Boudoir Guitar
Rock Star
- Messages
- 4,438
I got this yesterday. First 15 minutes with it yesterday were...very disappointing. Spent an hour with it today and improved, but still hovering in the land of regret.
The good: With the reverb set super splashy/intense, it's got some really good tones. The reverb doesn't sound as "small" as the Carl Martin small-box spring reverb I've played before. It doesn't sound "big", but doesn't sound small either, so not a bad place to be for the size of the box running off 9V, etc. The tremolo sounds good. Oddly, I prefer the black to brown setting -- black is not super choppy...more like a clipped sine wave modulator than a square wave if that makes sense. There's nothing magic going on with the tremolo in either setting, just sounds like a straight LFO volume modulation. But it sounds good.
The weird: Set anything less than full on splash, the reverb sounds like there's a ducking phenomenon going on. You can get an okay moderate reverb sound, but it only sounds good if you're banging away on it at full throttle attack. I tried all sorts of variations on using Dwell and Mix on both II and III settings and I couldn't get it to go away. It wasn't like a nice dynamic ramp from "that's a nice reverb and get's splashy if you really hit it hard" it was a really hard-kneed change ... like I said, almost like there was a gate set to duck it or something.
The annoying: I like that its got a volume knob, but I wish unity was a detent. It's pretty annoying to have to make sure you are level matched when you want to be level matched, and not great for the paranoid among us.
The bad: dry signal gets brighter when it's turned on. Given how bright and splashy the reverb winds up being in its usable zone, I'd actually probably prefer my base tone to get a little darker, if anything, when engaged.
Given that its only real usable setting for me is squarely in the "effect" zone, not an "always on" thing the last bit is PROBABLY the nail in the "move along now" coffin for this guy. I will keep it around long enough to do some solid patch creation in the Fractal using this to A/B against for the really splashy stuff. The White Whale does the super splashy stuff better than the Fractal as I have it dialed currently, but for anything short of that, I thought the Fractal sounded "real" and was WAY more usable. Also, the spring reverb in the Volante is similarly "real" sounding at less than super splashy settings and way more useable -- I've A/Bed the Volante quite a bit against the reverb in a Headstrong Lil' King amp. They don't sound the same, but the Voalnte doesn't sound any less "real" at low-to-moderate settings.
The good: With the reverb set super splashy/intense, it's got some really good tones. The reverb doesn't sound as "small" as the Carl Martin small-box spring reverb I've played before. It doesn't sound "big", but doesn't sound small either, so not a bad place to be for the size of the box running off 9V, etc. The tremolo sounds good. Oddly, I prefer the black to brown setting -- black is not super choppy...more like a clipped sine wave modulator than a square wave if that makes sense. There's nothing magic going on with the tremolo in either setting, just sounds like a straight LFO volume modulation. But it sounds good.
The weird: Set anything less than full on splash, the reverb sounds like there's a ducking phenomenon going on. You can get an okay moderate reverb sound, but it only sounds good if you're banging away on it at full throttle attack. I tried all sorts of variations on using Dwell and Mix on both II and III settings and I couldn't get it to go away. It wasn't like a nice dynamic ramp from "that's a nice reverb and get's splashy if you really hit it hard" it was a really hard-kneed change ... like I said, almost like there was a gate set to duck it or something.
The annoying: I like that its got a volume knob, but I wish unity was a detent. It's pretty annoying to have to make sure you are level matched when you want to be level matched, and not great for the paranoid among us.
The bad: dry signal gets brighter when it's turned on. Given how bright and splashy the reverb winds up being in its usable zone, I'd actually probably prefer my base tone to get a little darker, if anything, when engaged.
Given that its only real usable setting for me is squarely in the "effect" zone, not an "always on" thing the last bit is PROBABLY the nail in the "move along now" coffin for this guy. I will keep it around long enough to do some solid patch creation in the Fractal using this to A/B against for the really splashy stuff. The White Whale does the super splashy stuff better than the Fractal as I have it dialed currently, but for anything short of that, I thought the Fractal sounded "real" and was WAY more usable. Also, the spring reverb in the Volante is similarly "real" sounding at less than super splashy settings and way more useable -- I've A/Bed the Volante quite a bit against the reverb in a Headstrong Lil' King amp. They don't sound the same, but the Voalnte doesn't sound any less "real" at low-to-moderate settings.
