Amp reivews

[Pasha]

Tested AMP+CAB as Clean and Blues.
Compared with GR4, Line6 Pod Farm and my 18 years old Fender Studio Reverb AMP.

What I have to say is that as I switch my 5 position pickup selector on my Fender Strat with Lace Sensors when using my hardware amp I get a different sound and the same happens with Live AMP+CAB. Unfortunately the same is not true with GR4 and L6 Podfarm.
It seems that AMP has more sensitivity about the signal (20 years old pickups) that comes from my axe. This is a good thing especially when I play with tones on my guitar. They make a difference.
Distorted sound are not comparable with GR4 or Podfarm but only because I need a noise gate that works better than Live Gate (better = more guitar oriented). The presets sounds good to me but the gate is too invasive and the sound is chopped. This does not happen with GR4 and L6.
The Bass type of AMP is good to me and adds punch to all recorded lines.
I have also used AMP on recorded Acoustic Guitar Tracks and it makes a change! I like it.
My fav are Clean and Blues.

- Best
- Pasha

[agent314]

Finally getting to test out Amp with the effect itself rather than the Rack presets, and at first blush I am a big fan.

Not as light on the CPU as I was hoping, but it sounds great.

Doesn't have as much right-out-of-the-box variety as Guitar Rig 4, but I would say for what it does do, it easily holds its own and in some ways exceeds GR.

I find it responds to my playing dynamics a lot more than GR4 did, and cleans up with volume rolloff a lot more believably than a lot of the amps in GR. Using Saturator in front of it gets you a lot of gain versatility.

Some of the amp/cab combinations are a little boomier than I like, and a lot of the Reverb presets seem to amplify this exponentially. Nothing a little EQ can't fix, but it's still kind of a fly in the otherwise excellent ointment.

It would be nice if bringing in Amp would automatically bring in a cab along with it. I understand why people would be calling it hive-of-bees gain, if they loaded it up and didn't put in a cabinet too.

My only real complaint is how noisy it is. Even with high gain settings in GR4, rolling my guitar volume knobs to zero would produce mild hiss, but nothing terrible. Any of the high-gain settings in Amp seem to produce a LOT of noise. It would be nice to just turn down my volume knob when I'm playing live and have the sound all go away, but that may not be possible without a gate or some such. I can see why all the presets had Noise Reduction macro knobs.

Overall, an awesome plugin with a lot of uses. I've only tried it for a proper guitar - can't wait to try them out with synths and other audio, too.

Thumbs up, Ableton.

[friend_kami]

i was under the impression that guitar rig is just a wrapper and each of the amps and effects and whatnots are essentially guitar rig "plugins".
if this is the case then its completely different. correct me if im wrong though.

what is completely different? yeah, guitar rig is the wrapper in which you stack the plugins. just as in live, audio effect rack will be that wrapper (rename it to guitar rig if you want), in which you can stack your amps and other audio effects (call them plugins ).

so besides the visual difference, and the obvious fact that the effects themselves are different, there is no logical difference between an effect rack filled with amps (and saturators and reverbs and such) and a guitar rig filled with those.

because amp has several amps inside each plugin instance, whereas guitar rig has only the one(s) you select..
i dont know really. it still sounds like shit though. as soon as you wanna go highgain it sounds so horribly digital it makes me cringe.
i suspect you could probably rack it up and sit and fiddle around for a while and get it to sounds.. well.. less digital.

for a plugin that is supposed to emulate amps, they really should have made that sound a bit more accessible.
just saying.

but the clean tones sounds really nice though.

[agent314]

i dont know really. it still sounds like shit though. as soon as you wanna go highgain it sounds so horribly digital it makes me cringe.

You're using a cabinet with it, right?

Because the Lead and Heavy options, with a 4x12, sounds pretty good for a high-gain emulation, as far as my ears can tell.

But no cab = sounds like shrill death.

[friend_kami]

do i look like an idiot?
ofcourse i am using it with a cabinet.
it still sounds like shit.

[nylarch]

do i look like an idiot?

don't know - what do you look like?

[Hermanus]

lmao

[agent314]

do i look like an idiot?
ofcourse i am using it with a cabinet.
it still sounds like shit.

Just trying to help. I'll be sure to avoid trying in the future.

Maybe I'm just not internet-cool enough to hate on a useful, free plugin?

All I know is, as someone who's played through non-emulated amps for the better part of 20 years, it sounds pretty good to me.

[friend_kami]

do i look like an idiot?
ofcourse i am using it with a cabinet.
it still sounds like shit.

Just trying to help. I'll be sure to avoid trying in the future.

Maybe I'm just not internet-cool enough to hate on a useful, free plugin?

All I know is, as someone who's played through non-emulated amps for the better part of 20 years, it sounds pretty good to me.

then it must be my nonemulated hardware amps that sounds horrible, because they sound nothing like this, none of them.
yes, im sure that "internet-cool" has alot of say in the soundquality of a plugin.

[nebulae]

^^ isn't there a mac v. pc thread that you dumb shits can go argue on?

[friend_kami]

^^ isn't there a mac v. pc thread that you dumb shits can go argue on?

oooeerr i cant, im running osx on a pc.
im a hipocrit then :p
ill get mobbed by both of them at the same time.

[nebulae]

^ I wouldn't mob you. I'd simple strap you down and then make you listen to Amp (no cabinet) on repeat for about 3 days without food or water.

[friend_kami]

what have the world come too, when software companies are developing halfassed torture devices for mere pleasure?

*AWESOME, thats what!

[nebulae]

ok what if during those three days, I was also masturbating the entire time in front of your eyes? And I had taped your eyelids open so you couldn't close them.

I'd say that's pretty fucking great torture. Nothing half assed about that.

[martinkellogs]

edited