software

Some of you may remember I've had a love/hate affair with my Vox Valvetronix amps. I just have not been able to get a great sound out of it..at least on the models I need. It's just never sounded quot;rightquot; to me.

I sold my MESA and had been looking into other modelers or a very low wattage tubeamp for practice/bedroom playing....even contemplated going Solid State (like an old Marshall 52XX or lead 12).

The other day I was rummagin' through some old guitar gear and came upon my original SansAmp Pedal which I bought in prolly 1992 or so. I used to run it through a red knob Fender Princeton Chorus solid state amp for practice cos my Marshall/Jackson/Laney's were too much most of the time. It always sounded quite good with some tweaking.

So I pulled it out, figured I'd set the Vox for as clean a sound as possible (boutique clean model), ste the EQ on the amp neutral and see what happened.

It's just as great as I remember. There are lots of tweaks on it..and you can really dial in a great sound. It doesn't quite clean up like a tube amp...nor is it quite as warm either...but it does have some tube like dynamics at lower gain. The Vox sounds a bit more like a quot;realquot; amp , but the actual tones are just not right. Once I got the volume up with SansAmp though, the gap narrowed considerably.

With the Sansamp I was able to nail the old Angus Young vibe with a Marshall set for quot;cleanquot;. Pulling it out of clean, it's Brown Sound to modded Marshall heaven.

The MESA setting gave me those old MKII/MKIII sounds...I got into John Sykes mode for a bit, LOL.

Fender sounds are great too.

Probably the coolest thing about it, is you can set pre-amp AND power amp style gain. So for an old plexi type sound I drop the pre and and pull the power amp up a bit...the power amp gain also adds low end and low mids which can make for a HUGE stack sound at very low volumes. By adding pre-amp gain you start getting that top end sizzle like on VH1 (it also starts to lose low end, so you need to tweak to find the right balance)

The other nice thing is that it's very quot;tightquot; sounding. Palm mutes and whatnot are clear as a bell even with my EPI's stock pups. You'd think the BurstBuckers in my Standard are Duncan Distortions or EMG's or something..just super tight with great definition but cool PAF style tone.

Anyhoo..for all you folks seeking great sounds at low volume, you may wanna try one into a clean ss type amp. They really do sound good, and I'm pretty much a tube snob. It's not the same of course, but it's VERY VERY good.

Way cool product...

Cool. I bet you could pick up one of those pretty cheap now. Sounds like something good to look into if you've got a limited cash supply and are looking for something that will get you close to a tube amp.

It's cool that you fell back in love with some of your old gear, too.

I am a recent convert to Tech 21, but you're right - their stuff does sound great!


Originally Posted by JacksonMIACool. I bet you could pick up one of those pretty cheap now.

Unfortuanatly, Original SansAmps suffer from Cobain-used-it syndrome.