Review: Behringer V-Ampire LX112 combo

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to make another legacy review, this time of a Behringer combo which was quite popular among the beginner guitar players in the mid-2000s, because at least back then the German company was known for producing cost effective music gear, which often were inspired by products created by popular brands, but that often featured a very good technical spec sheet.

When Line6 presented the POD in the end of the '90s, this device represented a paradigm shift in terms of guitar amp simulation, finally simulators were leaving the niche of toys and were starting to be used also from professionals, and few years after Behringer launched its interpretation of this new wave of digital amp sims, the V-Amp, which had similar shape and features, but that added even more sound possibilities, and along with it they released also the V-Amp Pro (the rack version) and the V-Ampire, a combo which basically mounted a V-Amp Pro on a speaker, and this happened even before Line6 released its first combos based on the POD.

All this at a fraction of the price of the Line6 versions.

The V-Ampire LX112 is a now discontinued digital 1x12 combo with 120w RMS (there is also a 2x12 version), or 2x60 RMS stereo, which back then had features that almost no other combo had: 32 amp models, 15 cab simulations, 16 effects and so on, all controllable via MIDI, and given the price it was quite popular.

Tone wise the sounds were surprisingly good for the time, they were usable for any genre, also in a live environment (even if the power amp was weaker than the numbers tell), and held up also compared with an actual POD, except for probably generating a bit more noise.

So, where is the catch? Where were they cutting costs? Simple: build quality.
The amp was extremely poorly built: the first one I bought (new) made a lound bang the first time I turned it on, producing dense black smoke, and when I called the store they tried also the others that they had in stock and they all had the same problem, therefore I had to wait several weeks for the arrival of a new batch, and when I got mine replaced, it finally worked.

The poor build quality showed itself not only with the power amp failure, but also with the knobs: they were made of extremely thin and weak plastic, and the first time I carried the amp in a car, just because of the vibrations, FOUR knobs fell from the amp (and no, I wasn't racing the Paris Dakar rally).
After this experience, I decided to sell it and to buy something with a less shiny spec sheet but with a stronger build quality, and since then I learned my lesson.

Nevertheless, if you need a very inexpensive combo to doodle around in your room and you don't plan to move it EVER, for its street price of today (around 70/80 bucks) it could still give you some fun.

Thumbs sideways!

Specs taken from the website:

- 2 x 60-Watt guitar modeling workstation 

- 32 amp models

- 15 speaker cabinet simulations 

- 16 multi-effects

- 12'' Bugera Vintage speaker for classic sound reproduction

- 120-Watt mono or 2 x 60-Watt stereo operation with additional cabinet (optional)

- 125 memory locations, divided into 25 banks of 5 presets each

- rotary controls with dedicated LED indicators

- 15 rear panel connectors allow comprehensive routing to suit virtually any conceivable application-plus MIDI In, Out/Thru

- Full MIDI implementation including program change commands, control change commands and SysEx, allowing extensive MIDI control using our free V-AMP Design editor software for Windows operating systems

- Balanced stereo XLR DI Out with ground lift and switchable ULTRA-G speaker simulation

- Pre-DSP send/return for dry recording and wet monitoring

- Adjustable stereo aux input for line-level signals (CD, soundcard, monitoring etc.)-can be re-configured to feed headphones only, for in-ear monitoring applications

- Frequency compensated stereo headphone output with adjustable volume

- adjustable auto-chromatic tuner


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The focus of our mix part 2

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to elaborate more on a topic we have already started talking about here: The Focus of our mix!

Let's start by saying that if we have applied the 5 rules of the first article we will already know what is the focus of our mix, whether it's the vocals, the drums, the guitars, the synths etc... 

Once we have a mix that satisfies us we need to make 2 more trials to check the balance of our mix:

1) Check the mix in mono: maybe the mix sounds incredibly well in your 1000 bucks monitors and headphones, but you need to imagine that roughly half of the listeners will listen to it in less than ideal conditions, like from the mono speaker of the phone, and you need to be ready to spot all the possible problems (for example something hard panned that disappears or that makes some weird interaction with the other instruments or loses balance.

2) Check the mix at minimum volume: now it's the time of the trial by fire, we need to listen to the mix with the volume at the minimum, when it's barely understandable. 

What are the instruments that stand out the most? Are they the ones that we expected? If they are not, we need to eq the things we want in spotlight better, moving them towards the most audible frequency area (2khz to 5khz) and carving space in the other instruments.
I remember in the past I have listened to some death metal song that at normal volume was sounding decent, then lowering the volume we realized that basically only the kick remained audible, so the sound guy had to rebalance things a bit, and this way he freed up a lot of headroom for the other instruments without sacrificing too much the perceived kick volume at normal levels.

3) Once the focus of your mix is established, work your way backwards: once you have clear where you want the attention of your listener to go, you need to put the chosen instrument under the spotlight, and make room both in terms of volume and eq through the other ones, according to your priority list; don't let the audience focus on a useless cowbell while in the background the singer is singing the most beautiful melody of all times!

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Review: Engl Savage 120

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing a monster of an amp, 120w of tube power, which is considered the most representative of the German brand Engl: the Savage 120!

This head came out originally in 1993, a time in which digital amps were basically useless toys, and in which if you wanted a no-compromise guitar tone you had to really go for the real thing: a super large, super heavy (22kg!) rock amplifier, with a lot of tubes (even in the fx loop) and volume, and if you wanted to reach the perfect tone you had to crank it to the point of being almost unusable.

The Engl Savage is a head that embodies well the attitude of the brand: high priced amps, hand made in Germany, which provides impressive solidity, reliability and mids capable of cutting through the most dense mix: usually if in a concert only one of the 2 guitarists has an Engl amp, the other one gets completely covered.

The Savage offered back then features that were not common (and still today are not), making it a very complete, full optional amp: 2 fx loops, 2 master volumes, 4 channels, and a ton of knobs and switches to craft your tone in a very detailed way.

How does it sound? As I was mentioning, it has a very distinctive mid range which is very cutting, but it features also a lot of flexibility; as a reference, think about a Marshall as an amp with prominent mid highs, while the Engl is an amp with its distinctive tone a bit more in the mid range, slightly more nasal and with a ton of additional gain.

Compared to other popular heads of the brand, for example the Powerball, which came out almost 10 years later, the Savage sounds more classic and in your face (more punchy, like a Marshall JM800 compared to a DSL or a TSL, which sound more modern), a bit less scratchy and slightly more nasal, while the Powerball is a little bit more modern, but both heads retain the undeniable Engl character, which I really love.

Today this amp is sold in its Mark II version, which comes in 60w and 120w and features a serie of extra optionals (noise gate, MIDI switching) and tweaks in terms of tone, which doesn't modify too much the soul of this head.

Thumbs up!

Specs for the Mark II version, the one currently sold:

- 4 Channels: Clean, Crunch I, Crunch II, Lead

- Power: 120 W

- Preamplifier tubes: 6x Engl ECC83 / 12AX7

- Power amp tubes: 2x Engl 6550

- 2 Tube-driven FX loops with separate balance controls

- Noise Gate with adjustable threshold (footswitchable)

- MIDI Channel Assignment and Controller Enable Switch - Write / Copy (for MIDI programming)

- Sound Switching options: Input Lo / Hi, Bright, Preshape, Contour (Clean, Crunch I), Mid Le./Bo., Depth Boost, Gain Lo / Hi, Contour (Crunch II, Lead), Rough / Smooth

- Controls: Gain (separate for each channel), Bass, Mid Lean, Mid Bold, Treble (Clean, Crunch I), Bass, Middle, Treble, Tone Balance (Crunch II, Lead), Volume (separate for each channel), Presence A, Presence B, Master A, Master B

- Controls (rear side): Noise Gate Threshold Level, FX Loop I Balance, FX Loop II Balance

- Outputs: 1 x 4 Ohm, 2 x 8 Ohm, 2 x 16 Ohm, 1 x 16 Ohm

- Made in Germany

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Visual references when mastering

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a topic that ties together our mastering article and the one about frequency analyzers: how to use visual references to help us when mastering!

The first tool I want to talk about is Izotope Tonal Balance Control, a tool that is available for separate purchase and that is also included in other Izotope bundles, which is very simple: they have analyzed thousands of record, divided by genre, and have found the average eq curve of the tunes, so you can compare your master to this average to see where you're at: does your master need more low end? Less? Does it need more air? 

This product is as simple as brilliant, and probably is the most useful mastering tool that came out in the recent years, because sometimes your room is not treated, or your monitors or headphones are not the best, and certain areas of your mix can go unnoticed: this way you can easily find where there is too much (or too little) energy compared with the average of the other commercial recordings, and it's a great starting point also just to go back to our mix project and correct there.

The second one, for much more precise adjustments, is Voxengo Span, a free plugin (click here to download it): with this frequency analyzer not only you can see in great detail the analysis of your spectrum, but you can zoom to the extreme, and this is interesting because it's like looking at our mix with a magnifying glass: if we want we can easily go resonance hunting and with an eq lower, surgically, all the parts in which there is an accumulation of energy (for example too many instruments in the same frequency area, which produce a spike in volume), this way we can mix some of those instruments differently, or lower with an eq these spikes: in any case the aim is to free headroom without harming the mix, cleaning up the troublesome areas so that this way we will have more room to push our master, and have all the available volume in the areas we want.

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Review: Audiority Dr Drive

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to review a new free Vst plugin, an overdrive by Audiority: the Dr Drive!

This overdrive is modeled after the Horizon Devices Precision Drive, a modified version of the classic Tube Screamer designed by Misha Mansoor of Periphery, which includes 4 knobs (plus the gate switch, which is in a separate part of the GUI):

- Level (which is similar to the Tube Screamer one, except for the fact that the 6 in this corresponds to the 10 in the TS, so use it very carefully),

- Drive, which not too different from the TS one, very usable (I have used this plugin mainly as a booster, though)

- Attack, which determines where is set the attack when picking, from somewhere in the lower mids to the ear piercing highs area, and it's useful especially when creating modern tones,

- Bright, which is basically a tone knob, but tuned a bit more towards the high end, therefore conservative settings are suggested,

- Gate: an intelligent noise gate that basically removes the need of adding a separate gate plugin to our guitar chain, thus saving CPU

What can I say? Since I have tried this plugin, it has become my go-to overdrive for all projects, because it sounds great, it has an integrated noise gate and it gives even more tone shaping tools than the classic Tube Screamer, so I really suggest all of our readers to download this plugin and try it out, it might become your ultimate overdrive plugin for a long time.

Thumbs up!

Specs taken fromthe website: 


- Analog Modelled Overdrive

- Drive, Tone, Attack and Level controls

- Pre and Post effect gain

- Mix control

- Noise Gate

- Resizable interface

Happy new year from Guitar Nerding Blog!

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