Review: VTarAmps Proto Four (with video sample and download link)

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a very good, free amp simulator by VTarAmps: P.R.O.T.O. Four!

This amp sim is a new version of  MegaFuzzieMKIV by Vadim Taranov, a virtual version of the overdrive channel of a Mesa Boogie Mark IV and it adds many new functions to the original one.

The interface looks like the one of a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, but the tone is the one of a Mark IV, and the amp offers, besides the usual gain knob, also two separate controls to dial the gain for the low and the high frequencies, plus the two sections (preamp and power amp) are bypassable individually.

On the top of the amp there is also the fuzziness control, which lets you add fuzz to the tone and to control the fuzz character, from dark to bright; there is also a fizz control, which sets the "acidness" of the amp.
All these functions give the Proto an impressive versatility: the amp allows you to achieve a very wide range of tones, from crunch to any type of fuzz, up to the extreme metal without problems, also because an eq section with a very wide excursion: with the mid knob it's possible to obtain a very scooped sound already at 11'. 

The amp sim sounds very well, as you can hear from the sample: the interface is cool and pretty intuitive, and it's easy to achieve a good tone: the only thing I can do is to suggest you to download it and try it for yourself!

To be noted also that I see in the interface (and the manual) also the Ugritone logo, which is the evolution of a software house we used to know (and review) under the name "It Might Get Loud": I suspect something is cooking, can't wait to see how this collaboration will pan out!

Thumbs up!

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Impose yourself a deadline when writing a song

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today I would like to explore a topic that has been on my mind since long time, which concerns how long to be working on a song.
I have been mumbling about this question because the first conclusion could be "as long as necessary: sometimes a piece of art can take years to complete", but then I've seen situations like a friend of mine sending me the demo of a great song, then, 2 months after another demo with same the song radically changed, and then again after 2 months and so on... Eventually 2 years later the band broke up, they never finished that song and the latest iteration was way worse than the original one.
They had just come to hate the song and lost completely any objectivity about it.

The conclusion is that yes, it's important to refine all the details of the song like it's a painting, as much as needed (yes, even if you do the rawest punk rock), but it's equally important that the first intuition, the first burst of creativity when we write a song usually is the least mediated by our reason, and usually it's the best part, so it's probably a good idea of writing down and preserving these more "inspired" parts and to limit the "craftmasnhip" side as little as possible, only to fill the gaps between the quick ideas, otherwise we will come up with an overcooked piece of music that taste like nothing.

The aim should be to get to know the right time to "let a song go", meaning to consider it finished and publish it, so we can focus on other songs, and this is sometimes a hard task for a perfectionist, therefore some songwriter came up with the idea of setting yourself a deadline: "I'm going to work on this song for (for example) 4 sessions, and one month from now I will consider it finished".

This can be a good exercise: one can actually work on the song for example on the weekends for one month, and keep the other days of the week for listening to it with fresh ears, in order to understand what is there to correct, or whether the song is bad and needs to be scrapped, and then at the end of the month the song should have received enough "debug" to take a final form.
If the final form is still not 100% satisfying, it's time to demolish the song, salvage the usable riffs and put them in the warehouse in case we need to complete another song.
For someone the 1 month deadline can be even too long, so they can prefer a 15 days deadline, or a 7 days one, it all really depends on you and your creative output.

One final note: we have talked about deadlines for individual songs but this doesn't mean that we can be working on 2, 5, 10 songs at the same time, each one with its own specific deadlines!

Did you ever try this technique? Let us know in the comments below!

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Review: Seymour Duncan P90 Stack

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a legendary pickup, the Seymour Duncan P90 Stack!

Let's start off with some history: P90s were pickups created originally by Gibson for their guitars in the second half of the '40s, and they are single coil pickups built in a slightly different way from the Fender single coil ones;
the P90 has the wires wider and shorter than the typical Fender pickups, and this made the sound warmer and less bright, a bit closer to the tone that later Gibson developed into the humbucking pickups.

The main difference with the humbuckers was, in facts, the hum, a background noise typical of single coil pickups that also the P90 had, until many aftermarket producers (and Gibson itself) started producing noise canceling versions of this pickup, which retain the tonal characteristics of the original one but without the noise.

The one we are reviewing today is the Seymour Duncan P90 Stack, but the brand actually produces a wide range of P90 pickups, some more vintage sounding, some more hot, and out of them all, this is the one that is the closest to the original Gibson S90 tone.

Look-wise this pickup is quite similar to the original one: a soapbar that fits a humbucking slot, but with only one line of poles, and sound wise it's a very good sounding pickup, the type of pickup that you could hear at home in any classic rock, punk, blues, jazz, alternative or country record, and it's been used by countless musicians, from Green Day to John Lennon, from The Who to Muse, from Black Sabbath to Bon Jovi.

This Seymour Duncan version of the P90 sounds every bit as good as the original Gibson one: tone-wise it's the perfect halfway between a single coil and a humbucker, giving clarity, note separation and definition when needed, but also being warm and extremely pleasant with distortions too, because it smoothes the edges of the distortions making the tone always pleasant, and because it doesn't have the typical razorblade tone of the distorted single coils.
To be noted that also some metal musician likes to use it, especially in the neck position, because it allows to obtain beautiful, saturated clean tones which can sometimes be too muddy with a neck humbucker.

All I can say is that this is a great rock pickup, and one of the best to be put in the neck position in general. Thumbs up!

Specs taken from the website:

- DCR: Bridge 31.6k

- Magnet: Alnico 5

- Cable: 4c Shielded

- Type: Passive

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What is a sustainer? (with free VST plugins)

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a type of guitar effect which is often overlooked, but that in some genre can make the difference: the Sustainer!

Let's start with the basics: the sustain is one of the four parts of a sound (click here for a dedicated article), meaning for example with the guitar, how long it passes between when you pluck a string and when the volume goes back to zero.

If we're playing the clean channel of an amp, the cleaner it is the shorter in theory the sustain is, while at the opposite, adding gain adds also compression, which keeps audible also the quieter parts for longer, with the result that the tone has more sustain.

Sustain can be added either by adding gain, distortion, tube saturation or directly by using a compressor, and the original, beloved sustain was actually a product of the signal overdriving the guitar amp tubes, which were not (voluntarily) distorting the tone, but producing a saturated clean channel which provided sustain, and made playing solos more easy.

By adding stages of gain and distortions, reverbs and delays, the guitarits have found many ways to add sustain, but all those methods change dramatically the tone, and sometimes this is not what the guitarist needs:

Sometimes what a guitarist need is a tone that is clean or just slightly distorted, but with an incredibly long sustain, so that all the nuances of the solo are audible and the beauty of the guitar tone can arrive to the listener without being completely disfigured by the other effects, as you can hear for example in the solos by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. 

This is where compressors comes into play: a compressor, if set in a way in which it boost the lower part of the signal without affecting too much the rest of the tone, can offer an alternative to the high volume tube compression of a saturated amp, and this has been the success of stompboxes such as the Boss Compressor/Sustainer.

Today in studio there is not even anymore the need of using a hardware sustainer, it is sufficient to have a VST one, and usually the guitar amp suites have some sort of compressor/sustainer bundled, but if you don't happen to have one, you can try one of these 2:

7amp Peak Sustainer - a free sustainer plugin

Hornet HCS1 (demo) - a paid compressor/sustainer

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Review: Seymour Duncan '59 neck

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a legendary humbucking pickup (click here for an article dedicated to humbuckers), which ended up also in our top 10 pickups list: the Seymour Duncan '59!

The '59 is a "p.a.f." pickup, which means "patent applied for", and indicates pickups that try to recreate the tone of those mounted on '50s and '60s Gibson guitars, with medium output but with a good, musical mid range, and with a present but not "scratchy" high end.
This style of pickup is still today extremely popular, and it inspired a wide production of clones from many manufacturers, to the point of almost becoming a standard.

The neck version of the '59 is probably the most popular Seymour Duncan neck pickup, and for good reasons: it's warm and full sounding thanks to its alnico 5 magnet, but it has a precise attack and the mediums are not too pronounced, resulting in a perfect balance both for clean parts (btw there is also a coil split version) and for high gain parts, since it sounds good also for high gain solos.

For my genre (I play mostly metal) a pickup like a p.a.f. would be too weak for the bridge position, I need higher output ones especially for a matter of low-end tightness and definition, but in the neck position a pickup like this is great, because it captures all the nuances and it's fantastic also when lowering the volume knob.

In conclusion this is the pickup that I usually suggest when someone asks me which passive humbucker to put in the neck position, since it sounds very balanced and pleasant for basically any genre, from jazz to metal, and you should check it out too, if you have the chance.

Thumbs up!

Specs taken from the website:

- DCR: Neck 7.60k

- Magnet: Alnico 5

- Cable: 1c Braided Shield, 4c Shielded

- Type: Passive

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Clean guitar tone from a distorted one (and why you should use it)

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we dive back into the guitar world talking about tone, and specifically about a trick that has been kept secret for quite some time: the perks of getting a good clean tone by rolling off the input level that enters a distorted channel.

Usually when dialing in a clean tone we start from the clean channel of an amp, whether it is a real one or a plugin, and we work our way around from there, but there is an alternative way that in some case can sound even better: in some amp, in facts, the clean channel can sound a bit too weak, too cristalline, too "cold", while sometimes the type of clean we are looking for is richer in harmonics, at the limit of the breakup (the point in which it starts saturating and entering almost in the overdrive territory); we can be looking for a tone that is more full in the lower-mid range, and not always this is obtainable from the clean channel.

So what do we need to do? Do we lower the volume?

No. That one can stay fairly high, for example at noon: what we need to do is to lower the input level (if we're using a plugin) or lower the guitar volume by moving the volume knob in the guitar, and this way the signal coming into the amplifier will be weaker (but make sure to turn off any noise gate, or else it will fall below threshold and be cut).

Once the guitar signal will be lowered, the amp will not have anymore enough signal to produce a distorted output, and will give you a very warm tone, much fuller and warmer, and almost "out of focus" compared to the "zing" of the clean channel, in which you can really hear the brightness of the string. 
Now it's time to adjust the master volume in order to compensate for the lower input volume, and this (especially if we're talking about tube amps) will add an additional layer of saturation and harmonic richness, so dose it carefully.

Finally, note that this method of obtaining a low gain/clean tone will need eq adjustments in order to restore some brightness, and maybe to tame some low mids, which will become quite prominent.  

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Review: POD 2.0

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to make a long awaited legacy review from one of the most important pieces of guitar hardware of the latest 20 years: the Line 6 Pod 2.0!

This revolutionary piece of gear (that we have described along with its other iterations in our article "The Battle of PODs") came out in the year 2000, and (along with the first model, which came out 2 years before) contributed greatly in making digital amp modeling a viable option not only for beginner guitarists but also for professional ones.
How did they do? Well I guess the technology was starting to be mature enough to allow the guitar player to obtain sounds that were a bit richer in harmonics and fuller in terms of frequencies, compared to the '90s digital processors, which often sounded like fingernails on a whiteboard and were not a viable option if you wanted tone to do anything more than doodling in your bedroom.

This 2.0 version has been the one that exploded, in terms of public recognition, and became very popular both in studio and live environment, because it was user friendly and yet packed several interesting features, such as 32 amp models which could be used to drive a real power amp or mixed and matched with the integrated cabinet models, 16 effects, several inputs and outputs, and 36 presets.

The amp models were covering the whole guitar spectrum, from the classic Fender cleans to a high gain Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier (plus there was also some custom Line6 model such as the "Line6 Insane"), the cabinet simulations were available in several brands and sizes (for example 1x12, 4x12, 4x10 etc...) and the effects were the most common ones and there were also several effect combinations.

How does it sound? As I have said, compared to the previous digital amp sims such as the '90s Zoom ones there is a huge leap forward: for once the high gain tones are usable, and even if the distortions are still quite scratchy, there is already a decent amount of musical mids, and also the effects are more than usable.
Probably the biggest bottleneck today is represented by the cab simulators, which today sound quite dated, but already someone on Youtube has shown that by using this unit together with modern impulse responses you can still obtain sounds which are competitive today, and this tells us a lot: the cab simulation is still today probably the most important part in a digital guitar rig.

Does it deserve still today to be bought?
Actually the technology of POD has been used, with some update, for basically 20 years, for example in the Spider Combo lineup, or in the Pocket POD and so on, so the hardware has proven to be good and reliable, but today the latest iteration of the POD is the POD GO, which features a completely different hardware and software: it is based on the one of the Line6 Helix, which is much more advanced.
If you are considering of buying anything from the Line6 family, probably the POD GO today is the bang for the buck to check out!

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- Amp Models: 32, customizable

- Digital Effects: 16

- Factory/User Presets: 36

- Headphone and Direct Out: 1/4 in. TRS

- Mono/Stereo: Stereo

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