Vox valvetronics AD 120 VT.............. Ampmodelling???

timmerman

timmerman

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Great amp eh?

Very, very impressive sounds, but I like to look at it as ONE amp with lots of tonal varities rather than a clone-amp.

Why do people really call them model-amps? Selling point?

Yes you get an impressive amp with a lot of sounds but try not to see it as a clone of your AC 30, AC 15 or your Fender BAssman or your Marshall Superlead because.......................it is not!!

Still impressive amp for a relatively good price, so great stuff or....................?
 
I'd say that it is an amp-modeling amp, simply because the "amp tones" in the vox are "modeled" after famous amps. No one is going to say that it has the exact sound of a bassman, or ac-30, or boogie, but they share similar tonal qualities. They're an alternative to going out and buying all of those amps. I would place money on the fact that if someone who is good at recording would take one of these amps and record the different models, if you listened to it by itself, you'd be fooled. Obviously some models are better than others, but there are some good ones.
Personally, I'd never play one live or in the studio, but I think that they are a great tool for someone who may not have the money to go out and purchase lots of high end amps.
Rory
 
I think it does quite a bit, especially when compared to other amp modelers like the line 6. Perhaps it is just my mind telling me its the tube, but it sounds better and more "tube-like" than the other modelers out there. This is completely subjective too, have you tried one? By no means do I think its better than my tube marshall, fenders, or zvex, nor would I buy one for myself. But if I were in the market for a really versitile amp that sounded good, had lots of different useable sounds, and effects, its one hell of an amp.
rory
 
rory said:
I think it does quite a bit, especially when compared to other amp modelers like the line 6. Perhaps it is just my mind telling me its the tube, but it sounds better and more "tube-like" than the other modelers out there. This is completely subjective too, have you tried one? By no means do I think its better than my tube marshall, fenders, or zvex, nor would I buy one for myself.
rory
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I feel when I play through them that it is so easy, you do not have to work on your sound for it to come out. Compare that to an older valve amp [or even a solid-state amp] where you need to dig in to get your sound out of the amp, work a bit with the volume etc. Really you need to learn this as you go along.

With the ampsmodelers this seems to be not the case: Play a note and it is there,...........great? Yeah, but you cannot change that note too much as well.

Do not know if any of you plays bass as well?. Now when you play one of the "older" basses such as Fender Jazzbass of the Precision, you have the same thing there: You need to work on it for the sound to come out. Compare this to more "modern" basses such as a Warwick, and they seem to be so "easy" They almost play themselves.

Now this idea of "it plays itself" may have to do with the technology inside, perhaps this is also why some people refer to them as "sounding like plastic" a term people do not seem to use for any valve or solid-state amp.

Off course, with all of this it helps if you are interested in tone, what makes the sound, and the new innovations in sound. It seems that at some point ampengineers did get it right: Were able to make amps which sounded very pleasing to a lot of people. These days we love to go back to those days and recreate those sounds with the technology of today.

I love the fact that guitar is so much about DIY: You need to plug it into something to get a sound, you can alter the sound by adding boxes, you can tweak twose boxes, you can change the order of those boxes ect. ect.

As a keyboardplayer you do not get all those options. I used to play organ and I always looked at the guitarists around me in the band with all their leads, boxes and amps. I was just there sitting behind the organ and my leslie cab. Okay later on I found out that you could alter a lot to the sound of the leslie as well, in fact alter a whole lot to the organsound, but for guitar it seems to be more of "that is the thing what you do with them"

The whole appeal of playing electric is the DIY thing, but the market of today does tell younger people to get an amp which can "do it all", gone is the research and the fun. You just press a button and there it is, if you do not like that tone go to the next one without trying to find out WHY you did not like that tone in the first place.

Okay I know there are still younger guys who do the research thing..........think Ibanezrocks is one of them, but there are also a lot of people who seem to be happy with the sounds which come out of the box........

Eddie
 
Amp modeling

Well, they call it amplifier modeling, simply because the underlying technology being used is called "computer modeling" and the objects being modeled are musical instrument amplifiers. Computer modeling has been around a very long time. This is simply when you take the physics that are involved with the creation of a certain thing, and then translate these physics principles into computer algorithms. You can then create a computer model of the real-world equivalent, and do experiments on it by changing some of the variables. I'm sure, for example, that Hurricane Katrina has already been "modeled" on various workstations that are involved in weather research.

Computer modeling technology has also been used to model musical instruments for quite a long time, too. The first such instrument that I recall was the Yamaha WX-7 "wind synthesizer" which looked like a soprano sax with a cable coming out of the end. It had an actual reed mouthpiece (like on a sax or clarinet), but then used a computer chip to allow you to change the sound of the instrument to that of a flute or clarinet or trumpet or whatever. That was in about 1990 or so, which means that the use of computer modeling for modeling musical instruments is about 15 years old. This technology has been under development for at least four or five generations, now.
 
Amps Ive owned:

Fenders - BassmanRI, Prosonic, Evil Twin, Twin reverb, Blues Deluxe, Blues Deville, Pro Jr Marshalls- TSL100, Bluesbreaker Soldanos- SLO, Reverb-O-Sonic, Vox AC30, Ampegs, Mesas, a host of others I can't think of.

What am I playing the crap of for the past year?

Vox AD120.

play what sounds good.

H2H
 
With the ampsmodelers this seems to be not the case: Play a note and it is there,...........great? Yeah, but you cannot change that note too much as well.
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And this quote tells me you've never really played one of them. Maybe for 3 minutes in Guitar Center, but that doesn't count.

H2H
 
Hard2Hear said:
Amps Ive owned:

Fenders - BassmanRI, Prosonic, Evil Twin, Twin reverb, Blues Deluxe, Blues Deville, Pro Jr Marshalls- TSL100, Bluesbreaker Soldanos- SLO, Reverb-O-Sonic, Vox AC30, Ampegs, Mesas, a host of others I can't think of.

What am I playing the crap of for the past year?

Vox AD120.

play what sounds good.

H2H
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I have the 15-watter. I was looking at the 100W 2x12", the aim being that I could have all my patches set up and practice on the baby and take the daddy to gigs. Is the AD120 the same models and FX as the others? I've not actually seen it in recent adverts.

PS - H2H - is that your missus in the church picture? She's a stunner mate - you lucky man!! :)
 
timmerman said:
Great amp eh?

Very, very impressive sounds, but I like to look at it as ONE amp with lots of tonal varities rather than a clone-amp.

Why do people really call them model-amps? Selling point?

Yes you get an impressive amp with a lot of sounds but try not to see it as a clone of your AC 30, AC 15 or your Fender BAssman or your Marshall Superlead because.......................it is not!!

Still impressive amp for a relatively good price, so great stuff or....................?
Click to expand...
Have you got one of these now, Eddie? We're doing more Korg stuff now so if you want a bit of a deal ............................ pop over my place! ;)
 
Ok, I've had a look at the range and I'm confused all over again. The AD120 has loads more models and FX, and Celestion drivers rather than 'Vox' ones, but it doesn't have the extremely cool adjustable output wattage which allows you to drive the tube hard without higher volumes. I can't believe that they don't include a footswitch with the AD120 either!!

FWIW regarding the tubes in these amps - they work in the power amp stage rather than the pre stage (which is where most hybrid amps put them, including my Fender Roc Pro 1000). They're on a kinda redundant transformered circuit or something, which means you don't need to blast the hell out of them to get any 'valve tone' ... although, the louder you play the amp, the more signal the valve gets, which is obviously a desirable thing. :)

Nik
 
noisedude said:
it doesn't have the extremely cool adjustable output wattage which allows you to drive the tube hard without higher volumes.
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Yes it does. :)

1 watt X 2, 15 watts X 2, 30 watts X 2, and 60 watts X 2
Its one of the coolest things about the amp. I use 1 watt all the time for recording, it sounds awesome with the master fully up.

I liked the Celestion speakers it came with, but I changed them out to one Celestion Blue and one Vintage 30. This works a little better for me personally and the tones I use most.

H2H
 
Hard2Hear said:
Yes it does. :)

1 watt X 2, 15 watts X 2, 30 watts X 2, and 60 watts X 2
Its one of the coolest things about the amp. I use 1 watt all the time for recording, it sounds awesome with the master fully up.

I liked the Celestion speakers it came with, but I changed them out to one Celestion Blue and one Vintage 30. This works a little better for me personally and the tones I use most.

H2H
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You are my hero! I know what I'm saving for now!! :)

Although you could go even higher in my (admittedly unimportant) estimation by answering my question about the nice young lady in the photos on your website!
 
Hard2Hear said:
And this quote tells me you've never really played one of them. Maybe for 3 minutes in Guitar Center, but that doesn't count.

H2H[/QUOTE
No No Sir, but I have not spend enough time with any of them.........

Whenever I do get change to play though any of the modeling -amps I tend to scrawl through the whole menu of amp-sounds and the effects. Yes I hear what they are going for but the feel is so different...........

Not really trying to say there is no place for ampmodeling, no it is very useful and versatile e.g in live-situations and recording scenario's where people need a lot of sounds and don't have a lot of space........... ect. ect. It has all been said before eh? So .............let me just stop there.
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Bassman Brad said:
Well, they call it amplifier modeling, simply because the underlying technology being used is called "computer modeling" and the objects being modeled are musical instrument amplifiers. Computer modeling has been around a very long time. This is simply when you take the physics that are involved with the creation of a certain thing, and then translate these physics principles into computer algorithms. You can then create a computer model of the real-world equivalent, and do experiments on it by changing some of the variables. I'm sure, for example, that Hurricane Katrina has already been "modeled" on various workstations that are involved in weather research.

Computer modeling technology has also been used to model musical instruments for quite a long time, too. The first such instrument that I recall was the Yamaha WX-7 "wind synthesizer" which looked like a soprano sax with a cable coming out of the end. It had an actual reed mouthpiece (like on a sax or clarinet), but then used a computer chip to allow you to change the sound of the instrument to that of a flute or clarinet or trumpet or whatever. That was in about 1990 or so, which means that the use of computer modeling for modeling musical instruments is about 15 years old. This technology has been under development for at least four or five generations, now.
Click to expand...

Thanks brad,

No need to add anything to your words here,

Cheers

Eddie
 
noisedude said:
Have you got one of these now, Eddie? We're doing more Korg stuff now so if you want a bit of a deal ............................ pop over my place! ;)
Click to expand...


What? You are trying to get me to buy more gear :confused: :D

What about being able to use equipement on a loan basis for example for one month?

I will be in some time next week, and looking forward to meeting you man :)

Eddie
 
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