I'm putting this here because the Amp X is not a digital modeler, it's an amp with built in fx. Even if there's a lot of overlap with modelers in its feature set.
You can read about the intended features and functionality from
the product website.
This latest video shows some of how it functions. Guitar volume on the video is often low so turn up to hear the playing.
TL;DW main news points:
- Release date still unknown, but seems they might be aiming for next NAMM for some sort of limited US release.
- Hardware seems mostly complete and basically it all comes down to software.
- There won't be a desktop editor at launch. There may be a web-based editor later. Which is IMO fine considering web technologies can do a helluva lot these days and are a pretty good fit for custom UIs with virtual knobs and whatnot.
- BluGuitar will launch a website where you would be able to download extra models, aka BlugPrints, to the Amp X. No info on what will be offered, free or paid etc. They showed the website but it looks pretty work in progress, with no good categorization etc and probably atm only testing that downloading and uploading data to the Amp X works as it should.
- BluGuitar seems to aim for this to be a pretty long term product, throwing in the air that it could be something they work on improving for the next 10 years or something.
My thoughts:
One thing I'm not sold on is using traditional analog knobs for the X controls that control the 4 params with small screens. They have a "catch up" feature to show you where to point the knob to make it match the value saved into a preset, but infinite rotaries would have greatly simplified this. The main controls feature a similar catchup feature but shown on the bigger screen.
Selecting what to edit is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand you can press dedicated buttons for assigned effects to get to them quick, but on the flip side there's definitely some scrolling involved to select the effect type and then which effect to use.
Overall it ends up in a similar issues most things have where seeing stored values at once isn't happening in an easy way and either requires menuing or some knob twisting. I don't have too much issue with this even on my large pedalboard so it will work ok overall.
To me seems BluGuitar guys, especially Julian who works on the software, are a bit overwhelmed with the amount of work. Both he and Thomas looked kinda tired there so they must've been really working hard over these last few months. I hope they can hire some additional software devs who could help. It seems their software is still quite half-baked and has plenty of bugs, as all pre-release software does.
When this releases, my expectation is that there will be people who will complain that it doesn't have their specific favorite flavor of amp or cab or effects there, or that some modeler has more of them and so on. Which of course ignores that e.g Line6 or Fractal have been developing their systems for a long time now. But at least BluGuitar's system does allow for eventually adding more - both analog and digital effects.
I'm guessing that the device's onboard memory is not designed to hold hundreds of different models at once and the intention is instead to kind of pick your favorites and install them on it as a package of Blugprints. Plus what comes as stock of course. I think that would work well for them because we all have things that we love and others we don't care about so we could leave some of those out and keep all those lists much cleaner.
I'm on their waiting list but it really depends on what my situation looks like when this comes available to buy. I'm of course interested in giving it a try because I feel the Amp 1 Mercury Edition I have is just a really good amp, even if it has its limitations. But on the flipside I've already got fx I like and the Amp 1 does largely enough for me so I don't feel like I necessarily need all the extra stuff the Amp X will offer.
