Two Notes Reload II, with "Celestion-Approved Load"

[EOengineer]

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Honestly surprised it took this long. You guys are slipping.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Honestly surprised it took this long. You guys are slipping.

I mean, I thought it as soon as I read the tagline. But I figured at my age, I should try to resist.

 

[EOengineer]

I mean, I thought it as soon as I read the tagline. But I figured at my age, I should try to resist.

You don’t wanna blow a hammy making a jizz joke.

 

[Elf]

 

[Desertdweller]

I can't believe this fucking guy thought he could open another thread. JFC, Vince.

To be fair it's not digital nor modeling and I searched the AMP forum first because it's, you know, analog and an amp.

 

[Humbug]

Yup. Just as I thought. Not a millimeter to spare.

To be fair, dealing with multiple inductors in a box is a royal pain in the ass and the Suhr box is probably as small as they could get it.

 

[Humbug]

But one would guess there would be a market for someone doing this competetively for the non-soldering demographic, right? Making a high quality reactive load box, preferably with selectable impedance curves, but with no extra frills or marketing bullshit? Right?

How much would you pay for it is the question. And, I suppose, how big is acceptable? How accurate to the real speaker cab(s)? A speaker accurate load box requires three inductors (four for it to be _really_ accurate), so it will be big. Magnetic fields are a pain and need their space to prevent them from becoming one magnetic field. And expensive. Copper ain't cheap, as Dana White said. If you want to switch between accurate speaker impedance curves as well, you would probably need tapped inductors which would have to be custom made, though I suppose switching capacitance and resistance only would be a reasonable compromise (like the Fractal box).

I am considering a small run of my Creampie box (comparable to a 70's Marshall 412 with celestion T1220 greenbacks) eventually, but the price will be ridiculous and it will probably come in a 3u rack box. I don't think there's a market for this

 

[laxu]

But hey I’m in Germany where they decided to use the word bendings to mean bends, which prior was the German word for pulling strings…

We Finns instead prefer keeping it simple:

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

We Finns instead prefer keeping it simple:

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I got a headache now

 

[woody]

I have to admit, after reading all this, I still don't know what or whom the reload ii is actually for?
To me it's just an overall weird product.

It obviously is heavily based on the Power Station.
For me the Power Station always lacked a balanced IR output, but this "All tube, play your tube amp (with the tubes in it) as loud as you want, with tubes, did I say tubes?" kinda made sense to me.
Now, this thing supplements the tubes for (I'd assume) class D power amps. In Stereo.
Why?
This thing ain't cheap.

The "approved load response" nonsense:
Firstly, I don't really understand this impedance curve debate to begin with: If you can't make compelling recordings or live shows with the Captor X, it's clearly not a problem of impedance curves making meaningful musicking impossible.
That said: A somehow compromise combined impedance curve won't stop that argument.
It would take selectable, precisely modeled curves for different cab models to cater to that crowd, and the reload ii just does not deliver there.

In the studio, I'd want a IR out, to be able to commit to tones fast.
And there the whole stereo loop thing does not make sense to me, either.
If you are inclined to do IR in the box, why would you want to commit to FX on the input with all this convoluted hardware trouble?
Without even having a dry DI signal?

Live, this looks really fun as a WDW-interface.
But then I'd want three IR-outs to go to FOH or a multitrack recorder, (or, again, at least three DI outs, to slap on IRs on later, when recording).
And for a WDW interface this thing seems excessively expensive for what it offers.


I don't get this.

 

[woody]

There's already the Fryette Power Station, The Suhr Reactive Loads, and the Boss Tube Amp Expander, each in it's own niche.
The reload II is a weird mishmash of everything without doing anything right, imho.

 

[laxu]

I got a headache now

Easy, you could get by in Finland by just knowing all the variations of this!

 

[Orvillain]

I don't understand how this thing is a Reload sequel, when they removed the DI and reamping capabilities? Unless I'm missing something?? Those features were really good features of the first one. The loadbox element of it was kinda crappy.

 

[Orvillain]

Hey Ed, guess what I dusted off recently?

THD HotPlate 16ohm.

Been relegated to "bench repair / tube amp biasing", but re-visiting slaving with a resistive load thing...

Ugh. Literally one of the worst sounding bits of kit I ever purchased.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Ugh. Literally one of the worst sounding bits of kit I ever purchased.

Yup. I had one, and it was an extraordinary turd.

 

[paisleywookiee]

To be fair it's not digital nor modeling and I searched the AMP forum first because it's, you know, analog and an amp.

FWIW, I’m just joking around; I’ve known Desertdweller for over 20 years

 

[NKP]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing; the Captor impedance curve wasn't right at all. I remain hopeful though!

Wasn’t right maybe but sound really good to me in the end with my jp2c head and good irs .

 

[nicolasrivera]

The Captor vs. the Suhr was night and day for me.

I own both, in my case for example i like how my MESA MArk III feels under the fingers with the Captor X, and love how my Suhr SL67 feels with the Surh RL.

I'm invesyed in the Two Notes DynIR ecosystem, so when i want to use that side alone but feel the reactiveness of the Suhr Rl just plug it to the Captor X, this bypasses the reactive side of the captor and uses that of the Suhr. Best of both worlds in my opinion.

 

[Tanax]

In what world is a $1K price tag for a fucking load box + iR loader a "good" price?

For the record, love my Torpedo CAB M+(Two Notes product example), but that was reasonably priced.

So, just because UA started the "let's make a ridiculously overpriced load box with wood sides" game here with the ridiculously overpriced OX Box, that means that that stupid bar should be upheld?

Fucking ridiculous. It's essentially just a load box + iR loader, mofos. And they're so obviously targeting the snooty, stratospheric "audiophool" pricing that UA shot for (and got; because people are fucking stupid) with the OX Box.

And how much of that $1K price is for the "Celestion rubber stamp of approval"?

Just no. Fuck no.




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Nothing wrong the Suhr RL.

EDIT: Ok so it has a "power amp" as well. So fucking what. 10 bucks says it's a cheapass Class D.

It's not an IR loader?

To be fair it's not digital nor modeling and I searched the AMP forum first because it's, you know, analog and an amp.

Me too. It makes zero sense that it's in this forum. It's 100% analog per Two Notes themselves.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Ugh. Literally one of the worst sounding bits of kit I ever purchased.

paisleywookee: Yup. I had one, and it was an extraordinary turd.

Well, this was wayyy back in the early 2Ks when resistive loads were the only thing available to consumers. Everybody on the old Plexi Palace gear forum had one. That's where myself and Ed DeGenaro (of THD then) hung out (among others). Reactive loads didn't come along for at least another decade-plus.

And actually, it depends on how you use it. It's fine for shaving off a few dBs as an attenuator, but beyond that any resistive load is gonna suck.

It's fine for bench work when you need to say, bias the power tubes (set to "Load").

Also set to "Load", can sound great in a slaved setup (which is why I dusted it off)... I'm revisiting slaving and I'm getting some pretty killer results.

So, I have my old THD HotPlate (resistive), and my much more recently acquired Suhr RL (non-iR, reactive).