Two new fabulous guitar amps

[jfrichards]

In trialing the Devoloop Sitbul bass amp, I was trying to understand what it was doing harmonically, so I ran my guitar through it, and really didn't like the character it gave the guitar, confirming that the Sitbul is modeled after those old garage band bass amps from the sixties, having a very specific tonal palette for old school bass for me (love it for some Jazz Bass stuff).  I wanted to see what the other two bass amps I use did to my guitar, the Cerberus and the Softube Bass.  The results were shocking to me.  Running my strat through Cerberus and Softube Bass, both the presets and lots of tweaking, both with a little RV7000 spring or hall reverb, gave me over a dozen wonderful guitar amps, especially the Line Bass 2 in Softube Bass.  This should not be totally shocking to me because the Fender Bassman from the '50's is one of the best guitar amps ever made.  Both Cerberus and Softube Bass have great tube type harmonics and sound shaping for guitar.

In both Cerberus and Softube Bass, if I map my pedal to the mid frequency knob and turn the mid gain all the way up, I get very nice guitar wah pedals also (even though the Softube frequency is only 5 steps).

I should also note that the opposite is true, that Vermilion (and probably Softube Amp) is great for bass tones (and especially electric piano and harmonica).

I highly recommend these two for all guitarists.

Edit:  I'll have to try the 3 tubescreamer pedals in Creme in front of Cerberus and Softube Bass, should be good.
Now we have Vermilion, Creme, Softube, Revival, Cerberus, and Softube Bass (and still Line6 for Teles and stadium leads).

[PSoames]

Absolutely John. So many options it's fantastic.

I'm particularly enjoying using Cerberus for electro-acoustic guitar at the moment. I've got a Martin with some sort of Fishman mic thing in it.

It sounds lush as an acoustic, but horrid - to my ears anyway - when DI'd into an audio channel in Reason. Might be down to me bein' a picker not a strummer, not sure.

But by processing it through Cerberus I can get v.close to its acoustic nature.

Oh and with you on the Sitbull; wasn't a fan for bass guitar. But as a Bass Synth distortion unit, I liked it a lot.

[EnochLight]

Honestly, I haven't trialed Sitbull, but everything I read about it seems to indicate the same.  Thanks for posting your thoughts - i'll likely stick with Cerebus and Softube for my bass.

[jfrichards]

Another big surprise:  No amp at all, just the Trident with 3K on +9 and 500 on +9:

http://phead.mu/s/PGgOswpN

 

With one RV7000 on spring and another on Concert Hall, and a touch of Unison.  Strat players would pay a lot of money for this tone.

 

Of course, you need a great sounding Strat, which you can get for $380 these days:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/guitars/ ... ric-guitar

[eusti]

Nice one, John!

D.

[Marco Raaphorst]

Recently I got some really warm overdriven tones using the Revival Preamp Red or Brown with Vermillion and Revival Preamp SilverHG with Creme.

[Marco Raaphorst]

Here's a screenshot of the Brown Preamp versus the Pulveriser:

 

The Pulveriser skips the second harmonic on mild Drive settings compared to the Brown preamp of Revival. The Pulveriser introduces this second harmonic though when you set the Drive to a higher setting. And when using a higher Drive setting the frequencies won't fall back on the Pulveriser. The Echo has a nice saturation algorithm with a fast fall off/decay of high frequencies. 

Many saturation units I have tested, also stuff like Guitar Rig, they seem to be skipping the second harmonic often. Don't know why. The thing hate the most I what I consider as bad saturation is when the overtones are only happening in the high end. When there's a cap between the fundamental tones and the additional saturation frequencies. It creates this paper thin sound which becomes a problem for me when playing the low strings of my guitars. As soon as I start hearing this effect that sounds something like I am overdriving the input, that thin sounding "pffff" behind the strings, I know the saturation is just thin sounding. Sometimes with more overdrive and using the bridge pickup you can hide that problem a bit, but it's still there and it is a thin sound imo.

The Pulveriser can sound extremely good for these kind of things, but you need to set the Drive right and work on the Tone and Filter settings (and don't forget about the Filter routing).

Getting an warm overdriven sound is a challenge in digital but it is possible. The Revival Preamp has a couple of saturation presets which are superb sounding. So I can highly recommend that device. You can drive both Amp and Kuassa Creme and Vermillion with it. All those amps sound 10 times warmer when you're using the right Preamp distortion.

Maybe I should be doing lots of tests and write them all down. Takes time and I am not a scientist... rather make some music instead. Play my guitar some more

[Marco Raaphorst]

Wrote a long blogpost for this. There were a couple of things not correct in my reply. Check:
http://melodiefabriek.com/blog/saturati ... r-revival/