Scott Henderson Discussion

[blackstratblues]

Hi Scott, thought you'd find this interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ZF3Q66za4

Maybe see if James can bring one over to try, from what I understand they claim IRs are static and the OX processing is dynamic.

It's funny they modelled the cone cry - I know how you hate it, luckily you can disable it altogether.

[Scott Henderson]

Not to be rude in any way, but this looks overpriced and already outdated. You can get a Suhr reactive load box for much cheaper, and IR's are virtually free. Suhr is coming out with a box like this the size of a pedal, and for less than half the price. Also, this seems to be geared towards people who use non-master volume amps - I use a master volume amp so I'd have no need for this box since I can get a good tone from my amp at a wide variety of volume levels.

[jason3000]

I am extremely interested in this box as well. Just wondering Scott do you think it's not good because you don't think it will sound as good as the Suhr?

It does sound a bit expensive, but may be worth the price? Time will tell. The dynamic processing vs the static IR snapshot sounds very interesting and like nothing that's been seen yet in the IR world from what i can see.

[Scott Henderson]

It looks like a glorified attenuator, and after trying every one on the market and hating them all, I'm extremely skeptical.

However I was also skeptical of the whole IR thing until they finally got it right, and for much cheaper than this box is selling for.

I can't officially put down something I haven't heard, but it just sounds like more snake oil to me. As soon as he mentioned amp modeling in the video, I left the page.

[peter_heijnen]

UAD tries to fill the void they left open by refusing to accomodate a native IR loader in their own UAD software environment. I have the Apollo Twin and i love it, but UAD definetly are overpriced monopolists.

[blackstratblues]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk76QJlgEiM

This demo looks interesting though...

[Scott Henderson]

Much better demo for sure - Shawn Tubbs is a really good player. However I'm not seeing anything on this box that has any value for me. I seriously doubt the reactive load is better than the Suhr, and I've tried enough IR's to know that no one company makes enough good ones. FX and EQ's are useless to me because the best ones are made by companies like Waves, an impedance switch is unnecessary because amps usually sound the best at 8 ohms, an attenuator is useless because all of them sound like shit, and no disrespect for Shawn whatsoever, but all those tones sound completely generic. Doesn't mean they're not good though. My experience is that to get your personal live tone, you have to mix and match products from different companies - Suhr guitar > Klon overdrive > Marshall amp > Kerry Wright cab > Greenbacks. Same with recording - Suhr guitar > Klon overdrive > Marshall amp > Suhr reactive load > Neve mic pre > MixIR plug-in > Celestion Balanced Greenback IR > Waves VEQ > Soundtoys Echoboy > Lexicon reverb.

Now here's a company that claims to do all that in one box. I don't think so.

[blackstratblues]

At the moment, I'm running my CAA OD-100 into a Suhr Reactive Load and using some Celestion Impulses in Mix IR2 for recording when I can't mic. I have a UA Apollo 16 interface so for realtime monitoring I use the Friedman BE-100 plugin with the pre & power amp sections bypassed, making it an effective cab sim.

The interesting bit is UA claim their cab sim algorithm is 'dynamic' vs IRs which are static. I'm guessing you could plug the speaker through on the OX to the Suhr Load and set it to 0% attenuation, bypassing the OX load completely. Then you could compare loads, which would be very interesting.

Btw - the OX's processing is all at 44.1Khz, I wished they would do 96KHz

My hope is that at some point UA offers the OX as a plugin, that would be cool for Apollo interface users.

[Scott Henderson]

If the OX can only do 44.1, all I can say about that is WEAK! LAME!

[dizzy]

Speaking of attenuators I realized something recently:
I had a fryette power station. I used it a few times and it is the only attenuator that I have tried that sounded good but....
Rock guitar sounds don’t sound good to me at low volume! I can do lower gain breaking up sounds but bringing a distorted guitar lower then pretty loud just sounded funny to me. On recording you can turn it down and it sounds good but live not so much...at least that is how I feel.

If it a sound like Tom Petty playing Princetons then it is awesome but an AC/DC/Hendrix/Henderson/Landau/Beck live solo tone needs to be fairly loud. The volume itself is one of the factors that makes it great. Imagine the intro to Beethoven’s 5th with an attenuator:). If people want to go hear that symphony they have to be ok with some volume and the same for rock guitar fans.

So fundamentally, no matter how well an attenuator works, it will never sound natural to me.

And this is just my opinion obviously.

[Scott Henderson]

I think the room has a lot to do with it. In a big boomy room where you still have to play soft, the loudness of the room itself could probably make using an attenuator seem OK, but in a dry dead room like an intimate restaurant, an attenuator makes the amp sound like a toy. That's been my experience - it's why I pretty much bailed on the idea of playing around LA more - I have no desire to try to get my tone in places where the knives and forks are louder than I am, which seems to be what most small venue owners want.

[dizzy]

Yeah, you’re right—-the room creates the context.
Using a clean sound it is easier to “fit” in many environments but if that is not your voice then a clean sound(like an archtop) doesn’t really express what you want to say.
I’ve noticed some players can use an archtop for one gig, a strat for another, then a nylon string etc. But how many great jazz players use more then one basic sound? The closest is Pat Metheny but he is still known for his archtop sound and developed that before he got heavily into playing other guitars.

[peter_heijnen]

[Scott Henderson]

I feel like one of my jobs on this forum is to warn people about bad, overpriced gear. What a perfect opportunity UA has offered me to do exactly that. The price of the best reactive load box from Suhr is $399. A great interface like the Apogee Duet is $595. The best IR player MixIR is $49. There are thousands of great IR libraries out there from Celestion and Ownhammer for under $20.

Now here comes UA with their do-it-all box, offering only a fraction of what you get with the gear listed above for $1299, and their ONLY selling point is that you don't need a computer.... yes, a computer which gives you the option of thousands of plug-ins, a recording DAW, backing tracks, and countless other extremely valuable tools for any musician. This is a no-brainer.

[dizzy]

I agree with you Scott. For 450.00 my Suhr load box and some IRs allowed me to sell my kemper and still get better tone.
Couple that with the fact that I seriously doubt the UAD effects are going to rival echo-boy from sound toys and it seems like the product is overpriced hype.
One thing that it does that you didn’t mention is attenuation but there are lots of standalone attenuators out there. Is someone really going to bring that huge box to a gig for an attenuator?