Universal Audio amp sim plugins

[[Nathan]]

Shame-less-plug

If you want to see nothing but power chords into the Lion, then I got the video for you.
I’ve got a couple months left on my annual spark sub so we’ll see how motivated I am to buy it and if it’s hovering around the $49 mark. I really like it to practice and noodle around on cause it’s pretty humbling. But the end tone I can only do so much with for recording. Keen to try the EVH and recto when they eventually arrive as plugins.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Well my upgrade price was £174 to UAD Ultimate 13, so it meant that the new amp sims worked out to about £8 each (assuming I placed equal value on the remaining plugins I didn’t have yet).

My thoughts:

- All 3 sound great. Instant gratification, as soon as you fire it up it sounds and looks the way you expect.
- Nice to have everything on the same window, no scrolling or tabbing through pages or menus.
- Makes dialling in similar tones on an AxeFX an absolute chore (think how many steps involved from assigning I/O, routing cables, choosing amps, applying mods, tabbing pages, adding appropriate vibrato/trem/reverb, IR, no plugin etc).
- Boomerific tones. They’re almost made for “stock DAW” type sounds - if you need a typical clean or crunch guitar sound they’ll do just that with no fuss. Can imagine them becoming defacto tones for users who typically use Garageband/Logic type sims.
- Built in IR’s arent very good. They do the job perfectly well on the Fender and Vox, I think because cleaner tones are more forgiving with IR’s. As soon as there is more harmonic complexity, it becomes fussier. Lion IR’s were an instant NOPE for me.
- Available amps and mods are nicely chosen. I particularly liked the Super Bass and Variac.
- in fact, it’s probably my favourite “Variac Marshall” tone ITB. Super Bass was lovely with single coils.
- Room reverb is weird to me, always going to be off I think.
- Tuner would have been nice (almost essential)
- Probably worth £30-50 at the absolute most. I think they’re as good as anything else out there, and are nice for a quick fix. Better cabinet section/more fx/standalone would maybe warrant a slightly higher price but not a dealbreaker.

 

[[Nathan]]

Dream is pretty damn good with a strat here. I was hunting for some FX and realised I could just use the TMP.... ended up down the rabbit hole of Dead Kennedys Police Truck and got a good patch for it (looked up what they used (Fender Twin, MXR distortion and a Tape Echo).

 

[MirrorProfiles]

jamming on Lion a bit more, thinking "damn this is pretty fucking amazing actually". Somehow the input level doesn't give a readout of the value so its almost completely pointless unless used creatively (even though it has a boost pedal (with a readout....) for that anyway. Made a feature request to get the value displayed, easy enough telling the support bot on their website "feature request" to get that logged.

then fired up Helix Native, took no effort to get basically the same tone. Lion is nicer to use though, just instant plexi tones+look.

EDIT: compared to Softube's 1959 as well. That one is a little bit spittier and more aggressive which I like, but essentially much of a muchness. Ultimately its incredibly fucking cool to have so many different companies making excellent models of the MOST rare desired Marshall's ever made. You get small variations as you would with the real thing but they're all cool. The main strength of UAD is the GUI/simplicity.

I say it all the time, but this plugin spring reverb is the best one going. amazing to play through: https://www.arturia.com/products/software-effects/rev-spring636/overview

 

[Blix]

then fired up Helix Native, took no effort to get basically the same tone. Lion is nicer to use though, just instant plexi tones+look.

For me it's not remotely possible to get anything like the UA Brown Devil preset in Native, Line 6 doesn't have anything comparable. The Line 6 plexis lacks the kerrang and snarl to me. The 2203 rocks though!

 

[MirrorProfiles]

For me it's not remotely possible to get anything like the UA Brown Devil preset in Native, Line 6 doesn't have anything comparable. The Line 6 plexis lacks the kerrang and snarl to me. The 2203 rocks though!

Brit Plexi seems very close to the Lion Super Lead to my ear.

I'll see what gets closer to the Brown, but the variac thing might be harder to approximate

 

[MirrorProfiles]

quick comparison between Lion's Brown amp and Helix.

 

[Jarick]

Interesting, #2 has more of a brittle top end but they both have the really overdriven near fuzz splatty levels of gain. Really close!

 

[contrario]

The #2 sounds mushier, fizzier and thinner. The mid characteristics of the 2 models are very different. I think #2 is Helix.

 

[Blix]

quick comparison between Lion's Brown amp and Helix.

Can you post the Native settings so I can try it here?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Can you post the Native settings so I can try it here?

was that sort of thing, I might have dropped the treble and presence even more. I actually find Lion to be a bit thicker/less kerrangy at times so there's been a bit of jigging about with settings.

Brit Plexi Jumped gets close too, it just doesn't have the same compression as a variac'd amp. Turning sag up and playing with bias helps a bit though.

Just playing around with Softube's 1959. I LOVE that on that one you can set the knobs to 0 and still have a bit of the channel bleed coming through which affects the top end. Love that kind of attention to detail on a model.

 

[sashimi]

So was #2 the helix? I do think 1 sounded a little better but they’re very close

 

[Blix]

View attachment 30702

was that sort of thing, I might have dropped the treble and presence even more. I actually find Lion to be a bit thicker/less kerrangy at times so there's been a bit of jigging about with settings.

Brit Plexi Jumped gets close too, it just doesn't have the same compression as a variac'd amp. Turning sag up and playing with bias helps a bit though.

Just playing around with Softube's 1959. I LOVE that on that one you can set the knobs to 0 and still have a bit of the channel bleed coming through which affects the top end. Love that kind of attention to detail on a model.

Thanks I'll try it later, which cab? :)

 

[MirrorProfiles]

So was #2 the helix?

yep, meant to comment. Brit Plexi is a bit less twangy but you can hear it has more headroom than the Brown amp in Lion

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Thanks I'll try it later, which cab? :)

One of my Marshall V30 IR's (BL34 sm57)

 

[contrario]

The video is unavailable because it's private. Can you upload it in another way?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

quick one with softube. presence behaviour is totally different (different pot value or NFB perhaps?). Its generally a bit more aggro/scooped/twangy sounding, maybe a different bright cap or something too. No real preference between them, they're all fun variations. Suppose I should fire my amp and the axe fx up as well.



check the different settings:

 

[MirrorProfiles]

The video is unavailable because it's private. Can you upload it in another way?

should work now!

 

[Blix]

So I messed around a bit with Axe, Lion and Helix Native. Still can't get Native to sound even remotely as good as the Lion and the Fractal.
The "P75" is using MirrorProfiles settings.
Lion and Axe, has everything on 10 except bass at 5. Helix plexi brt at the same settings.
Your typical cranked plexi.

All using the sameYork KW SH-Dark IR




Lion


Helix P75


Axe-FX 1959SLP bright


Helix Brit Plexi Brt



EDIT: Added Helix 2203, not surprisingly the superior sounding Helix amp model, they really got that one right.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

So I messed around a bit with Axe, Lion and Helix Native. Still can't get Native to sound even remotely as good as the Lion and the Fractal.
The "P75" is using MirrorProfiles settings.
Lion and Axe, has everything on 10 except bass at 5. Helix plexi brt at the same settings.
Your typical cranked plexi.

All using the sameYork KW SH-Dark IR




Lion


Helix P75


Axe-FX 1959SLP bright


Helix Brit Plexi Brt



EDIT: Added Helix 2203, not surprisingly the superior sounding Helix amp model, they really got that one right.

why use the same settings? Let alone the tolerances for a 60 year old amp, those amps went a ton of small revisions as they built them AND some of those amps are just straight up different circuits.

Try going by ear and it’ll even out a lot of the differences