K
KentC
Active member
So I went I went into a local shop the other day to get some strings and take a quick peek around and they just happened to have a new Thrasher and RD1H sitting on top of a couple EVH cabs so I figured why not.
I'll start off by saying here at the beginning that I like the RD1 better than the thrasher. I just felt that it had "that" thing that I was looking for. Maybe it was the simplicity of it all? One thing I can say about it is that I was a little skeptical about the amp only having a tone knob. It does have the TSS switch but still, only one knob for tone shaping had me a little worried. But, I will say that the entire time I played the amp, I never found myself wishing that I had a Bass, Treble, and Mid knob to mess with. I found that the TSS switch really sets the EQ curve right in a sweet spot for all types of sounds. All the way from a mid range heavy Marshall type sound, all the way to a more modern slightly dipped sound. I wouldn’t say that the mids were "scooped" but dipped quite nicely. The gain knob has a very nice sweep to it and never got mushy on me. Even with the gain all the way up it still stayed nice and tight and never felt like it was too much. Awesome little amp! If I wanted more gain I would just throw a boost in front and be done with it. Want more EQ shaping options? Just throw an EQ pedal in the loop and have at it. With an EQ pedal, the tone knob and the TSS switch, there shouldn’t be any problems getting whatever type of sound you would want. But I was just so thrilled that I was getting the sounds I like without needing any of that extra stuff. Just the amp itself was good enough for me. Im so amazed at these little amps. It’s just a one channel amp that seems to be designed for metal so I only tried for 30 seconds to get a good clean sound and then realized it just wasn’t worth trying since you wouldn’t be able to change to a clean sound on the fly anyway.
But for the money, I don’t know why these amps have not taken over the world as far as at home practicing and recording goes. I can only imagine that its bigger brothers like the RD20 and RD45 sound just as good or even better.
The Thrasher on the other hand did sound nice don’t get me wrong, but I found I was never able to get the amp quite to where I wanted it. I'd like to have more time with one but for the time I had I just couldn't seem to get the amp quite to where I wanted it. Having all the tone shaping options that the amp has, including the TSS switch sure does give a nice selection of options to taylor the sound. I was just missing something to my ears. One thing that I have read online about was about the amp not having that much gain on tap. Which from what I can hear, it doesn't. I really dont like using a ton of gain on my sound either. To give a reference point, an example of how much gain I prefer would be the 5150/6505 on the "clean" channel with the crunch and bright buttons in and the gain about 3 o'clock. Or the lead channel with the gain around half way. When you look at the amp, you basically have four different knobs (including the boost knob) that affect the gain so I would think that it would be no trouble getting the amp to sound like I wanted it. Heck, I even thought I would have to dial it back a bit like I would on a Peavey. But I found that wasn’t the case at all. While the idea of having the LF gain and HF gain is a great, I did not care for the way that can actually take gain away if you prefer to keep the knobs in some other position other than full bore. The LF gain knob really worked to help fatten up the guitar sound. From watching the videos that I have seen online, I would have thought that I would have barely kept that knob above 9’oclock to help keep it as tight as possible. But as will almost all amps, you can’t go off what you see online with someone else playing. I personally found that I liked the LF gain around 2’oclock which is much higher than I thought I would have liked it. Who knew… Plus there is the fact that the lower I kept the knob, it took gain away from the amp. The HF gain knob was touchier than the LF knob, at least to my ears anyway. The higher you raise this setting, the gain gets tighter as expected, but this knob also seems to make the gain thin out a little. The range of this knob is very wide and used the entire sweep of the pot nicely so there is plenty of room to play with. To get the amp to sound the tightest, I turned the HF knob up all the way. So naturally this gave the amp an incredible bite and attack, but it did thin out the gain a bit. Too much for my liking. The biggest difference in the HF knob seemed to be between 5 o’clock and 6 o’clock. Basically between 9 out of 10 and full on. Being at 9 and 9.5 and then going full on made the gain thin out pretty badly where I ended up backing it off quite a bit so that last little bit does make a big difference. The gain knob itself was pretty much around 3 o’clock the whole time just to get the gain up where I was trying to get it. I did play with it maxed out for a while, but I felt that it was thinning out the gain a little when maxed out so I would back it off a some. And I felt that the boost knob was pretty much useless on this thing. It barley made a difference and the only difference I did hear was adding a slight amount of saturation, and that was with it turned all the way up. I left the boost off entirely and felt the amp sounded much nicer without it.
So this probably sounds like a lot of hate on the Thrasher, but I wouldn’t call it hate, just an observation based off what I personally like. I’m sure there will be some guy to come in and plug into it and absolutely fall in love with it weather it be because they really love the sound, or because of the Kool-aid they drank from reading praises of this amp online, like myself. Wanted to love it going into it because let’s face it, it IS an absolutely killer amp and design, it’s just not for me though. I think that if the amp had more gain on tap, and made it where the HF and LF gain knobs would affect the low and high frequencies of the EQ rather than the gain itself then I might have liked it more. I will say that the amp works perfectly for doing what it was designed to do. I just wish it did more of it
Oh, but I will say that the clean on the amp was SUPER! Stunning how good it sounded actually considering it’s a high gain amp. I played both amps through the same EVH 4x12 cab and at pretty good volume levels. I think that more volume would have helped the Thrasher a little more but probably not enough to make ne fall in love with the amp. So there it is, my little experience with these amps. I enjoyed them both and will defiantly be picking up an RD5 or maybe an RD20 in the future.
I'll start off by saying here at the beginning that I like the RD1 better than the thrasher. I just felt that it had "that" thing that I was looking for. Maybe it was the simplicity of it all? One thing I can say about it is that I was a little skeptical about the amp only having a tone knob. It does have the TSS switch but still, only one knob for tone shaping had me a little worried. But, I will say that the entire time I played the amp, I never found myself wishing that I had a Bass, Treble, and Mid knob to mess with. I found that the TSS switch really sets the EQ curve right in a sweet spot for all types of sounds. All the way from a mid range heavy Marshall type sound, all the way to a more modern slightly dipped sound. I wouldn’t say that the mids were "scooped" but dipped quite nicely. The gain knob has a very nice sweep to it and never got mushy on me. Even with the gain all the way up it still stayed nice and tight and never felt like it was too much. Awesome little amp! If I wanted more gain I would just throw a boost in front and be done with it. Want more EQ shaping options? Just throw an EQ pedal in the loop and have at it. With an EQ pedal, the tone knob and the TSS switch, there shouldn’t be any problems getting whatever type of sound you would want. But I was just so thrilled that I was getting the sounds I like without needing any of that extra stuff. Just the amp itself was good enough for me. Im so amazed at these little amps. It’s just a one channel amp that seems to be designed for metal so I only tried for 30 seconds to get a good clean sound and then realized it just wasn’t worth trying since you wouldn’t be able to change to a clean sound on the fly anyway.
But for the money, I don’t know why these amps have not taken over the world as far as at home practicing and recording goes. I can only imagine that its bigger brothers like the RD20 and RD45 sound just as good or even better.The Thrasher on the other hand did sound nice don’t get me wrong, but I found I was never able to get the amp quite to where I wanted it. I'd like to have more time with one but for the time I had I just couldn't seem to get the amp quite to where I wanted it. Having all the tone shaping options that the amp has, including the TSS switch sure does give a nice selection of options to taylor the sound. I was just missing something to my ears. One thing that I have read online about was about the amp not having that much gain on tap. Which from what I can hear, it doesn't. I really dont like using a ton of gain on my sound either. To give a reference point, an example of how much gain I prefer would be the 5150/6505 on the "clean" channel with the crunch and bright buttons in and the gain about 3 o'clock. Or the lead channel with the gain around half way. When you look at the amp, you basically have four different knobs (including the boost knob) that affect the gain so I would think that it would be no trouble getting the amp to sound like I wanted it. Heck, I even thought I would have to dial it back a bit like I would on a Peavey. But I found that wasn’t the case at all. While the idea of having the LF gain and HF gain is a great, I did not care for the way that can actually take gain away if you prefer to keep the knobs in some other position other than full bore. The LF gain knob really worked to help fatten up the guitar sound. From watching the videos that I have seen online, I would have thought that I would have barely kept that knob above 9’oclock to help keep it as tight as possible. But as will almost all amps, you can’t go off what you see online with someone else playing. I personally found that I liked the LF gain around 2’oclock which is much higher than I thought I would have liked it. Who knew… Plus there is the fact that the lower I kept the knob, it took gain away from the amp. The HF gain knob was touchier than the LF knob, at least to my ears anyway. The higher you raise this setting, the gain gets tighter as expected, but this knob also seems to make the gain thin out a little. The range of this knob is very wide and used the entire sweep of the pot nicely so there is plenty of room to play with. To get the amp to sound the tightest, I turned the HF knob up all the way. So naturally this gave the amp an incredible bite and attack, but it did thin out the gain a bit. Too much for my liking. The biggest difference in the HF knob seemed to be between 5 o’clock and 6 o’clock. Basically between 9 out of 10 and full on. Being at 9 and 9.5 and then going full on made the gain thin out pretty badly where I ended up backing it off quite a bit so that last little bit does make a big difference. The gain knob itself was pretty much around 3 o’clock the whole time just to get the gain up where I was trying to get it. I did play with it maxed out for a while, but I felt that it was thinning out the gain a little when maxed out so I would back it off a some. And I felt that the boost knob was pretty much useless on this thing. It barley made a difference and the only difference I did hear was adding a slight amount of saturation, and that was with it turned all the way up. I left the boost off entirely and felt the amp sounded much nicer without it.
So this probably sounds like a lot of hate on the Thrasher, but I wouldn’t call it hate, just an observation based off what I personally like. I’m sure there will be some guy to come in and plug into it and absolutely fall in love with it weather it be because they really love the sound, or because of the Kool-aid they drank from reading praises of this amp online, like myself. Wanted to love it going into it because let’s face it, it IS an absolutely killer amp and design, it’s just not for me though. I think that if the amp had more gain on tap, and made it where the HF and LF gain knobs would affect the low and high frequencies of the EQ rather than the gain itself then I might have liked it more. I will say that the amp works perfectly for doing what it was designed to do. I just wish it did more of it
Oh, but I will say that the clean on the amp was SUPER! Stunning how good it sounded actually considering it’s a high gain amp. I played both amps through the same EVH 4x12 cab and at pretty good volume levels. I think that more volume would have helped the Thrasher a little more but probably not enough to make ne fall in love with the amp. So there it is, my little experience with these amps. I enjoyed them both and will defiantly be picking up an RD5 or maybe an RD20 in the future.
