Hey
@politoleo could we get a bit of a comparison between Fryette Power Station vs IR-Load?
So the main difference on paper is that the Fryette is a mono tube poweramp and the IR-Load is solid-state and stereo.
The goals with both products are the same:
- Attenuate a tube amp.
- Amplify a low power tube amp to louder levels.
- Work as a poweramp for modelers and preamps.
- Allow some form of direct recording from XLR outs.
Both allow adjusting the poweramp behavior with Volume/Presence/Depth controls.
But after that the differences start to add up.
Reactive load:
The Fryette allows adjusting how the connected amp behaves via its loadbox switches. This in my experience allows
the connected tube amp to behave more like if it was connected direct to the cab. I use these switches to match the load behavior to my different cabs, and this allows me to make the Bypass (Amp in -> Speaker out) and Operate (Amp in -> Loadbox -> Poweramp -> Speaker out) states to sound/feel similar.
The IR-Load in comparison seems to have the same loadbox behavior with any amp. Thus the behavior of the
connected tube amp to my understandin would remain the same as the reactive load is always the same.
Poweramp:
The Fryette being a tube poweramp, it will always behave like a tube poweramp (albeit a fairly neutral one) into whatever speakers are connected.
The IR-Load by comparison needs to emulate behaving like a tube amp by using the speaker impedance measurement and machine learning model.
If I have understood your posts on TGP correctly, the Reactance knob governs how much of the ML model behavior is applied.
- All the way down and it would be pretty much neutral. Is it more like a "neutral tube amp", or pure solid-state behavior?
- All the way up would behave like a Friedman poweramp. I assume this means similar to e.g a Friedman BE poweramp. Marshallish, middle of the road in how tight/loose it is etc.
Usage with different amps:
With the Fryette you try to match the behavior with the load switches and Presence/Depth.
How would the IR-Load behave with say a Tweed or Vox AC30? The Tweed or AC30 is pretty saggy when cranked, which is at odds with how the poweramp behaves. If the machine learning model represents a more Marshall style poweramp, and the loadbox maybe approximates say a 4x12 cab, how would this work out compared to running a Vox AC30 into 2x12 Celestion Blues for example?