Amp Farm User Manual

Transcript

User Manual Also available on Amp Farm CD and on the internet at http://www.line6.com Line 6 part no. 40-00-0102 Rev D INTRODUCTION: LIFE ON THE FARM.... INTRODUCTION LIFE ON THE FARM.... Thank you for purchasing Amp Farm, the Guitar Recording Plug-in for TDM. You can just charge ahead with using it if you like, but we figured you might first be curious to know about what it is and how it came to be. It all starts with a little modern age miracle called Amp Modeling.... AMP MODELING Tubes, we can all agree, are the heart and soul of every legendary guitar amp and are responsible for the warm, harmonic-rich tone quality of those amps. Solid state devices (transistors) are simply unable to duplicate tube warmth and performance. And “hybrids” – a tube in a circuit along with a bunch of transistors – are really a vain attempt at warming up a transistor-based tone. They fall short in any comparison to a 100% tube circuit. So that’s it – tubes or nothin’, right? Well, not any more.... You see, the engineers at Line 6, being an adventurous lot, and totally pumped about this whole guitar tone thing as well, decided to stock up on the coffee, bust out the engineering equipment, and get down to learning everything there is to know about tubes. Riding high on the caffeine wave, they began a three-year project to analyze and map out exactly how different types of tubes respond under various conditions typical of guitar amplifier design. How tubes process an input signal, how the signal is colored and shaped, at what point it begins to distort, the quality and characteristic of the distortion – complicated stuff, but all analyzable as electronic data. A guitar pickup output, after all, is an electronic signal, and tubes are really just a complex form of signal processing. Having sussed it all out, the Line 6 engineers were then able to apply their digital expertise to develop software which simulates the tube and other circuitry’s signal processing entirely within the digital domain. Cool, huh? 1•1 INTRODUCTION: 1•2 LIFE ON THE FARM.... AMP MODELS This modeling technology allowed Line 6 to create software Amp Models modeled after a collection of amplifiers recognized by guitarists the world over as true “tone classics.” We got these amps together, cranked ’em up, and had a look at the electronic data generated by the tubes, transformers, capacitors, plate and grid voltages, tone control curves – and the whole mess of components and elements unique to each amplifier design. This research led to the creation of TubeTone software Amp Models. These Amp Models were tweaked up through careful A/B listening comparisons to the amps that inspired them, with an ear open for the effects of different volume levels and settings of the originals’ tone and gain controls. The gain and equalization characteristics of the modeled amps were carefully measured so that changes to amp knobs on the models would mirror the effects of these changes on the originals as closely as possible. We’re talking major attention to detail here. Tone control center frequencies, slopes, and cut/boost range were painstakingly analyzed, and we also carefully attended to the effect of presence switches, “bright” channels, and other model-specific factors. Not only that, but since these old amps had highly interactive circuits, we paid careful attention to the way that the setting of one knob will change the way that another knob on the amp will behave. All in an effort to make our Amp Models as much like the amps we modeled as possible. The resulting Amp Models are the foundation of Amp Farm. So, now that you know where it comes from, it’s time to experience Amp Farm and its TubeTone Amp Models for yourself. Start by turning to the next section, Installing Your Software. System Requirements You’ll want to refer to the Digidesign web site or other Digidesign-provided information to insure that your system is compatible with your Pro Tools TDM hardware and the latest version of Pro Tools or other software and hardware you are planning to use with Amp Farm. Note that Echo Farm will not run on older NuBus TDM systems, and will also will not run as an RTAS or AudioSuite plugin. As a result, Amp Farm cannot be used with a Digi 001 system, which relies on “native” processing for its plug-in power. INTRODUCTION: 1•6 SETTING UP YOUR HARDWARE SETTING UP YOUR HARDWARE We assume here that you’ve already got your Pro Tools TDM system all setup and cranking away. The only thing to add to your present setup is a direct connection from your guitar to your Pro Tools audio interface.... Clean Direct To get your guitar signal into Amp Farm, you want to boost your totally clean guitar signal to line level and then feed that signal to your Pro Tools interface. We’re looking for unadulterated guitar input here – you don’t want to use hardware intended to color the guitar’s direct sound. Steer clear of amp simulators. You can use a guitar preamp, as long as it is clean, with a flat frequency response – no tone shaping. How about just plugging the guitar’s output into a mixer channel? Guitar pickups like to feed into a high impedance load – at least 300 KOhms impedance; 1 MOhm is ideal for the best results. Most mixer inputs are relatively low impedance, and therefore don’t deliver ideal guitar tone; you will tend to get a darker, “squashed” sound if you plug the guitar in directly. To avoid this, we recommend buffering your guitar’s signal before the mixer with a quality DI box or tonally “transparent” instrument preamp. Look for a unit that delivers clean, uncolored sound. With that said, you can sometimes get acceptable results plugging direct into a line level mixer channel if you have a guitar with hot, active pickups (since the active electronic’s output can have relatively low impedance). The tracks of the Amp Farm Demo Session, for instance, were recorded by plugging our guitar output right into a channel on a Mackie 1202 VLZ, cranking up the trim, and feeding the direct output from that mixer channel directly to an 888 input. Don’t try to plug into a microphone level mixer input, because the extremely low impedance of mic inputs will load the active circuitry down too much. Don’t over-do it! Please do yourself a favor when setting your input levels, and don’t turn up the guitar too much. You want to get your loudest strumming and pick-up selection to just about reach maximum on your interface’s input meters, but not hit the top. This will insure maximum signal-to-noise ratio, while avoiding nasty digital clipping. ’Course, if you like digital clipping, who are we stop you? INTRODUCTION: SETTING UP YOUR HARDWARE Stomp Boxes Got some old stomp boxes you want to run your guitar through before Amp Farm? No problem. Just observe the level setting precautions above. Make sure the stomp box isn’t overdriving your mixer channel or guitar direct box, and make sure that the stomped and then boosted signal doesn’t overdrive your Pro Tools interface’s input. When setting your levels, be sure to try your loudest strumming, hottest pick-up combination, and your maximum volume boost from the stomp box at the same time to make sure the resulting din makes it into the Pro Tools interface under the digital zero mark. Radiation Alert You will likely find, especially if you are using a guitar with single coil pickups, that it is quite easy to pick up some serious noise from your computer’s monitor. CRT displays are, after all, just special purpose ray guns that shoot light at you all day long. Your guitar pickups receive and amplify the electro-magnetic fields that your display radiates, and you hear this in your audio signal as buzz and hum. Moving farther from the CRT, and turning your guitar so that it is does not face the computer’s display directly, will minimize this problem. But if you find yourself in a tight studio setup, needing to lay down some quick tracks, and being pestered by CRT-induced buzz, you may find it helpful to do as we have sometimes done: set up your track to record and start your pre-roll; reach up and flick your computer monitor’s power switch off; record your guitar part; stop your recording, flick the monitor back on, and check out the buzz-free playback. Track Setup Amp Farm, like any TDM plug-in, can be applied to any audio track, aux track, or Master Fader. The standard thing is to run it on an audio track. Assign your guitar as the input to the audio track. Apply Amp Farm as one of the track’s inserts. At this point, you should see Amp Farm in the plug-in window, and you should hear Amp Farm processing your guitar input. Pick an Amp Model by clicking on the words in the Amp Model pop-up menu. Do the same thing in the Cab Model popup to make your cabinet simulator choice. Set your knobs and switches to taste. Hit record. Play a bit. Hit stop. Play back what you’ve recorded. Move the knobs around. Neat, isn’t it? The Amp Farm controls and operations are run down in detail in the upcoming section, Amp Farm Controls. 1•7 USING AMP FARM: AMP FARM CONTROLS USING AMP FARM The following discussion of Amp Farm recording and mixing techniques assumes you are running Amp Farm with Pro Tools software – as opposed to a TDM-compatible sequencer package like Performer, Vision, Logic, or Cubase. The concepts are pretty similar with the sequencers, so apart from differences in appearance and nomenclature, this should all work with whatever software you are using.... AMP FARM CONTROLS Now that you’re all set for Amp Farming, we’ll use the next few pages to go through the various Amp Farm controls and see what they do. But first... The Basics of Mouse Control All the Amp Farm knob controls are set up to be controlled with a left-to-right or up-and-down mouse motion. Click on a knob you want to move, and then drag to the left or down to turn the knob down. Drag to the right or up to turn a knob up. Don’t try to click on a knob and move your mouse around in a circular motion to turn it, as if you were actually touching it. The Amp Farm switch controls are all set up for single-click operation. Click on a toggle switch to change the switch from one of its two states to the other. Click again to change it back. The Amp Farm pop-up controls are accessed by clicking directly on the name currently shown in the pop-up window. Click and hold in the Amp Model’s yellow pop-up field, for instance, on the name of the currently selected Amp Model. Holding down the mouse, drag through the displayed list to the name of another Amp Model and let go. The panel for that Amp Model is now displayed in the Amp Farm plug-in window. 2•1 USING AMP FARM: AMP FARM CONTROLS 2•2 Input Knob & Clip Indicator - This knob lets you adjust the signal level that’s fed into Amp Farm. In general you want to leave this one alone. Most of the time, using it will lead to poorer signal-to-noise ratio performance. It’s here to allow you to compensate for less-than-ideal situations, but keep in mind that most of the time if you’re using it, it’s just that – less than ideal. Turn it down below the center “detent” to reduce your input level to Amp Farm, turn it up past the center point to boost your input level into Amp Farm. Hold down the option key on your Macintosh keyboard while clicking on the knob to set the input level to its center no-gain-change position. So, when do you want to use it? When you’ve got your controls maxed out on an Amp Model (say your Treble and Mid controls are both up all the way on the Amp Model based on the Fender Twin and you’ve got a hot guitar signal coming in), you may clip Amp Farm internally (and thus light up the Clip light above and to the right of the Input level control). This is just like clipping the internal circuitry on a hardware amplifier. To avoid this clipping, you would back off on the Input level until you see that the Input Clip indicator no longer lights. The other time you would use the Input level knob (and this is the less-than-ideal situation we mentioned earlier) is when you have a guitar track that’s been recorded or is being recorded at lower than optimum volume. If you’ve given your guitar all the analog domain boosting you have available (as described in the Setting Up Your Hardware section) and you’re still not getting enough level into Amp Farm, then you can use this control to get more gain in the digital domain. Keep in mind, though, that you are essentially reducing the bit depth of the guitar input by doing this, and you will therefore get more noise and less definition of tone. USING AMP FARM: AMP FARM CONTROLS Master Volume & Clip Indicator - This knob sets the output level of Amp Farm. The Master Volume Clip indicator is a little red light that appears above and to the right of the Master Volume knob to let you know when you’ve gone overboard with this one. Just turn down the Master Volume knob until the clip light no longer comes on to insure tasty tone output. Amp Model Pop-up - This is where you select the Amp Model you would like Amp Farm to use. Click and hold your mouse button in the yellow text field to see the list of Amp Models available. Keep holding the mouse button and drag through the list to the Amp Model you’d like to select. Release the mouse button, and the Amp Model you selected is now running in the Amp Farm window. Cab Model Pop-up - Works just like the Amp Model pop-up, and selects a cabinet simulation to pair up with the Amp Model. Drive Knob - Each one of the Amp Models has a Drive knob. This takes the place of the familiar Volume knob, and controls how hard you’re driving the chosen amp model. Think of it like the input volume control on a non-master volume amp; the higher the setting, the more “dirt.” Knobs & Switches - The other knobs and switches that appear on-screen for a particular Amp Model are setup to emulate the controls found on the amp that the model was based on. In the cases of amplifiers that featured a regular and high gain channel, we’ve provided a toggle switch that selects between these two alternatives. For other Amp Models, a toggle switch may turn on or off a tremolo circuit. For the Amp Models based on Marshall amplifiers, an Extra Gain toggle is provided to give you the effect of patching your regular and high gain channels together for extra gain on input. In general, the knobs and switches are setup to emulate, as nearly as possible, the effect of the similarly-labeled knobs, switches, and jacks on the original amps we modeled. For the complete story, check out the Amp Models chapter in this manual. 2•3 USING AMP FARM: STANDARD PLUG-IN CONTROLS STANDARD PLUG-IN CONTROLS 2•4 Amp Farm includes the standard set of plug-in controls along its top control strip. You should refer to the latest version of the Pro Tools documentation to be sure you’re aware of any new features, but here’s a quick primer on the basics in case you need it: Track Selector - This is the top left button above. Click it to choose what track or channel strip you would like to adjust plug-in settings for. Insert/Send Selector - The next button to the right, showing “insert a” above is the insert/send selector. Click it to choose which of the inserts you want to deal with on the selected track or channel. Plug-in Selector - Continuing along the top row toward the right, the next button picks the plug-in that you want to use (Amp Farm, for instance). Bypass - You guessed it! Click here to bypass the currently displayed plug-in; you will now hear the sound of the audio on that track or channel strip without the plug-in’s processing. Setting Pop-up - Bottom left of the illustration. You have to click on the little downward pointing arrow to Save settings, or click on the text of the pop-up menu to recall settings files that have been saved in the Amp Farm Plug-In folder inside the Plug-Ins folder inside your DAE Folder (which, of course, is in your System Folder). Be sure to save your settings files to this folder so that you can USING AMP FARM: STANDARD PLUG-IN CONTROLS recall them in your Pro Tools sessions. Settings may also be saved to your Session Settings file; consult your Pro Tools documentation for more information. Librarian Pop-up - Shows “” in the illustration. Click this button to display a menu of commands for copying, pasting, saving and importing Amp Farm settings. Compare - If you have changed the settings of Amp Farm since you last saved them, clicking this button allows you to toggle between the saved settings and your newly edited settings in order to compare them. Automation - Amp Farm brings you more than great guitar amplifier emulations. It gives you a whole new power to control guitar amplifier sounds. The key to this power is the TDM Plug-In Automation capability built into Pro Tools and TDM-compatible software. The documentation for Pro Tools or your sequencer package should cover automation in detail. But we’ll go over a few points here to try to help you avoid problems in getting things set up. Clicking this button brings up a dialogue box like this one shown on the next page: 2•5 USING AMP FARM: AUTOMATION & AMP FARM SETTINGS FILES AUTOMATION & AMP FARM SETTINGS FILES 2•6 See the latest Pro Tools documentation for up to the minute details on Automation. As of this manual writing, here are the basics: Enabling Automation - Step 1 This dialogue box shows up when you press the Automation button at the top of the Amp Farm window as described on the previous page of this manual. It lets you select which Amp Farm controls you would like to automate. In general, you probably want to automate them all, so click on the first item in the list on the left, and then hold down the shift key and click on the last item in the list to highlight all the Amp Farm controls. With all of the items on the left selected, USING AMP FARM: AUTOMATION & AMP FARM SETTINGS FILES click on the Add button at the top center of the dialogue box and all of these Amp Farm controls will be enabled for automation. Click OK to close the dialogue box. 2•7 Enabling Automation - Step 2 In order to actually record and playback automation, you will also need to choose Show Automation Enable Window from the Pro Tools Display menu, and make sure that plug-in automation is enabled. The Write Automation... selection in the Pro Tools Edit menu and the automation pop-up menus on individual tracks and channels can then be used to control automation recording, playback, and editing. All of Amp Farm’s capabilities in this regard are made to follow the Digidesign standards, so please refer to your Pro Tools documentation for details. Saving & Recalling Amp Farm Settings The Amp Farm installer will place several Amp Farm settings files in the Amp Farm Plug-In folder inside your Plug-In Settings folder, within your DAE Folder (which, of course, lives in your System Folder). You can call up this library of settings from within the Amp Farm dialogue box any time by clicking on the Setting Pop-Up (as described on page 2•4 of this user guide). When saving your own Amp Farm settings, we recommend that you save them in this folder to ensure that they will be available to any Pro Tools session you are working on. You can create sub-folders inside the Amp Farm Plug-In folder within the Plug-In Settings folder if you wish. You can also create custom user default settings for Amp Farm, so that it always comes up the way you want it to when you first start a new session. Again, all of Amp Farm’s capabilities in this regard are made to follow the Digidesign standards, so please refer to your Pro Tools documentation for details. USING AMP FARM: AUTOMATION & AMP FARM SETTINGS FILES Aux Channel 2•8 It can be handy to run Amp Farm on an Aux Channel. Doing this lets you do pretty much anything you could do by running Amp Farm on an audio track, but offers some additional flexibility. For instance, if you want to record some audio – say your vocal – while playing through Amp Farm at the same time, but you don’t want to record your guitar, you can’t do that with an audio track. Because the audio track has to be recordenabled for you to hear your guitar input. Which means you’re recording your guitar as you record your vocal. On the other hand, if you have the guitar selected as the input to an aux channel, which then runs Amp Farm, that will allow you to mess around with Amp Farm as much as you like without recording. Writing Amp Farm Processing to Disk There may be times when you want to record your guitar to disk with Amp Farm processing, as opposed to running the Amp Farm processing “live.” This may sometimes be necessary if you don’t have enough DSP resources to run all the plug-ins you want to use simultaneously. Or maybe you’re going to take some tracks you’ve recorded over to another studio and work on them there, and they don’t have Amp Farm (yet). Here’s what you do: Select a bus as the output of your audio track where your guitar is recorded, and Amp Farm is currently running as an insert. In the illustration, bus 1-2 is being selected. Next, set up another audio track, and assign the bus you just chose as the new track’s input. Carrying along with our example, we illustrate selection of bus 1 here. Now, record-enable the new track, and you can permanently commit your post-Amp Farm tone to hard disk for posterity. USING AMP FARM: MIX IT UP MIX IT UP We’ve concentrated here on the pure Amp Farm experience, but when you’re actually making your music with it, we encourage you to treat Amp Farm as just one more powerful tool to be used in combination with the others in your arsenal. For instance, one early Amp Farmer found that he was able to get some great tones by placing EQ before Amp Farm, and thus shape the tonal characteristics of the Amp Farm processing. He found that preceding one of the Marshall-inspired Amp Models with a low shelf cut of –10dB at 62Hz, and a mid-range parametric bump of about +6dB at 2.6kHz and a Q of .8 was just the ticket for his version of tonal bliss. You may find that some other EQ setting – or an entirely different effect – is the thing that makes you smile. Whatever it is, here’s your encouragement to find it. Doing this is basically like using a stomp box in front of a regular (hardware) guitar amplifier. Also, be sure to try the sound of a double- or triple-dip of Amp Farm – running several instances in series or parallel to get the kind of multi-amp tone than many artists and producers have made one of their standard techniques for great studio guitar sound. This can be a great way to get the clear pitch definition and rich body of a nice clean tone, and still have the saturation of a heavily overdriven amp setup at the same time. And remember that if you were recording a non-software amp you’d probably add some EQ and other effects at the board to sculpt the miked sound before you’d commit it to tape or to your mix. Since they’re emulations of amps, the same goes for your Amp Farm tones. Also, be sure to give the “Big” Cabs a go. While the other Amp Farm cabinets are emulations of specific cabinet and microphone configurations, the Big Cabinet Models were designed without worrying about emulating any particular cabinet or miking technique precisely. We just used the cabinet emulation algorithms to give you a couple of big, beefy cabinet tones. The frequency response of these settings is particularly smooth, in contrast to the cabinets modeled for the real-world emulations. Real speakers each have their own wonderful quirks of frequency response that express themselves as particular EQ peaks and valleys, and add up to the special character of those speakers. Try applying some narrow EQ bumps and notches after the Big Cabs to sculpt them into your own personal speaker tone. That’s it. We now return you to our regularly scheduled User Manual programming.... 2•9 MODELED AMPS: WHICH AMPS ARE MODELED? MODELED AMPS WHICH AMPS ARE MODELED? Note: For the following description of the Amp Models, and other references that you will find throughout this manual, please be aware that Fender, Marshall, Vox, and other amplifier model designations, and the names of musical artists and groups, are all trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Line 6. These marks and names are used solely for the purpose of describing certain amplifier tones produced using Line 6’s amp modeling technology. The Line 6 amp modeling technology provides Amp Farm with a wide variety of sounds modeled after some of the most popular sounds of the classic amps and artists mentioned here. 1959 Fender Bassman - The classic Fender Bassman 4x10 combo was the amp that started it all – instant rock and roll tone. Originally a bass guitar amp, the Bassman became a Blues staple for 6-string guitarists. It has the fat bottom end you’d expect from a bass amp but also has the Fender twang on the top. Incidentally, when Jim Marshall built his first amps with Ken Bran they were heavily influenced by the early Bassman. The Bassman, like many of the amps modeled for Amp Farm, didn’t have a master volume. So to get the kind of tone that the Bassman can deliver at higher gain settings, you had to crank it up loud enough to do some serious damage to anyone who might be standing close by. With Amp Farm, you can get that kind of tone at a bedroom or studio level – or through your headphones even! Try a drive setting of about 4 or 5 with Amp Farm’s Bassman Amp Model – it’s guaranteed to dredge up the best R&B licks you know. 3•1 MODELED AMPS: 3•2 WHICH AMPS ARE MODELED? 1964 Fender “Blackface” Deluxe - The Holy Grail for many blues, country, and “roots” players has been a blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb (of course, now that Amp Farm’s here, that may all change). After listening to quite a few candidates for modeling, we stumbled upon an extremely cool ’64 Deluxe. Most players love a Deluxe when it’s turned up to about 7 for a nice gritty sound that cleans up when you back off your guitar’s volume knob just a little. Notice how the tone control response changes as this Amp Model’s Drive is changed; clean settings are crisp and present, while more driven settings will mellow the high end. This is typical of what you get from a Deluxe, and is nicely captured here. Tweaked up right, this tone will cut through and sing. 1965 Fender “Blackface” Twin - The classic blackface Fender Twin (in this case, a 1965 Twin) was a real workhorse. Everybody used it from jazz and country players to serious rockers (I remember seeing a band where both guitar players were using 6 Twins stacked in a pyramid. We were in the second balcony and it was REALLY loud even all the way back there). The Twin has a lot of tonal flexibility and is at home in a great many different situations. It never gets extremely overdriven and dirty, mostly just louder; a lot louder. With Amp Farm you can get a full range of Twin-inspired sounds at any volume you choose. This is the amp for the classic surf sound: turn up the tremolo, turn up your monitors, and look out for bikinis. 1960 Vox AC 30 - Vox amps owe much of their unique tone quality to a Class A power amp and were standard issue for English bands in the 60’s. Brian May of Queen, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and The Edge of U2 have also used classic AC 30s to make their music. Vox amplifiers were actually one of the first brand of amplifiers designed specifically for electric guitar; the other companies essentially got their designs straight from the RCA Radio book. We were lucky enough to find what we are told was one of Bryan Adams’ favorite AC 30s for recording. Lenny Kravits happened to be using it the week before we began testing. It was one of the gems in a great collection of vintage amplifiers offered for rental in Los Angeles, where Line 6 is located. We later bought this amp, and continued to hone our emulation of it to bring you the Amp Model it inspired in Amp Farm. This is definitely a good place to start to get yourself some of those classic British invasion sounds. MODELED AMPS: WHICH AMPS ARE MODELED? 1966 Vox AC 30 Top-Boost - Music was changing in the 60’s and guitarists were asking for more brilliance & twang. So the Jennings Company, makers of Vox amps, decided to add Treble and Bass controls (and an extra 12AX7 gain stage, incidentally); this additional circuit became known as Top Boost. 3•3 1964 Marshall JTM 45 - This Amp Model is based on a JTM-45 head with block logo (predates the “scrolled” Marshall logo), complete with a gold Plexiglas (Plexi) front panel, although the sound normally associated with Plexi amps comes from the late 60’s, 50-watt version that was the inspiration for the next in Amp Farm’s line up of Amp Models. The JTM-45 marked the beginning of Marshall’s transition from a mellower Fender-like tone to the distinctive bright “crunchy” sound of the later Marshalls. 1968 Marshall Plexi - The infamous Marshall Plexi – coveted by tone connoisseurs the world over. By this time (ca. 1968) Marshall had completely changed the circuitry away from the Fender 6L6 power tube heritage and moved to an EL34 tube; another major tone difference was due to the necessary output & power supply transformer changes. (See, we told you we spent some time looking into all this stuff.) All this mucking about added up to create a tone forever linked with Rock Guitar. Amps of this era didn’t have any sort of master volume control, so to get this sound you’d have to crank your “Mark III Super Amp” to max – just the thing to help you really make friends with the neighbors. Hendrix used Marshalls of this era; 20 years later Van Halen’s first two records owed their “brown sound” to a Marshall Plexi. In order to get a crunch sound out of a Plexi you would likely crank up the input volume and the tone controls (to 10!). You’ll find that the Amp Farm Amp Model, in keeping with our basic “make-it-sound-a-wholelot-like-the-original” concept, is set up to do pretty darned near the same thing. Max out the Mid and Treble knobs and turn Bass to about 9 or 10 o’clock on the Amp Farm panel when using this Plexi-inspired Amp Model and you can treat those nice neighbors to a tasty slice of fat rock tone. MODELED AMPS: WHICH AMPS ARE MODELED? 1990 Marshall JCM 800 - Turn to this Amp Model to conjure up tones of 3•4 the coveted JCM 800, one of Marshall’s most universally-acclaimed modern amps. This updated version of the Plexi continued Marshall’s heritage with added gain and edge for a new generation of rock guitarists. One of the biggest differences here is that the tone controls are located after the preamp tubes. We worked with a 1990 JCM 800 with Master Volume to develop this model. This is the metal sound Marshall made famous. Although not many people play Marshalls clean, it’s a great tone, so you should also be sure to check out this model with a low drive setting, too. Of course, you can always pump up the drive and rage.... By the way, you’ll notice that all of the Marshall-inspired Amp Models include an Extra Gain switch. This control allows you to hook up a “virtual patch cord” to link the normal and bright channels of these amplifiers. This classic trick is used to get more gain on input with these Marshall amplifiers, and we recreate it here. Just flip this switch to the Extra Gain position, and the patch cord pops up on the right. Fun, huh? 1994 Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Tremo-O-Verb combo You can use this Amp Model to get that tight, high gain sound used by bands like Dream Theater or Metallica. Boogie made their mark in the late 70’s and early 80’s by adding master volumes and more gain stages to amps with Fender-style circuitry. You can hear the Fender heritage but with more “punch” in the mids. The Boogie Dual Rectifier’s tone controls are post-distortion, and as with the tone sections of most of the amps we based our models on, the individual controls interact with each other and with the drive. With high drive settings, you can scoop the mids and crank the bottom end for some great Seattle grunge sounds. 1995 Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier head - The Boogie Rectifier head that this Amp Model was based on is similar to the Rectifier combo, taking a modern, high gain approach for that “big hair” sound. In contrast to the earlier Boogies, the Dual Rectifier’s tone controls have more influence at high gain settings, so you can scoop the mids and increase the bottom end. MODELED AMPS: WHICH AMPS ARE MODELED? 1989 Soldano X88R Rack-mount preamp - The Soldano sound is intensely overdriven, and also has EQ after the preamp distortion. This oversaturated tone is well-suited to thrash metal and grunge bands, but has also been used more subtly by artists like Eric Clapton. This is a good Amp Model to use if you want to get a current Van Halen or Joe Satriani sound. Talk about high gain preamp tube distortion! The X88R we studied to create this Amp Model would have been the rage for Los Angeles studio use in the late ‘80s. 1989 Soldano Super Lead Overdrive SLO head - This sound is modeled after a Soldano SLO – Super Lead Overdrive – head. With snake skin tolex covering and everything! Unlike the X88R preamp studied for the previous Amp Model, the SLO includes a presence control, plus other little details that give it a bit of a different sound. With the Drive control cranked way up, you’ll get sustain for days.... Go out’n’ave a bite – when you come back it’ll still be sustaining! 1996 Matchless Chieftain - The ’96 Matchless Chieftain, which was studied for this Amp Model, is a very expensive handmade amp with a Class A design. Originally designed to sound like a top-boost Vox AC 30, the Matchless doesn’t exactly have a Vox sound, but something unique (largely due to the complicated EQ scheme); the sound is sort of “future retro.” Its soft clipping is typical of Class A amplifiers; almost a “hi-fi” sound in a great rock n’ roll amplifier. 3•5 THE WRAP UP CUSTOMER SUPPORT Digidesign provides customer support services for Amp Farm. The Product Registration & Customer Services Information booklet that you received in your Amp Farm package gives you all the details on accessing these support services. Be sure to send in the registration card so that we can contact you when Amp Farm updates are available. This will insure that you don’t get stuck messing about with old bugs when new bug fixes are available for the asking! OTHER LINE 6 PRODUCTS Looking for a hardware version of Amp Farm? How about a collection of great stomp boxes? The modeling technology of Line 6 is also available in stand-alone amplifiers from Line 6, the acclaimed POD series products for guitar and bass, and a line of Stomp Box Modelers which feature models of classic vintage stomp boxes and other effects. The amps and PODs feature the same great tones as Amp Farm, plus additional Amp Models, built-in effects, programmable channels, foot control options, MIDI, and more – so when it’s time to step out of the studio to take your act on the road, you can take all the great Line 6 sounds from your recording sessions with you. POD and POD Pro are especially perfect for any recording situation where your Pro Tools rig isn’t handy – or in addition to it! Also available from Line 6: Echo Farm, the Vintage Echo Plug-in for MIX Systems. CONTACTING LINE 6 You can find out about all of the Line 6 products and technologies when you visit our web site at http://www.line6.com. You should also be sure to check in to the Line 6 web site for the latest Amp Farm news. THE FINE PRINT Amp Farm, Line 6, the Amp Farm logo and the Line 6 logo are all trademarks of Line 6, Inc. Pro Tools and TDM are trademarks of Digidesign, which distributes and provides technical support for Amp Farm. 4•1