Spent more time with the Agoura Plexi. I think the vintage and classic rock guys (Hendrix, Page, EJ) will love this model. I’m able to stiffen the amp up a bit by turning the bass and sag all the way down, z pre/post all the way up, and running the bright channel with mids maxed, treble and presence at noon. It’s still too squishy and too spitty for what I’m looking for and if you push the treble and presence both those issues get worse. The amp basically totally falls apart, especially with humbuckers.
It’s amazing how many variants are available and how all our tastes differ. For my preferences, I love how this one sounds and reacts. But then I do seem to gravitate towards amps that fart wildly from the belly when you hit them more than modern voiced things. Don’t get me wrong, I like those too (I can find a use for anything really and if it’s not useful it’s often fun). For me, with these initial amps, there’s quite a few of (what I think) are modern voiced amps anyway so I’m glad they went more in a vintage voicing with this one.
But I gravitate more toward the late 60’s thing that they modeled in the Brit Plexi.
Do you guys think you’d enjoy trying captures of amps, or would you prefer Line 6 Agoura models? I suppose time will tell, but I know players can be kinda split on that topic. I love captures, but I pretty much just play the captures I make of my own amps, ha.
Me too on the vintage thing (see above).
I’m looking forward to captures but not longing for it anywhere near as much as if you’d asked me the same question a few months ago.
I’ve come from a Kemper and, although I was very happy with it, I’m preferring the sounds I’m getting here. I’m also really enjoying the engagement I’m feeling with dialing in the Stadium. Scrolling through captures that someone else has done is a very different mindset and I frankly hadn’t realised that I’d prefer doing it this way - you probably wouldn’t have convinced me of this mindset shift until I’d tried doing it this way….. I know it’s still not a real amp but my brain is fooled into feeling more connected with the device - I guess because of how I’m working with it compared with just loading a profile and tweaking maybe one parameter….. normally, I’d just go to another profile if it didn’t do what I wanted. Lazy maybe but I doubt I’m alone.
I think my perception of profiles being the way to go came from a vague concept of Fractal feedback where you can tweak everything down to the minutest detail. That polarises people IMO - you get folks who say ‘I can control everything and it’s awesome’. You get others that might argue that you’ll spend more time tweaking than you will playing. This perception comes up on forums aimed at people whose devices rely on capture; this mindset makes dialing in presets sound quite intimidating compared to having someone else’s golden ears do it for you (which is what a Kemper profile is and, although you can tweak a little (and go beyond the original amp) you’re still better off selecting another profile if the gain is significantly different from where you’re wanting it to be).
So for ‘the new me’ I’m keen to stay with modelling now I’ve lost the fear of it! I am still interested in captures but, for me now, I think it’s more about being able to experience weird and wonderful amps that haven’t had the modelling treatment. There’s also the question of ‘Will a captured stomp box take less DSP than a modelled one’. Same question for an amp and, right now, we don’t know. For anyone that makes massive presets, this might also be something that is attractive (or otherwise!) about Proxy.
