp and bleeds some of it off. What comes out the other end is a quieter signal, to save your hearing and your marriage!
More expensive attenuators offer variable power soak levels. The Captor offers a fixed -20db attenuation. To put that in context, that’s roughly the difference between 2 and 4 on the HT-100’s Master volume control.
Which is just enough to get the power tubes cooking nicely.
The end result? A big difference to the quality of the tone captured by the Kemper Profiler – without a louder volume coming out of the speaker cab. There’s more definition to the tone, with the power tubes filling out the mids nicely. And that’s exactly where the Kemper’s internal algorithms seem to work the best.
However, I’m not ready to sell off all my pedals and stick exclusively with the Kemper just yet. Which is where my new Synergy Amps dual-amp setup comes in … along with the Captor’s other useful function.
Right now, I’m using a pair of Captors for silent recording.
I’ve just built up a dual-amp setup: a pair of Synergy Amps SYN-1 enclosures, with different modules in each, running into the two channels of the Synergy SYN-5050 power amp. I’m running that in stereo mode, with each channel running out into an 8 ohm Captor.
There’s no speaker cab plugged into either Captor. Instead, I’m using the XLR line out to run a mono signal from each Captor into my Apollo Twin unit. With two Captors, I can run two mono signals, and effectively have a dual-amp setup for blended pedal tones, a la That Pedal Show’s usual setups.
The only noise? The fan on the SYN-5050 power amp, and (if I crank the power amp too much) some sympathetic noise from each Captor. The noise was annoying when I had everything out on top of a speaker cab. For now, I’ve bundled them under a desk and out of the way, and that’s cut down the noise just enough to be able to ignore it – most of the time at any rate.
Both channels at the Apollo run into my DAW (I use Reaper – it’s excellent). There, I record onto two separate channels – one for Channel A, and a different one for Channel B from the SYN-5050. I have different impulse responses loaded onto each channel, chosen to match both the preamp module and the guitar I’m using.
The Captor comes with a license for Two Note’s highly-regarded Wall of Sound (WoS) impulse response plugin. I’m actually using something else – mixIR and the Redwirez BigBox collection.
I’ve been using the Redwirez BigBox for the last 4 years, so I know it well and I’ve had a lot of practice getting the results I want from it. It has great, phase-corrected impulses that suit all the Synergy preamp modules that I’m using. I’m really happy with it.
The end results are excellent.
I found that I got the best results using the XLR output of the Captor, rather than the TRS Line Out. You need to be able to provide phantom power – which the Apollo Twin does.
The Line Out doesn’t need power to operate. I struggled to get a signal that I liked from the Line Out. The output volume there seems to depend on how loud you run your amp. The Captor is rated for 100W amps, and my amp is 50W. Even cranked, I found I was having to crank the preamps on my Apollo Twin too. The end result was too noisy for my tastes.
Your mileage may vary.
The Captor is the entry-level model for Two Note’s Torpedo line of units. There is nothing entry-level about the results you can achieve with it.
On one of the forums I hang out on, someone else posted that the Captor sounds identical to the more expensive Torpedo units. If you don’t need the features of those units – and at home, you probably don’t – then the Captor is an excellent choice.
Almost any other competitor – the Suhr Reactive Load, or Fryette’s Power Station – still relies on impulse responses running in your DAW. You might prefer how these units affect the tone. Each load box uses a different design to bleed off the power, and each design has a different effect on the end tone. We all hear things differently, and which unit you ultimately prefer will be a subjective matter of personal taste.
The only way you’ll get a substantive improvement over what impulse responses offer is to use a proprietary modelling solution like Universal Audio’s OX amp top box. If you want to know more about that, here’s a recent blog post comparing it to the other options.
I’ve only just finished wiring up the dual-amp pedal platform. It’ll probably be Easter weekend before I have the time to sit down and really explore what it can do. I’m excited for the possibilities.
There’s no two ways about it. I wouldn’t have been able to build this before the Captor came along.
Because there’s no software running on the Captor – and therefore no software drivers to worry about as time goes on – not only is the Captor cheaper, it should also outlive its more capable big brothers.
If you’re recording at home with valve amps, and you don’t have anywhere to run a real speaker cab at volume, the Captor + impulse responses should be on your list of options.
Graham over at The Recording Revolution looks at how you can add drums to your recordings without having a real drummer or playing a real drum kit.
Many of us can’t play drums, and we don’t have the physical space for a drum kit of any kind either – and yet, we play music genres where drums are a major component of the overall sound.
So we need options – and Graham’s video shows 3 common options to fill in (pun intended) for a real drummer.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you found Graham’s video useful.
Paul at ReaperTV has posted an interesting video on how to get better mixes in a home studio, using SonarWorks Reference 4.
Adding acoustic treatment to a home studio isn’t always easy or desirable. We don’t all have a dedicated room in the first place, and I for one like how my little space adds a bit of life to a recorded vocal.
Well, there’s another way – to change the sound coming out of your DAW to take into account the acoustic properties of your room. And this is what SonarWorks Reference 4 does.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Paul’s video.
When Shane recently demoed the new Marshall DSL amps, he liked them so much that he went out and bought one for himself. And he’s kindly gone and posted an in-depth look at what the 40W combo sounds like.
Watch it all the way through to the end for his honest pros and cons of his new amp. and some footage of him using the amp live with an ES-335 style guitar.
If you’re thinking of getting one of these, you’ll find his comments about the two master volumes particularly informative. They’re especially important if you’re thinking of buying this amp to play mostly at home tone volume levels.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Shane’s video.
Another one from Michael Nielsen tonight. He’s done a great video looking at how several popular load boxes sound for vintage tones.
Around the 7 minute mark, he talks about a surprising aspect of load boxes – that they drive the amp harder than the real cab does. He then goes on to show the captured waveforms side by side. There’s a few surprises hiding in there too.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Michael’s video.
Check this out. Michael Nielsen has posted a video comparing a real mic + cab setup vs 5 different ways to record silently at home. And he’s picked a great way to do it too.
He’s recorded the best sound he could with each approach, and used them in a mix so that you can hear the kind of final results you might be able to get. Best of all: the guitar is soloed to begin with, to give you a taste of what it’s like to simply noodle through each setup.
It isn’t a straight comparison. The real cab has V30s in it, and is mic’d using an SM57. The impulse responses used are of G12M Creambacks with a couple of different mics, and I’d swear that the OX is emulating G12Hs not G12Ms. But that’s kinda the point. He’s gone and done exactly what we’d do ourselves – dial in what he thinks sounds the best.
Do have a read of the comments people have been leaving on his video. It’s clear that not only do people have different tastes, but that different people actually hear different things too.
The other thing that’s interesting? Play it back to back a few times. Once ear fatigue kicks in, just how much difference can you hear any more?
(And just how good does that BE-100 sound?!? Me want …!)
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment for Michael’s video.
This is a first look at the Synergy Amps system now that it’s home, where I can hear it through my cabs and with my guitars.
I’ve been away for work this last week, and whilst I over the other side of the country, I managed to pick up a set of Synergy Amps modules, enclosures and the power amp.
Now that I’m back at the Hermit’s Cave, time to unbox everything … just to make sure it survived the journey, right? 😀
So what have we got here?
They’re sat on top of a pair of Victory Amps 1×12 cabs. The top cab is a V112-C with a G12M-65 Creamback, and the bottom cab is a V112-V with a V30.
Let’s talk about the power amp first. I have a lot more to say about it than I expected to.
The power amp is deceptively heavy. The SYN-1 enclosures aren’t exactly featherweights either. It’s all solid stuff. If it was all mounted into a rack, I wouldn’t want to be moving it around much.
When I switched the power amp on, first thing I noticed is that the internal fan is loud. Loud enough to be heard when playing at home tone volume levels. It’s loud enough to be an issue for my environment. I’m hoping that it’ll be less noticeable once it’s properly racked. Failing that, the sound reminds me of one of those old 90s computer fans. Maybe it’s possible to replace it with something more acoustically engineered?
(I’ll do a follow-up post at some point talking about why fan noise is important.)
I’ve owned a few rack-mount power amps over the years. This one’s a little different to what I’ve seen before. This isn’t a dual mono-block power amp. It took me a bit of fiddling to get both channels working, and at first I really thought that Channel B wasn’t working. It was working, it’s just that Channel B’s volume control isn’t always active.
I’ll do a dedicated post about the SYN-5050’s 3 modes of operation shortly.
One reason why I want to make that a separate post is the manual that comes with the SYN-5050. I didn’t find the manual any help at all. I’m hoping it’s just that the manual is a draft, and that they’ll improve it as time goes on. The diagrams aren’t labelled, the text refers to sections that aren’t included, and the description of MONO, MONO-BRIDGED and STEREO modes wasn’t clear enough for me.
On the front of the power amp, the STANDBY/ON switches for Channel A and Channel B are next to each other. I’ve already switched Channel B on by mistake at least once. Fortunately, I had a cab plugged into Channel B, so no harm done. But be aware of it. It’s an accident waiting to happen.
The amp itself sounds great. It’s 50W in MONO and STEREO modes, and 100W in MONO-BRIDGED mode, I believe. The volume range is very usable for home use – already a bonus compared to many Fender amps! I’m looking forward to running it through the Two Notes Torpedo Captor so that I can crank it a bit and hear that lovely power tube saturation.
I’ve been after a rack-mountable 6L6 power amp for many years. The old Mesa Boogie 2:90 was on my wishlist for a long time. The sheer weight of it always put me off. That, and how much it would cost to revalve! I’ve been using software-based emulation in the mean time, which certainly does a job. I’m very pleased that I don’t have to any more 🙂
So what are the two modules like?
This module takes drive pedals really well. Especially on the red channel, which I believe is voiced like a Fender Deluxe. Some pedals just don’t shine through the Blackstar HT-100. I’ve had a couple of them out the cupboard and through the T-DLX, and so far I like what I’ve heard.
Early days yet. I need to do some recording and mixing before I can say that this is definitely a great pedal platform.
The module sounds good through the G12M-65. I would like to pair it with a Celestion A-Type soon, to get even closer to that Fender DRRI tone. I’m going to take a looat at how easy it is to swap speakers in the Victory cabs. Not sure yet whether I’ll swap out the V30, or just pick up a third cab and swap the speaker in that.
The Metro Plex doesn’t take drive pedals at all. When I kick in the pedal, all the bottom end disappears. And I don’t care.
Because this thing sounds utterly glorious with a Les Paul.
I lost what – an hour and a half? two hours? – last night just playing straight into it. Hit the front end with a compressor (like my favourite, the Forest Green Compressor from Mad Professor) or a Wampler Tumnus, and it’s amp drive heaven. I’ve never been a fan of amp drive before. This module has converted me 🙂
Well … almost. I haven’t yet managed to dial in a touch-sensitive kind of crunch. Hopefully I’ll find it. If not, it’s still a special sound, and this module is a keeper regardless.
I bought this rig to be a completely-overkill pedal platform. The plan was to run pedals into both modules at the same time – a la That Pedal Show and their dual-amp setup – to get the best blended tone possible.
Then I got sidetracked a bit, because I had the opportunity to get the Metro Plex module. The early YouTube demos had deeply impressed me. I didn’t think there were any in the country, so when Peach Guitars said they had one, that was a no-brainer. I really don’t care that it doesn’t take pedals. It’s worth having for what it does.
So, going forward, I’ve got a couple of options.
I’ve already got the HT-100, and I know it takes many drive pedals very well. I’m going to wire that up into the SYN-5050 and give that a go first.
I don’t have a second Torpedo Two Notes Captor atm, and once again they’re on backorder at the retailers. I’m going to have to wait a few weeks before I can try this out.
And let’s not kid myself. I’ve been looking for a platform like Synergy ever since I decided that I’d had enough of digital amps. Unless I run into some big disappointments once I start recording this setup, I am going to collect the other modules over time.
I’ve spent years building a sound around my pedals into the Blackstar HT-100. Getting the Synergy Amps system has blown that up to a certain extent.
It’s going to be a few weeks before it’s fully integrated into my little home project studio here at The Hermit’s Cave. Probably won’t be able to get that done until Easter weekend. After that, I’m going to need time using it to learn how to get the best out of it.
I’ll be posting updates about that as I go.