Rackman
Well-known member
So I've played a couple gigs, a jam, and a few rehearsals with it at this point. Plus of course recorded for the neo-soul competition. It's still new-ish, but I've used it enough to have an opinion.
First off a couple global things. Yes, it's damn expensive - sucks, but there it is. Like all Ecstasy models, it's dark sounding. The presence seems happiest about 3:00 although the presence vs. highs tradeoff is still something I'm experimenting with. The highs pots are log pots it seems like, so most of the response is between about 2:00 and max, which is where they live. It looks odd, but it's the way the amp works.
The loop is good. Transparent. Hot, with no level controls. I don't think you want to be running some BOSS pedal. Pro rack gear is fine. I'm running an Eclipse in the loop with a 300ms digital delay set at 14% wet and its analog block mapped for MIDI volume control. Works good, no integration issues.
MIDI is the biggest quality of life improvement on this amp. Awesome to have and has been foolproof with a small RJM comtroller.
The front panel master is post-loop. Nice. Sounds good.
The amp overall is tweaky - lots of switches and knobs provide both pre- and post-EQ. I don't think it's hard to dial, but there is some dialing to be done and the controls are pretty interactive.
The channel number scheme is, sadly, retarded. In order of gain from lowest to highest the channels are:
1, 0, 2, 3
In order on the face of the amp they are:
1, 0, 3, 2
And on the footswitch they are:
1, ZERO (spelled out), 2, 3
WFT? No big deal, and the engineer in me likes the idea of zero indexed channels, but they should be in gain order. This is just short bus material. Of course with the MIDI controller I'm looking at preset #s and don't have to worry about it.
Now the channels:
Channel Green/1 (Clean) - Sounds good. Since purple/zero channel is harder to dial and they share an EQ, you're going to end up dialing that and taking what you get on green. Which is fine - it sounds good when purple sounds good. It has two modes - vaguely fendery or sort of a "boutique" more mid heavy clean. It seems to be pickup dependent which is better but it's pretty obvious for any given pickup. I set it for clean cleans, but there is a gain pot if you want some breakup. You can do jazz neck humbucker cleans here fine. You can do funk.
Channel Purple/0/ZERO (Blues Breakup) : I set this for SRV sounds which is on the low end of the gain range. It works good. This is the new innovation relative to the 101B/Aniversary/Pandora and I'm here for it. With a bridge single coil/tap/parallel mode it also gives a stones type vibe. This is the hardest channel to dial but I have managed to get what I want with a wide variety of pickups. I use it almost entirely with single coils/split/parallel but it does do OK with buckers for sort of an old Gibson in the delta sounding thing.
Channel Blue/2 (Mid-gain Rock) : This channel is configurable - you can make it a blue, a red, or plexi mode. I use it in blue. It does the mid-gain master volume Marshall type thing, but with typical Bogner mids. It's comfortable for rhythm or lead with a wide range of pickups without setup changes. Cover band rock songs you're going to live here a lot. The leads are really nice, not totally over the top. It works best to dial the EQ for channel 3 and take what you get on channel 2. That hasn't been a problem - they're related enough that if red sounds good blue does too. The opposite is not necessarily true.
Channel Red/3 (High-gain Rock) : This also has options - blue (same as above), red, or 80s. Red and 80s sound similar to my ears, but Red has more gain and more bass. Which you're going to use depends on the guitar. You can get very similar sounds at the high end of the gain pot in 80s or 2:00 on Red. Again, Bogner style mids. Red will do modern high gain, maybe not the most brutal but I'm the wrong person to ask about that. Either 80s or Red depending on the pickup will do a really nice moded Marhsall type high gain. Garry Moore, Van Halen, Guns, whatever. Generally it's a little thicker sounding than those reference tones. Lots of nice texture with the presence and treble high.
Overall, I'd say this is the nicest sounding rock amp I own. I'm gigging it over my JP2C, my X88IR/SM100R rack, and my synergy rack although I like all of those as well. It sits in a mix nicely. It seems to record easily at least room miced. I haven't gotten to close-micing experiments yet but I don't expect trouble.
Last edited:
