Amplitube Review
Before you download Amplitube from IK Multimedia, take a second to adjust your mindset. Usually with guitar gear software, you’ll pay a couple of hundred dollars and up to get hundreds of stomp boxes, amps, cabs, mics and racks. The demo is like being a kid with free reign in a candy store and you’ll run gleefully around snatching up handfuls of tempting treats while giggling insanely. This sugar rush can easily make you think this is awesome, but in truth for every yummy-candy-amazing-sound, there are 20 that are just “meh” or downright awful that you’ll never eat, I mean, use.
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Now we’re getting to the Amplitube mindset. The download gets you the core software, not a demo, and from that base you can try out and buy individual pieces of gear. Much more cost effective, but also a better approach; less IS more, it makes it easier to get the best out of what you have, saves time flicking between 1000 different options and keeps you focused on getting down to playing.
The downside is that most of the sample sounds tell you “You don’t have such-and-such installed” which can seem a bit frustrating at first. You don’t get that initial heady rush, and that’s why I said change your mindset before downloading and trying.
In the end what you get is an awesome set of sounds. I’ve tried hundreds of pieces of gear since the free download, most of which did not thrill me so I’m glad I didn’t have to buy it. Instead, in two shopping trips, I have the gear that gives me the kinds of sounds I like – that other gear is great, I’m sure, it’s just not for me.
I still have infinite sonic variety from just that subset of gear, and over time I will get to know it better and better and get more and more out of it. Perfect!
Does it sound real?
I am not the guy to ask, sorry. I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there with $4k to spare to know just how a Soldano SLO100 really sounds, but I’m not one of them. I’m also a tone philistine – I was DI’ing a Zoom half-rack digital FX box straight into the mixing desk 15 years ago, and the only remotely decent amp I owned was a Fender Princeton Chorus. I have no idea if it sounds or feels like the real thing.
What I do know is that it sounds great. It is not thin, fizzy, noisy, or any of the other drawbacks you can get with effects that exist purely in the digital domain. It’s warm, rich and responsive, it changes if I play quietly or loudly, it does what I’d expect it to you in general if it was a physical piece of equipment, and I end up with sounds I can control, work with, and like. What more can you ask?
So What Did I Buy?
Here’s one of my favorite set-ups right now, for a crunch type sound (this picture has been composited out of the various components and screens):
For my initial purchase, I went with the Soldano SLO100 for clean and crunch sounds, a Vox AC-30 cab (didn’t really like the sounds I got from the amps, to my surprise), a Fender ’65 Twin Reverb (closest thing I could find to the Princeton Chorus), a digital reverb rack, and the Mudhoney stomp pedal for the range of sounds from warm and crunchy to over-the-top distorted. A second trip to the store, thanks to a Fender sale, saw me pick up a Fender Pitch Shift, Fender Tape Echo (wonderfully traditional!), the ’64 Vibroverb Custom amp (I love Texas blues sounds), and a multi-tap delay stomp with a couple of mics just for the sake of it.
I now find I have a range of great clean, crunch and distorted sounds, with enough psychedelia from the extras to let me make some crazy sounds that I’ll use just once in a blue moon. I still find the presets to be of little use, as I’m always missing one piece of gear or other – it would be nice would be if it offered to download in demo mode all the items you don’t have for a preset which would make it easier to explore some good sounds and find the gear you need to make them.
Meantime, I’m just making my own preset library of the sounds I like, so I’m doing fine.
Economies Of Scale
Total cost for the gear I purchased when I add both shopping trips together, around $90 or so. Now, you can see that purchasing the full-meal-deal is good value for money, if you have all that money to spend in one go in the first place. Have to admit that from my tests and trials, I now have all my “must have” gear for my set up, so I’m pleased not to have to spend the extra to get stuff I didn’t really want anyway.
And if I do ever change my mind and want to expand? I can do so at any time I choose, or I can wait for the sales and specials to snap up a bargain.
Verdict
Exactly what I was looking for in terms of functionality, budget, and precision tailoring to my personal preferences. Awesome.
Visit IK Multimedia to try and buy Amplitube for yourself.
