badass! i didnt realize you didnt actually want to use anything up front haha, if you did it can be achieved without compromise.
still have yet to try a herbert but GASing hard for one. hagen, fokker and einstein are what I have. VH4 doesnt seem to be my speed. i vacillate over whether dmoll or herbert would be better for me but i hear dmoll has hagen preamp circuitry, could be too similar.
as for cables I went way further than most other and only use solid silver wire in my guitars and cabinets. for cable is use pure copper coated by silver. silver is more conductive than copper, more voltage passes as a result. simple irrefutable science. i stay out of the cable game other than that. all kinds of crazy conductors, winding patterns etc...
ill try your delay settings, shorter than my usual 485 with about a single repeat for "smear" or 500ms same single repeat for tighter "in time" sounds.
Cranky, really surprised no one has this and peter hasnt seen it yet. i agree just email him at this point.
Good morning MMB.
I'll be right up front (and this is from one man's rock, hard rock, metal & heavy metal opinion) you got the best amps money can buy, and we all know that Germans (like me) make the very best "technical products" on this messed up little rock 3rd from the sun. Although Papa doesn't push his original VH4 anymore as he has pretty much discontinued it. Your best bet is to keep an eye on eBay.
I've played all of Papa's amps many times over the years, and very personally for me Papa's Dad kills them all. Herbert is Papa's flagship. But even Herbie may appear to be a simple configuration there are endless textures that can be created by its relenting devil of a guitar amplifier. It literally took me (even after 42 years of playing electric and building acoustic guitars) ~2 years to parse Herbie out. I'm good now, REAL good and when some of my musical comrades come buy to here my rig they're speechless. So I tell them, if you have at the very minimum 15 years of experience playing guitar (and I mean in hours, not one day here or there, but continuously like myself) and at lease 20K then it's all good.
Now the cable minutia. Some guitar nut crackers think that George L's are the best thing since slice processed turkey meat, BLAH - garbage . . .; then you've got Mogami (a bit pricey) but in French it translates to "we suck". The worst thing cable designers can do to completely destroy the conductivity and "free electrons" of audio or any electrical signal for that matter is to gold plate the contact point, or plug. Gold is the worst conductor of any audio signal; so think about it.
Over my 42 years of rocking out I've tried countless different cables and there's only one manufacturer that I've found and have become friends with, and that man is Tony Farinella of "Evidence Audio". Tony's cables (plugs we're speaking of here) are two layers; layer one - brass, layer two nickel. Tony's cables aren't cheap and worth every hard earned penny. I've got more than $1500 invested in his cables. Check him out on your free time, his website is (
http://www.evidenceaudio.com/ ). Tony's support is impeccable just as Papas. So enough about cables, It's all good for me in that area.
I use all TC-Electronic rack gear so buffering and signal lose isn't a concern of mine and all my units are on all the time without any coloration whatsoever. I'm a garden variety TC-Electronic "whore". if you will.
As for the delay settings, I always have it set between (350 and 385) ms and a short feedback at 10% (with bleed), and the feedback level at 50.12 Hz at a mix of 25%. It really shines through nicely for conventional rhythm, clean (CH1) or grit and over the top gain (CH2&3). As for the other psychedelic spaceual effects I have much different settings that I name ("soak1, soak2, . . .) you get the picture. It's kind of hearing the early space movie "Forbidden Planet" with Leslie Nielsen.
Papa will be around, but as I said go to the horses mouth and send him a very concise and clear email as to your query and you'll hear back from him.
Have a great day MMB