One warning, Tonex is cheap, but if you get into a capture buying habit, it can get expensive. I pretty much only use my captures and paid captures, but I am careful about what and how many I buy.
I don't know if he is doing a sale now, but Amalgam OFTEN does 5 for the price of 3, 10 for the price of 5 etc. type deals so maybe plan out what you want and take advantage of those deals. 5 or 10 packs from Amalgam should cover a TON of ground for most of us if you choose carefully.
Totalllly, and thank you for the warning!
I am taking my time, and still haven't actually bought any yet lol. My plan is to avoid both overspending and file management overload, so I've been playing with the samples from Amalgam and Amp Gems (and a few Tone Junkie ones and other freebies) to get a feel for what I want (what I will
actually use), and just plan to buy a few. Also, I cleared all the presets on my unit, and then I put different things I've been trying out into the later banks, intending to build my "final" presets in the first few banks, and deleting presets to narrow it down as I gravitate away from them.
I know I'm getting Amalgam's Benson one. I love the sound and feel, just as I expected to based on all I've heard of those amps (and my attempts to emulate them in the Helix lol). Getting a good Benson sound without having to sell any organs was a big impetus for getting a capture device originally.
From there I had planned to get a Marshall-like, a Vox-like, and a scooped Fender of some sort. For the Marshall, tbh a lot of the factory direct / amp-only captures get me close enough for the classic Marshall rock sounds, which I only want occasionally, so I'm thinking of getting the Amalgam Tweed Bassman pack to cover the rest. There was an Amalgam Marshall I tried that I liked a lot too, but I don't remember what it was offhand (maybe the Super Bass?). I feel like a Bassman with a pre-low cut can get me close enough when I want that too though.
For the Vox, I tried a bunch of captures and didn't like most of them except for the Amalgam AC30 one. Most of the others I tried didn't seem to capture what I like about a driven Vox, at least in the samples, even if they did the clean thing well. I may go with that AC50 instead though (it really does sound good), but its driven sound overlaps quite a bit with the Benson and Bassman. I know I should probably check out Matchless etc too, but eh.
For the mid-scooped Fender sounds... I think I'm actually covered well enough by the factory amp captures and a few free ones I grabbed from Amp Gems, at least for now. When I'm not trying to emulate another sound (which isn't necessary in the digital realm), my Fender needs are pretty "keep it simple". Also, unlike the Amalgam ones, the Amp Gem freebies are actually direct captures, so I can use them as-is. If I decide later to look at more sounds like this, I'll actually probably check out the Magnatone Twilighter captures. A lot of artists I like use those DR-ish Magnatones, so I'm interested; there are no sample captures though.
There are all the things that are edge cases for me like the Oranges and the 5150s too, but again: eh. I still have my HX Stomp too anyway.
So that basically narrows me down to 3 to 5 packs, but probably just 3, and either way I plan to use either the 3 for 2 or 5 for 3 coupon codes Amalgam has on their site right now :)
