cakes wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 3:51 pm

benadrian wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 3:48 pm

cakes wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 3:45 pm I got the Ampeg SGT in and...boy, it's fucking awesome.

Glad you dig it!

I'm glad you're chiming in. I was also reading on bass forums that a lot of bass players like the Helix SVT. Have you tried the SGT and what are your thoughts on the Helix version?

Umm, do you know that Yamaha now own Ampeg and Line 6, and that the Line 6 part of the company (now called Yamaha Guitar Group) are the people developing Ampeg stuff?

So yeah, I did the original design of the SGT circuit (just the drive part), originally for the new Rocket Bass amps. The concept was to design an analog, Ampeg voiced, amp-in-a-box circuit to put in front of a clean preamp. The circuit could be bypassed for a modern bass tone, or engaged for a more vintage style tone. Another guy in my department did a lot of work tuning the clean preamp and touched up my SGT work to reduce noise. A third guy in my department did the IR captures of the bass cabs. So my extremely biased opinion is that the SGT-DI preamp is fantastic.

There's no SGT in Helix, right? There's just various modeled SVTs. The SVT model in Helix is pretty great; modeled from a Magnavox era amp. The model of the SVT 50th Anniversary in the SVT Suite plug in is excellent. It actually uses too much DSP to run in Helix.

Sidenote, I've been trying to find a "leftover" Venture V3 head around the office for guitar use. I can plug HX Stomp into the power amp in and use it as a guitar power amp. If anything goes wacky with the modeler, I can plug into the front and turn on the SGT and have a simulacra of something like a V4 head.

So that's my story. I hope you keep having fun with the pedal.

Yeah, I recently learned that Yamaha had bought Ampeg, def why I asked. So cool you worked on it. Great job, it's exactly what I was hoping it to be and more. I feel way more comfortable not having any real amps and making the decision to go with more focused pedals rather than something like the Helix.

Before I decided to buy it, I was seriously considering the GK Plex. There seemed to be some bad execution and flaws in the pedal, it seemed a little outdated and it was expensive for just wanting the 800RB sound. So, I was pleasantly surprised to come across the SGT and see consistent reviews of it and that the only complaint was the push-in buttons (which, honestly is silly).

Bad wording on my part. I was curious what you thought about the Helix SVT. Some people wondered if it had any connection to the SGT, since Yamaha owns it all.

I have come across the DSM Humboldt Electronics zero watt amps, and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with them? They're pretty cool, all knob tweakability. I think it's the successor to something like the Strymon Iridium. It has similar voicing, but more customizations. There's a couple different versions, I've seen at least three: guitar, guitar/reverb, and bass. Really cool pedals, ultra compact. I almost considered getting one, but hard to justify considering the pedals I've already got.

If you were someone that was interested in amp/cab modeling, but didn't want to deal with software and wanted full analog experience, check these out!

If you're curious about them and want to dip a toe without spending very much money, there's an aliexpress part-for-part copy of the original white simplifier that's well-regarded.

mdc wrote: Thu Feb 15, 2024 1:40 pm If you're curious about them and want to dip a toe without spending very much money, there's an aliexpress part-for-part copy of the original white simplifier that's well-regarded.

The LY-ROCK Tone Monster? That is some crazy shit. It sounds like it's the luck of the draw on them, for about $70. There's also the bass pedal.

I'm not sure what luck there would really be to draw from - I would assume it's all pick and place SMD made by robots, just like the original.

mdc wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2024 10:36 am I'm not sure what luck there would really be to draw from - I would assume it's all pick and place SMD made by robots, just like the original.

That's what I've read. But I think it might have more to do with the parts. If you look at the difference, the knobs and switches are not of the same quality. The switches are completely different, too. It's not a one-to-one on the build, it's a one-to-one on the schematic.

I just got a new Macbook for the first time since I bought one in 2006/7, and started using Garageband again as it's my bandmates DAW of choice so just makes it easier to share projects, etc (and I needed a new computer anyway). I've only dorked around with the amp sims in there a little bit so far, but the "modern" amp which is pretty much a Mesa 400+ sounds pretty great, and the "modern" 1x15 sim looks to be from an old Mesa as well. Definitely got a pretty dang close sound to what I get at the practice space when I plugged my Bean in, or changed the sim my bandmate had used on a new song.

tallchris wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2024 3:09 pm I just got a new Macbook for the first time since I bought one in 2006/7, and started using Garageband again as it's my bandmates DAW of choice so just makes it easier to share projects, etc (and I needed a new computer anyway). I've only dorked around with the amp sims in there a little bit so far, but the "modern" amp which is pretty much a Mesa 400+ sounds pretty great, and the "modern" 1x15 sim looks to be from an old Mesa as well. Definitely got a pretty dang close sound to what I get at the practice space when I plugged my Bean in, or changed the sim my bandmate had used on a new song.

Nembrini is having a really great sale right now where you can pick up amps for $10 a piece. They make some fantastic amps. They just released a piece software to run your VST plugins independently from the daw. I'm not sure if you can load other VSTs in it, or just Nembrini. I have yet to play with it, but I do have a copy.

Neural DSP sells some pretty amazing amp sims, too. All of those are also standalone amps. I really love their Morgan Amp. They do things a little different, you get a set of pedals to go along with the amps, but you can't add your own pedal VSTs to the signal chain unfortunately.

There's also VST hosts, some can get kind of expensive. There's one in particular that works pretty great on an ARM Mac and has good MIDI support and it's free, though a license is still pretty cheap: https://kushview.net/element/

I've been playing around a lot with the Opus and damn, it really is the best amp modeler pedal for the price. I originally put together an amp and DynIR that sounds very similar to my old rig (with some tweaks to improve some of the things I didn't like). I then started playing around making new amp/cab combos, getting some really cool sounds that work a little better on some songs than others. So, now I have started to rethink my pedal board. I currently have 3 ODs, which all sound great but totally different for each Opus preset. In some ways, one OD like the tubescreamer, sounds great on some amps, but dogshit on others. The klon sounds dirty on some presets, but sparkly on others. Not surprising, but I've never been confronted with the option of having multiple guitar heads available. I didn't care that the Opus didn't have a foot switch, but it actually would be nice if it had some basic navigation for the feet. I'm considering getting a MIDI controller to switch between presets for songs instead of going with one head for them all.

Ok, now for my rant...

All that being said, Genome just had a big update where they now offer premium amps. There's a real missed opportunity from Two Notes here... You cannot use the new premium amps with the Opus, their documentation says they are "incompatible" (they do have some convoluted documentation for using the Opus in your signal chain into a DAW and using Genome, but that doesn't work outside of recording). So, they made this awesome software for building out rigs for recording, and they offer a pedal for building Amp/Cab combos, but you can't use Genome to manage the Opus. If they are competing with the Helix, this is just awful. You can't even load the Codex amp on the Opus, which I think is a big whiff. Amazing that a company could build a piece of hardware and a piece of software that are essentially begging to work together and they made them incompatible. I get that the Opus isn't designed to add effects units, and that's ok... but you can't load more TSM models on it? You can load DynIRs to your heart's content. It's definitely not a question of space, because you can remove/add things as you'd like. And it's not a question of processing, the Opus can handle the stock amps just fine, why can't it handle newer ones? It just boggles my fucking mind...