2012 - Sansamp GT2 - First impression.

I scored a GT2 this week for a really good price. I'd been humming & hawing about getting one for ages, but since they're usually more than $200AUD for a second hand one, I was reluctant as I do have a few adequate amp & speaker modelers (Bad Monkey, Condor Cab Sim, Digiverb, VT Bass).

I got mine nice and cheap and have only had a little while to play with it so far, but already there are things I do and don't like.

Here are the basics:
3 amp settings (Tweed (Bassman), British (Marshall), California (Boogie).
3 "mod settings" Clean, Hi Gain & hotwired.
3 mic settings Classic (flat), Center (mids), off axis (lower mids)

First off the amp settings appear to have different gain and eq structures, the Tweed being the lowest gain and the California being the highest. The tweed has the lowest bottom end and the others are fairly similar in my first test.

The mod settings appear to be a little misleading, as the "clean" setting doesn't mean clean tone, but actually means "stock" or "unmodded". I have read on other websites that the Sansamp is not capable of a clean boost, this was not my experience. When set for Tweed, Clean & Classic, I was able to get a really nice Fenderesqe clean tone with my Goldtone PB-GRE. As mentioned in my previous blog article, this guitar has a fairly low output and is likely biasing my experience.

The tone of the settings I've described is sparkly top with a nice thick bottom. I did notice a bit of noise (hiss), but that might be due to a flat battery, or that I'd cranked the gain. After fiddling with the knobs (they're old and a bit crackly) I was able to tame the noise and stop my mixer from overloading.

Speaking of overloading, this and the VT bass have some serious power in the output department.
It can be tricky to track down the culprit when your mixer clip light isn't triggered and there's unwanted distortion somewhere. I'm not 100% on this, but I think that the Sansamp series might actually be able to clip their own output stage.

So far I'm not convinced that the high gain models are up to the job of direct recording without some intermediary speaker cab filter. They can be somewhat fizzy, but it's also possible that the low output pickup just doesn't play well with those settings and I need to use a guitar with a humbucker or at the least high output single coil, like a P90 or a Mosrite.

I'm pretty happy with the clean tone and look forward to spending more time with the unit.

Stay tuned.

2012 Pedal Review - Digitech DIGIVERB

This is one pedal that I owned for a time and parted with to acquire another bit of gear. Honestly I can't say enough good things about Digitech pedals, especially the cabinet simulators, which seem to be available in every model.
some of the cab sims are more complex than others, and each one has its own tonal characteristic. The Digitech Digiverb is no expection.

To engage the cabinet simulator, simply hold down the pedal before applying power. Otherwise it will just behave as if plugged into an amp and bypass the cabinet circuitry. Tone wise, the cab is a little dark, but that was not a big deal as it's easily tweaked in a mixing desk. Oh and it has a cabinet sim on both outputs!m Perfect for DI work.

Enough about the cab sims as this is a reverb pedal, and that's pretty much what everyone wants to know about. Well... the pedal isn't perfect. Especially if you're a spring tank purist, but it's passable in that mode. Gate and Reverse are pretty much the same as any other pedal with this feature. Where the pedal really shines is in the cavernous Church mode.

The decay is long and the spread is very large. Church mode is really great for making those huge pad-like ambient sounds. Hall and plate are nice too, but nothing like the Church mode. The Spring sim is almost correct, but the splash at the beginning of it doesn't feel right. Maybe I've spent too much time with a valve driven spring tank, which has a tendency to overdrive when I play hard?

Some people complained that the pedal was prone to introducing noise into a circuit if powered by a daisy chain. I did find this in some positions, but not in others. It's all dependent on where the reverb is placed in your signal chain and how your cables are arranged. I've had the same issue with other DSP based effects, it's not a deal breaker as it can be worked around, if you're not lazy.

I'd be buying this if I was in the market for an EHX Cathedral pedal, but couldn't afford the cash or the floor space. Agaion, RRP in Australia is pretty high, so try to get your hands on one via the 2nd hand market.

2012 - Boss FRV-1 vs Fender Princeton

I'll start this off with admitting that I actually like COSM. For those times when you can't crank an amp, it turns out to be a useful tool. Since I currently live in an apartment with two lovely ladies, I try to keep my noise to a minimum.

To do this, I mostly record guitar via headphones. I've used a few amp & effect simulators on the PC, which have been fine, but all seem to incur more of an performance hit than the CPU monitor would indicate.
Their modeling is reasonably good for most things, but for reverb it has not been anywhere near satisfying, not for spring anyway.

Since I use reverb as part of my tone quite frequently I've been hunting for that perfect silent solution. Even to the point of building a mechanical reverb circuit. Which worked FYI, but did not match the quality of a tube driven circuit.

I've owned the Marshall Reflector, Digitech Digiverb and Boss FDR-1. All of these were decent enough, but when it came to a convincing spring tone, the first two were no better than my computer. The third sounded quite good, but would introduce random reverb splashes even if there were no notes being played.

The Boss FRV-1 doesn't seem to have the same problem as it's predecessor. It runs quietly and as long as it's not being A/B'd with a real Fender amp, it's pretty convincing. The decay is nice and long and the tone control is very handy. It can be dark and muddy or so bright that your ears hurt.

When played in tandem with the Princeton Reverb, it's noticeably darker, and doesn't give quite the same quality of bright tone. In fact, running the pedal as a dry guitar, the top end of the guitar is somewhat attenuated, not quite tone suck, but more of an low pass filter. The advantage of this pedal would be running reverb on overly bright amps, or if you have to play in a venue with severe electromagnetic interference issues (such as my home) as there's no inductor coil to hum like a fridge when you want a big splashy verb.

In a mix it sits nicely and I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and the real thing in a blind test, this might not be the case if I were the one playing the guitar as there is a marked difference between the two in terms of response to playing dynamics.

It's not a true substitute for the real thing, but it performs well for such a tiny package.
Sometimes a one trick pony is all you need.