Peters amps

[Holy-diver]

Now I am going to start selling shit off I suppose. First up is my mark. It is too love/hate for me to keep.

 

[GuitarGuyLP]

My Peters is an interesting amp. I don't think that I have played anything that gets quite as agressive. There is something to the upper mids that is just undeniably raw, and in your face. I might still keep my Peters, I have thought about selling it before, but I have never quite been able to part with it.

 

[rccCrawler]

Different (still good) perspective.

I got my Polaris about 6 weeks ago. LOVE IT!!!!!!

But I don't often post in these threads because most people on here are metal guys, I'm not, and the Polaris isn't really a metal amp, although I suppose it could be if you boosted it the right way. The polaris is mostly a classic rock/blues type amp. What I love most about mine is that it has a wide range of tones available, it is very responsive and dynamic (I alter tone exclusively with the volume, pups, and attack). It is marshall-esque, without being actual marshall - it has a tone all its own. I have the Halo channel setup more for cleanish, fenderish tones, but I'm struggling with that - not the tones, my playing!!!! What I like most about it, it's defining property I'd say, is its bark or bite. This seems to be true no matter which model you get, they all seem to really have this bark or bite to them. I flip over to the bridge humbucker, and play with heavy attack, and the thing just sounds REALLY PISSED OFF!!!!!! It's great. And you can dial it back just by lowering the volume, switching pups, and not hitting it as hard. Quite capable of settling right down to mellow, smooth, and soulful, but the anger is right there when you need/want it.

I also really like two other aspects to it, that others may or may not like. 1) It is not compressed. One thing I noticed about a lot of the high end amps that are now talked about (for instance, the bogner XTC) is that they all sound, to me at least, quite compressed. They also 'feel' compressed if that makes sense, when you play them. Do not want. The Polaris is not like that at all. The good part of that is the tone is very open, natural, woody, and NOT compressed. Me likey. Of course, the bad side of that is that your mistakes (and I make a lot of 'em) come right up front. 2) I had a marshall VM, and it was great, but I found that for soloing I could not get the gain up where I needed it with out it getting buzzy, fuzzy, grainy... what I really wanted was more gain with less grain. This amp delivered that in spades.

I am very happy with my purchase. I am still putting the pieces together, in terms of how best to use the halo channel, given my somewhat lacking skills and collection of axes, and also I am really beating my head against the wall trying to find a reverb I like. That's just the reverb I'm struggling with, the effects loop works great. Just can't seem to find one which is simple enough for me, without being too bright/snappy on the top end. I love the tone of the amp, and the controls offer a LOT of flexibility, so although it takes some time to learn how to twirl them (as with any amp), once you sorta get it down you can dial it in fairly straight forward.

More than anything, as people have pointed out over and over again, the amp comes on top of GREAT SERVICE. James is definitely very concerned that he ends up with a happy customer, and spends a great deal of time to arrive at that result. You as the customer benefit. The ONE caution I would give is that with anything custom where the artisan takes great pride in the work and the end result - IT IS NOT FAST. You need to be patient, and you will be rewarded. I knew this going in, so never really sweated the timelines, and it all came out good.

Anyway, I am very happy with my amp, and if anyone is out there that thinks Peters are only for metal, that isn't true, and check out the Polaris. I'd post clips if I didn't suck so much. I also want to give a shout out to Stu, who spent a lot of time answering my questions, and without whom I probably wouldn't be enjoying a Peters right now. Stu is another Polaris owner who went out of his way to answer a lot of my questions about the amp. Thanks stu!!!!

 

[petejt]

I've been having a hard time making clips I can be proud of enough to do the amps justice and want to post to really showcase the essence of these bad boys.

The Hydra has more saturation and delivers a nice and fat distortion and capable of getting more sag. The Chimera is really razor tight and is more unforgiving with a great tight, grinding style of voice that cuts much more than the Hydra. The hydra is massive, but the Chimera is a fucking razor blade. When I run these in Stereo, I can set them both up independently to get the same volume, then when run together, the Chimera really pulls into the forefront.

I love my Chimera for really singing leads and the Hydra has almost a chorus effect to the leads that makes it a little smoother.

You might say yourself that you suck at describing tones, but what you said there pricks my ears up!



And before anyone leaps on that sounding dirty, just say the word CHORUS to me and it makes me wet



When you can, could you please do a heavy rhythm demo of both amps playing at the same time, to get that natural 'chorus-like' effect? I'd love to hear it please.

 

[firejack]

I also really like two other aspects to it, that others may or may not like. 1) It is not compressed. One thing I noticed about a lot of the high end amps that are now talked about (for instance, the bogner XTC) is that they all sound, to me at least, quite compressed. They also 'feel' compressed if that makes sense, when you play them. Do not want. The Polaris is not like that at all. The good part of that is the tone is very open, natural, woody, and NOT compressed. Me likey. Of course, the bad side of that is that your mistakes (and I make a lot of 'em) come right up front. 2) I had a marshall VM, and it was great, but I found that for soloing I could not get the gain up where I needed it with out it getting buzzy, fuzzy, grainy... what I really wanted was more gain with less grain. This amp delivered that in spades.

Agreed!
I love that about my Gryphon. Gives me the best of both worlds.
If I want more compression, I step on my Comp or Boost pedal.

I am very happy with my purchase. I am still putting the pieces together, in terms of how best to use the halo channel, given my somewhat lacking skills and collection of axes, and also I am really beating my head against the wall trying to find a reverb I like. That's just the reverb I'm struggling with, the effects loop works great. Just can't seem to find one which is simple enough for me, without being too bright/snappy on the top end. I love the tone of the amp, and the controls offer a LOT of flexibility, so although it takes some time to learn how to twirl them (as with any amp), once you sorta get it down you can dial it in fairly straight forward.

Man, have you looked into the Neunaber Wet Reverb?
It's the best of the bunch that I tried with my Halo channel.
Another good contender for simplicity was the Hermida Reverb.
The Tech 21 Boost RVB was pretty good also, but has more knobs and requires more tweaking.

More than anything, as people have pointed out over and over again, the amp comes on top of GREAT SERVICE. James is definitely very concerned that he ends up with a happy customer, and spends a great deal of time to arrive at that result. You as the customer benefit. The ONE caution I would give is that with anything custom where the artisan takes great pride in the work and the end result - IT IS NOT FAST. You need to be patient, and you will be rewarded. I knew this going in, so never really sweated the timelines, and it all came out good.

James' customer service is amazing.
I purchased my Gryphon nearly three years ago, and he still puts up with my pestering.

 

[rccCrawler]

Re:

Man, have you looked into the Neunaber Wet Reverb?
It's the best of the bunch that I tried with my Halo channel.
Another good contender for simplicity was the Hermida Reverb.
The Tech 21 Boost RVB was pretty good also, but has more knobs and requires more tweaking.

I had not looked into all those, I will check them out, thanks for the heads up. I am somewhat constrained in that I probably cannot find any of this locally, so have to rely on Youtube and other clips to get a good feel for the tone of the effect. That's not so good. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I will check them out!

Do you mind if I ask what your settings are on the Halo channel? I saw your clean clips and like the tone, so I'm wondering how you go it set up. I have tried various things, right now I am in the fender scooped mid EQ settings, it's OK ...... but I'd like it to be better. Not sure where to set the gain, keeping humming and hawing between true, sparkle cleans and something that is breaking up...... any advice appreciated. For reference, I am using PRS C24s mostly.

 

[firejack]

I had not looked into all those, I will check them out, thanks for the heads up. I am somewhat constrained in that I probably cannot find any of this locally, so have to rely on Youtube and other clips to get a good feel for the tone of the effect. That's not so good. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I will check them out!

Do you mind if I ask what your settings are on the Halo channel? I saw your clean clips and like the tone, so I'm wondering how you go it set up. I have tried various things, right now I am in the fender scooped mid EQ settings, it's OK ...... but I'd like it to be better. Not sure where to set the gain, keeping humming and hawing between true, sparkle cleans and something that is breaking up...... any advice appreciated. For reference, I am using PRS C24s mostly.

Hey soz mate, missed this post.
I'll respond later.
Just have to step out for a few hours.

 

[rccCrawler]

no problem.

I'm on the WET reverb waiting list. Spring reverb without the top end crackle, and just the right amount of adjustment available. Hopefully the wait list is not too long, he said 2 weeks.

 

[firejack]

no problem.

I'm on the WET reverb waiting list. Spring reverb without the top end crackle, and just the right amount of adjustment available. Hopefully the wait list is not too long, he said 2 weeks.

You lucky bugger. I had to wait two months for mine.
And yeah that's pretty much the exact thing I didn't like about most reverb pedals I tried; that harsh and pingy metallic brightness in the top end.
The Wet Reverb can do the spring reverb type thing, or it can be smooth as silk.
To my ear it seems to brighten up the more you crank the controls past 12 o'clock.
But up to around 12 o'clock it stays dark and smooth.
Haven't had much time to really explore settings but from what little time I've spent messing with it, I found it to be the best of my favorite 3 and have placed it on my board permanently.
The Hermida is a close second, but it lacks the precise control over the reverb tail that the Wet Reverb's depth knob provides.

Do you mind if I ask what your settings are on the Halo channel? I saw your clean clips and like the tone, so I'm wondering how you go it set up. I have tried various things, right now I am in the fender scooped mid EQ settings, it's OK ...... but I'd like it to be better. Not sure where to set the gain, keeping humming and hawing between true, sparkle cleans and something that is breaking up...... any advice appreciated. For reference, I am using PRS C24s mostly.

I'm at work now, but when I get home I'll post up some pics of my settings for those clean tones (I happen to have pics of the amp's settings for when I recorded that song).

I set my Halo channel differently these days though.
I run the gain around halfway, use the master for volume and engage the Halo's bright switch.
The bright switch interacts with the Halo's gain control.
The lower the gain is set, the more of an effect the bright switch has on the clean tone.
For my setup, the bright switch is just too harsh until I get the gain up to around noon.
But without the bright switch with my setup, the cleans are too flat sounding.
If I want more hair I engage the Halo's boost switch.

My tone controls are all set just above 12 o'clock.
On my Peters amp, I have the shared EQ so I use a pedal to get different clean tones ( I like my high-gain tones with a healthy dose of mids).
So if I want the Fendery type tones, I step on a HBE Detox EQ with a mid scoop setting.

Hope this helps.

 

[rccCrawler]

It does help. I think my 'edge' switch is the same as your bright switch. I will try it and see. It sorta comfirms my overall feeling that I am running too much gain on that channel, I am going to back it off to about noon, and try the edge switch settings.

And I took the same feeling away from the videos of the wet reverb - seemed to stay nice and smooth as long as the 'mix' was less than noon. I liked it when he had it mix around 9 or 10 o'clock, depth (?) at around noon.

Thanks alot of the advice!

 

[firejack]

No worries mate.
Let me know how you go with it.

And btw... I forgot to grab those pics off my PC while I was at home earlier today, but I found a couple in my photo-sharing accounts.
Try them and see what you think.

This was for the brighter sparkly clean tones in the clips you heard (Ghost In The Well).
To add body and warmth for the other clean tones in the song I increased the Depth and lowered the Damping to taste:



This was for a much darker clean tone on a different recording: