The Anvil - Ignite Amps Newest VST Plugin

Description:
The Anvil is a digital emulation of a three channels tube preamplifier for guitar. It has been developed to accurately model its real hardware counterpart, designed by Andy Zeugs.

Features:
− Dynamic 12AX7 / ECC83 coupled triode stages analog modeling
− Three channels: clean, rhythm and lead, each with fully separated controls
− Mono / Stereo processing support
− Selectable oversampling rate (up to 8x)
− Global input / output level controls
− Double precision (64 bit) floating point mathematical model
− Fully automatable controls
- Zero latency

Fully coded in C++


Click here to Download

I was given the opportunity to test this beast before it's release. Thanks for the opportunity Alu! Although it's not my favorite, It keeps growing on me. and honestly, I still have mixed feelings about it. I could even change my mind about it again before I finish typing this. Having said that, two things are certain.

1. The Anvil plays like a dream. It's very responsive and tight. It responds well to dynamic changes and simply feels good. And I mean GOOD.

2. Most of you will absolutely love it.

The Anvil tends to have a very scooped profile. The first time I inserted it on a track, I already had the track recorded. Meaning that I heard it before I played it. I knew it was going to be more scooped than what I generally like, but I almost didn't even want to play it.

..But then I picked up the guitar and started playing.....and couldn't stop. I thought "This thing feels fantastic!" So much so that I stayed up way too late one night just playing. It responds well and just feels real.

I've found that I really like playing the Anvil with less gain. It sounds better to me with a (still on the lead channel mind you) little less gain than I would normally use. And I think you can hear it in the examples below. This less gain worked really well for the slide part as well (hear below).

So then I did my comparison tests and decided that I still like my NRR1/x50 tone better. It simply cuts through the mix better and has a little more uumph in those mids that I like. I also think the Anvil has just a hair too much upper end saturation, making it a little muddy at times. NRR1/x50, while a little brighter and a little harsh-er, has a slightly smoother curve up the frequency range to me. But I'm certainly not finished experimenting with this amp and I could completely change my mind in a few days.

For the nice feeling it has, I'll probably use The Anvil to track with. And with some more experimenting with cabs and post EQ changes, I can probably find a better way of fine tuning this amp to make it sound more like something I could use for everything.

Screenshot of my Settings
Anvil - Take 1
Anvil - Take 2 re-tracked, better playing and added slide
X50/NRR1 - Take 2 X50 on the left, NRR1v1 on the right - Understand that I've had months to refine this tone as well. I still love the bite it has!

Bass: TSE B.O.D., Lextac
Drums SSD 3.5

Thanks Ignite Amps for a beautiful plugin.

Steven Slate Drums 4.0

Just got an email. Here's to even better sounding drums in the future, I'm excited:

The New STEVEN SLATE DRUMS Virtual Instrument

The new STEVEN SLATE DRUMS 4.0 Virtual Instrument is going to be the most massive drum instrument in the industry. New in 4.0 is the new SSD4 Player, a drum sampler built from the ground up by the same development team behind the award winning TRIGGER drum replacement plugin. Also new are dozens of new drumkits recorded by Steven Slate called the DELUXE series. These new unprocessed kits use Steven's years of experience in recording drums to create the most amazing sounding virtual kits you'll hear! New kits include multiple Rock kits, a Jazz and Brushes kit, a vintage early 60's Ringo kit, and even 5 new Electro, Dance, and Urban kits designed by producer Griffon Boice. SSD4 will also debut with multiple expansion packs in various genres by some of the top producers and mixers in the field.
So do you want to be one of the first people to try SSD4? Well.. there's a catch. We're looking for some people who will want to help us make this plugin a rock solid beast on all systems and in all DAWS. If you're willing to put the time in to help, then you should be part of our beta team! We're going to choose 50 new people to join the SSD4 beta team this week. Here is how:
1. Sign in to your TWITTER account and follow Steven Slate at @slateproaudio
2. Later today, Steven will announce how to apply to be an SSD4 beta tester.
3. That's it.

New Song - Mercury

http://asonorouspose.bandcamp.com/track/mercury

It's been a long time coming....but here it is. The past year has been a little crazy. I've been working on this song since last September and I have finally finished it. I was going to wait to release it, but decided I needed something new on here. I currently have 2 other songs in the works, so hopefully it won't be this long on those.

"Mercury" was recorded in my usual fashion. I used the Vox sim from Revalver for the cleans and NNR1 and Lextac for the distortion. I think they make for a real nice mix. Tips on how I've set up the tones can be found in past blogs.

I hope you enjoy!

Please feel free to leave comments or questions. If you like the tracks, I would encourage you to buy it from my bandcamp page. Just click on the music player at the top.

Here's the skinny: I spent much more time on this one with editing, tweeking and getting everything just right, and I think it shows. Steven slate 3.5 just like all the others for the drums. Very little actually changed with the drums from past mixes. It's probably more about how the the guitars/vocals/bass are mixed. I spent extra time with the verbs and delay to put everything in the same space. Epicverb and taldubIII.The opening clean guitars are Revalver 3 Fox, redwirez Marshall IR's, double tracked with tal chorus (same dude who did tal-dub delays - WONDERFUL plugs btw if you haven't tried them) on each side, epicverb and taldubIII delay.....my cpu hates me.....I ended up bouncing everything to keep the cpu down. Distortion: And thank you, Alu, for NRR1....it's freakin awesome! The setup I used was the one we agreed was the better from my tests way back when, but with the volume on my LP rolled off about 2/3 of the way, Double tracked, panned 86%. One take with a lextac, slightly more gain than NNR1 (instead of doubled, it's a single play through with my old lextac settings at 100, 84, 84, 100% - you can really hear the difference at 4:40...the alllllmost wanting to feedback single note is Lextac and then the NRR1 comes in like I described above). The solo at the beginning is Lextac as described, the solo at the end of the song is NRR1.Vocals are done with a MXL 990 and run through so many fx I'm surprised my computer is not burning - Ni/Tim Exile's "the Mouth", Lextac, reatune, verbs, delays, more autotunes :P etc.... and double and triple tracked in places.Bass is BA500 from the old xgear for lows, lextac for high and string noise - all with ampeg implulses.

Police chatter used by creative commons permission, Thanks ERH!
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

TSE X50 Has Arrived!

..DROOL... http://www.theserinaexperiment.net/website/software.htm 5150 anybody? I don't mind if I do. What I'm hearing from this sim is far better than even the Peavey Revalver MKIII version I have. It's still in a beta version and is quite high on the CPU consumption, but hopefully that will be addressed in the final version. The ability to switch between el34 and 6L6 tubes might just make up for it though. Between Lextac, NRR1, and x50, I think I'm done looking for amps. Metal heads rejoice! Thanks Onqel!

Ok, so I pushed the beat a little to much. The point here is the tone, not my lack of "metronomeness".

CLICK HERE FOR MY TEST (using 5150 cab from Redwirez): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3406793/x50%20test.mp3

AND AN UPDATED VERSION (using Uberkab and Marshall IR's): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3406793/x50%20test2.mp3

Ignite Amps TS-999 SubScreamer VST Plug-In

With the quality stuff coming out these days, I'm finding more time to tweek and less time to make music and just play. On the other hand, it's real nice to have these quality tools available.

Enter the newest edition to the Ignite Amps family, The TS-999 SubScreamer. I've not tried it as of the time of this post, but looking at the quality of the NRR1 amp, I'm sure it's pretty rockin. I've also heard some real good things about it such as "Organic", "Realistic sounding", and "Awesome". Here's what the creator has to say about it:


Inspired by the most famous green overdrive pedal (version 808), based on the real pedal built by Ignite Amps for the italian thrashers Subhuman

Features:
- Dynamic 2N3904 BJT input and output buffers analog modeling
- Dynamic 1N4148 diode clipping circuit analog modeling
- Symmetric / Asymmetric clipping mode
- Normal / Fat mode
- Input level control for better response to different pickups
- Internal oversampling (selectable between 2x, 4x and 8x)
- Switchable input and output buffer modeling for better CPU performance
- Mono / Stereo support
- Double precision floating point internal processing

Fully coded in C++ using the Steinberg SDK 2.4

GET IT HERE: http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13011