TheGreatGreen
Well-known member
Lately there have been a few really great sounding Bogner Ecstasy high gain clips floating around. To me, these clips have sort of conflicted with the conventional wisdom I've heard that Bogners (Ecstasys in particular) are dark, slow, and spongy. "Chewy" being the most common word for them. So, I got curious to see how good they really are at modern high gain type rhythm tones and found somebody local who was nice enough to let me use their Ecstasy for a bit, and I made a few clips comparing it with an EVH 100w EL34 and Mesa Mark IV Rev B head.
There are four total Ecstasy clips here. Two made with the Blue and two made with the Red channel. For each channel, I made one clip with what I considered relatively "balanced" sounding front panel EQ settings for the kinds of tones I'm going for here, and the other with slight increases to the Presence and Treble dials. For modern high gain tones, I find the XTC needs its Treble control set pretty high, and this dial is highly responsive at the higher points in its sweep due to its steep audio taper, so the adjustments to the Treble and Presence controls between the balanced and "More Treble and Presence" clips were small but the changes to the sound were significant. Both the Red and Blue channels had their built-in channel boosts enabled, Pre EQ set to B1, and were set to "H" Structure.
Recording info:
These are NOT RAW CLIPS.
All amps have been EQ'd in post, but each track has the EXACT SAME EQ applied to it, so the clips do reflect accurate comparisons in that the only variable that changes is the amp when noted as such.
The EQ is simple, I used a parametric EQ to make a wide-Q dip in the mids by a few db centered around 800 Hz, and there's a shelved low end boost around 220 Hz by a couple of db, and a high pass filter at 100 Hz. I find cutting the mids this way clears some congestion from the tracks, and the low boost fills out some sonic territory, which is nice when there is no backing track to fill out the spectrum. Also, the tracks marked "with GEQ Boost" have been boosted by about 10 db with a Boss GE-7 that also has a gently sloping bass cut dialed in. The XTC Red channel is not boosted by a pedal but all others are.
Guitar: PRS Custom 22 with EMG 81 in the bridge
Each track has two guitar lines, one panned hard left and the other panned hard right.
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/j7QDF2hNPVZpjva57
What do you guys think? To me, the XTC totally holds up for modern rhythms here, and it has a thickness to it while retaining clarity in the mids that I'm kind of in love with. What I didn't expect was how "fast" and clear the 101B could get with the right gain settings and boosts. All you ever hear about these amps are that they're dark and slow ("chewy"), and while it's definitely easy to dial them in for that sound, turns out it's also not too hard to dial them to be quite modern, tight, bright, and clear if you want as well.
I threw the Mark IV in there on a whim at the last minute, didn't spend much time tweaking it, but it's not too shabby either imo.
edit: and yes I know I didn't play the part quite right lol, but by the time I noticed, I had already done quite a few tracks and got lazy, didn't feel like redoing them.
There are four total Ecstasy clips here. Two made with the Blue and two made with the Red channel. For each channel, I made one clip with what I considered relatively "balanced" sounding front panel EQ settings for the kinds of tones I'm going for here, and the other with slight increases to the Presence and Treble dials. For modern high gain tones, I find the XTC needs its Treble control set pretty high, and this dial is highly responsive at the higher points in its sweep due to its steep audio taper, so the adjustments to the Treble and Presence controls between the balanced and "More Treble and Presence" clips were small but the changes to the sound were significant. Both the Red and Blue channels had their built-in channel boosts enabled, Pre EQ set to B1, and were set to "H" Structure.
Recording info:
These are NOT RAW CLIPS.
All amps have been EQ'd in post, but each track has the EXACT SAME EQ applied to it, so the clips do reflect accurate comparisons in that the only variable that changes is the amp when noted as such.
The EQ is simple, I used a parametric EQ to make a wide-Q dip in the mids by a few db centered around 800 Hz, and there's a shelved low end boost around 220 Hz by a couple of db, and a high pass filter at 100 Hz. I find cutting the mids this way clears some congestion from the tracks, and the low boost fills out some sonic territory, which is nice when there is no backing track to fill out the spectrum. Also, the tracks marked "with GEQ Boost" have been boosted by about 10 db with a Boss GE-7 that also has a gently sloping bass cut dialed in. The XTC Red channel is not boosted by a pedal but all others are.
Guitar: PRS Custom 22 with EMG 81 in the bridge
Each track has two guitar lines, one panned hard left and the other panned hard right.
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/j7QDF2hNPVZpjva57
What do you guys think? To me, the XTC totally holds up for modern rhythms here, and it has a thickness to it while retaining clarity in the mids that I'm kind of in love with. What I didn't expect was how "fast" and clear the 101B could get with the right gain settings and boosts. All you ever hear about these amps are that they're dark and slow ("chewy"), and while it's definitely easy to dial them in for that sound, turns out it's also not too hard to dial them to be quite modern, tight, bright, and clear if you want as well.
I threw the Mark IV in there on a whim at the last minute, didn't spend much time tweaking it, but it's not too shabby either imo.
edit: and yes I know I didn't play the part quite right lol, but by the time I noticed, I had already done quite a few tracks and got lazy, didn't feel like redoing them.
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