What Pedalboard Amp Should You Get?

Video Transcript

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Welcome to get offset. My name is Emily, and I’m here to talk about amps in boxes. Pedalboard amp solutions and how to find the one that’s best for you. There are a ton of options out there for ’em. Pedal board amplifiers amps that exists in a board format is what is what that means. And there, there are a few different things that people mean when they’re talking about these kinds of amps, but for the most part, what I mean is an amplifier.

So that emulates the sound of an actual physical amplifier. And is used at least has the ability to be used in a DEI direct kind of situation be that recording directly into your focus rate or recording. Or playing live and going straight into the board for a silent stage or just because you trust the, the monitoring and things like that.

So here are just a few of the Pella board kind of amps that are popular. The strive and radium is out of frame because it’s on my permanent rig. The milkman, the amp, also part of a permanent rig. So I’m not pulling either of those off of their respective pedal boards for this video, but I do have the.

Walrus a C S one. The Cavs is mano, the humble DSN and Humboldt electronics simplifier. Over here I have the Seymour Duncan. Power stage one 70 here. I have the GT 1000 core by boss. I’m a little bit out of space. So I’m just throwing these in here as I can. And then over here I have the Holly. Digit. So these are just a few of the, actually this is other than a milkman and the Iridium.

These are all of my pedalboard sized amp solutions. So I’m actually gonna, going to start with kind of the more complicated ones. So I’m gonna leave the poly, the digit and focus there, but firstly, I want to talk about some of the differences that some of these. These have the biggest one that a lot of people care about, especially praise and worship or ambient players is a stereo compatibility.

Can you get that big spread had stereo spread that immersive kind of sound with these pedal board amps and a lot of them. A lot of them do enable you to do stereo say the most popular options generally allow stereo ends and stereo out, including the Strymon Iridium. Which again, off, off the board this poly digit definitely has stereo outs.

The GT core 1000 core, the only ones that don’t stereo outs. And that’s just, and that’s just because of the versions. Here are the Seymour Duncan power stage. I’m just going to hold that up here. The one 70 doesn’t have stereo outs. I forget if the 200 does, but the 200 definitely is I think, worth the upgrade for the price.

So this is really nice. Look how small this is. And even though this is mano. It has some features that some people wouldn’t be able to live without. And that I personally wouldn’t get wouldn’t recommend gigging without. And also this calves use mano, but the original cabs juice is stereo. The milkman amps are probably the best example.

Most well-known example. The one that I use the most, that is just a mano output. And. Like I said, I I would prefer both of these, the see where Duncan power stage and the milkman, the amp. For gigging. And there’s a big reason for that. It’s because the milkman and the Seymour Duncan power stage or power amps, that means they can power your speaker cab.

And that is, I think, essential for a lot of up and coming smaller musicians, because unless you are really confident about your monitoring situation and the sound system in the venue, It’s it’s going to be a nightmare. And I will explain why I’ll give you an, a couple stories from my Sunday crush performances, but like things like DIY gigs you know, some, some gigs in smaller clubs really small clubs gigs and art galleries.

They don’t always have the best monitoring. I have played a few art galleries with Sunday crush, a few kind of makeshift venues and fruit for what it’s worth. Those gigs do pay pretty well. So like, I love them. I love, I love the one time we played in like this kind of convenience store on an Island. It was a great paying gig concert.

People came out there. Wasn’t a lot of other stuff going on in the Island, but I had called. Ahead of time and said, Hey, I have a dim. Is it going to be a problem? And the guy said, Oh no, we have a PA. I’m like, cool. So that’s one thing you need. If you’re going to use this, a solution like, like this, that doesn’t power.

I can’t power a speaker cab. And I was like, yeah. Cool, great. Why fail to ask was, do you have monitor wedges and they did not. So I literally couldn’t hear myself the whole gig. The band couldn’t hear me because I didn’t bring a speaker cab. I didn’t have one yet. Afterwards I quickly bought one decorated it with my band mate and saw a better speaker in it.

And so next time then we played this art gallery. Everyone could hear me. It was amazing. It’s amazing how much more confident the whole band can be when they can hear each other. Really cool. So what I do is I have my milkman on my board all the time and I have the speaker cab in the truck. And if we can’t, if I can’t go DIY, or if I’m not confident going full Dai or for some reason, the video doesn’t want me to very normal.

I can, I can grab it, plug it in bang. Everybody can hear me. So if. If you’re not sure about like the caliber of the venues you’re going to be playing or whether or not they have the capacity to do like have a great monitoring situation and you don’t want to in an emergency you to then bro, somebody saying, if anyway, you’re gonna, you’re gonna want something like the power stage, the milkman.

So they can actually drive a speaker cab. In case of an emergency, you know what? I want to talk about it. I’m going to talk about the power stage a little bit more. So I’m going to put this over here. It’s, it’s, it’s a different version of it. This is supposed to be a very transparent kind of amplifier.

So you’ll want to have like a pregame pedal, like the Carolina effects Icarus in front of it, or like the Benson preamp, protested, pregame. I meant to say preamp. And yeah, then you’re, you’re good. Like, this is like a great solution for when you really want to hear those pedals. You’ve spent so much time and energy and money accumulating very, very transparent kind of tone.

The one thing, the one 70 doesn’t have that the 200 does have is a cab emulator. The milkman definitely has this reviews on it are some people love it. I think it’s great. I really like it. Some people don’t, that’s fine. That’s where something like the cabs is, comes in handy. So I could plug the Seymour Duncan power amp power stage or the milk ban either.

Directly into the soundboard, or I can run it through this first. And this has a ton of different cab, some sounds, but it’s not an amp emulator. So if you don’t have an amp, you might want. Again, to use a preempt puddle that kind of shapes your tone a little bit more. Sometimes basis find that unnecessary.

They can just go directly into a cab, but yeah, so that’s a solution here. And so these two things combined. That’s going to be out of focus can create a very nice, very nice little amplifier situation for you. But another thing, the power stage one 70 doesn’t have that, you know, not all of these have the politer doesn’t have this either.

I don’t believe so. Yep. Headphone jacks. So if you want to do silent practice, You’re going to plug this into an interface. Or you plug it into this and this has a headphone out so easy, so easy enough solutions, but something to consider. So to put the power stage away, going to put the cabs mano away, the poly digit and the GTX 1000 core are the next two.

I want to talk about even though these aren’t, these are not traditional amp in a box situations, but what they can both do. Yeah. They both have amp and cab emulators built into them. So just like you would use these two guys you can use the poly or the GTX core or something like the pod go, the HX stop those big multi effective units due to the have amping cab simulators.

So they can encompass your entire sound. That can be all you have. And I swear, man, if I was doing like a flyaway gig, I would, I would consider using like the, the poly edition or the GTX 1000 core by boss. I would, you can make like, do set lists with them so you can go in and make sure your songs from the right order.

And then just the next song, next song, next song. Easy, really easy. Once you do the menu dives, once you build the sounds like that is the hard part. Everyone’s just going to tell you, like, Oh, it’s so easy on those of these. Get them at least kind of in view. I mean, they’re complex, they’re complex machines.

I did live streams with both of these kind of running through them, you know, as much as I could, because it’s so hard to con combine like one, do one demo to cover the features. So that was more an exploratory kind of video. But I’m impressed with both of them. I really liked the digits the way that it’s all laid out on the screen and the touch screen is really neat.

The GTA, the GT 1000 core also, also really cool. Really, really cool. Great sounds. So I’m going to move those out of the way. And I want to talk about, let’s talk about the walrus ACS one. This is one of my more recent demos. It is a stereo input, stereo output, mini capable pedal. It’s very much in the same vein as the strive and radium.

This has More capacity to do a very, very distinct left and right stereo, which I think is fantastic for recording for life situations. I don’t think I would ever ask a sound person to do that for a Sunday crush show. If I was just kind of more experimental ambient, I might ask the sound guy, could you, could you split them left and right.

But. You know, if it’s a small room, it’s not going to make a big difference. The bigger the room, the more that kind of stereo vibe is going to matter. It always matters in recording. So you look at this and what you notice is that the outs are simple Ts out. So that’s like a normal like instrument cable outs versus the simplifier.

Which has both the Ts outs as well as balance XLR outs. And the milkman also has balanced XLR outs. And that’s why I really like digging with it. The sound guy likes the, the balance XLR outs. I don’t think the, the one 70 power Sage one 70 Yeah, it has a speaker loud speaker output but not a balanced XLR out again.

The cabs is motto does. So if you use those to, they make a wonderful pair, I think that’s actually a pretty killer little combination to be able to have the loud speaker, the actual power amp going into the Cassius mano. Hopefully not blowing it up. I actually haven’t really played with it that much.

What’s cool about this too, is that it, it doesn’t require Phantom power when you’re recording with it, but it won’t kill it either. Very important. Neat. So let’s talk about these. This has bows XLR out, which. Is not nearly as like when the SRAM or Radian came out, tons of people pan that didn’t have a balance XLR out.

That was, I think one of the top complaints I saw about the pedal, because it sounds great. It sounds really natural. I feel like it re it takes gain exceptionally well. But people complained. I didn’t have the balance XLR out. The thing is you play that pedal and you know what your sound guy’s going to do.

Do you let me know in the comments he’s gonna, he’s gonna put it into a DIY box and then he’s gonna run the XLR out into his soundboard. So unless you are really concerned that your sound, guy’s not gonna have enough Dai boxes, in which case, by your own, they’re like 150 bucks. Put it on your board with the pedal.

And yeah, you don’t, you won’t have any, you shouldn’t have any problems. Really neat. Yes. So these. Two guys here in the Iridium are really, they have most of the same feature sets. These two, especially can go. Well these three, I’m not including the uranium. So the milkman is its own sound. The power stage amps are their own sound.

The digit, the poly digit. And the GT 1000 core can emulate a bunch of different sounds. Well, actually I think the poly digit does like two ish different amps right now. And then you can upload your own cabinet. I RS. So that’s pretty infinite. The GT 1000 cords, a bunch of different amps and cabs.

These I know for the Iridium and the ACS one, you can. You can add your own cabinet IRS. And the IRS stands for impulse response. If you’re not familiar, it’s just modeling. So I don’t want to get too technical because I wouldn’t be the best person to describe the technical aspects of it, but it’s just made to emulate popular speaker cabinets, which have a very big impact.

The sound of the amp, the amp goes into the speaker cab. The speaker cab puts its own kind of tone profile for lack of a better phrase. It really changes everything. So I don’t see, Oh way here on the outside, where one would even upload be able to attach this to a computer to upload your own IRS, the ACS one and the Sherman Iridium do have that capability.

But they, these all three of those have sounds based on Marshall fender and box amps and a couple of different cabinets to choose from, even though you can’t upload your own to the simplifier, what you can do is change the, the cab SIM size. So you can have a two by 12, four by 12 or one by 12.

Which again has, that’s just, it’s just a different way to change, change the sound. And you just, it’s funny, you, you, listen, you experiment, you find something that works for you because everybody has different needs. I think it’s Mike Adams, AK pushy, and like, say your mileage will vary because you don’t, you know, th these whole Andy boxes, they’re not for everybody.

But the people that they’re for really cherish them and use them a lot. I use it. I usually already have an, all of my demos. Have you noticed, does it sound like a real amp people tell me it sounds pretty good. So that’s nice. That’s really nice. Let’s get back to also that this is called a simplified.

There is is hilarious. There is so much stuff going on here. You would probably. Is, this is obviously always on these other apps have switches simplify it. It’s not another switch. So you run this as close to the end of your board as you can. You got your inputs over here. So I think that it makes the most sense for it to be kind of in the upper, upper left corner of your board.

So you can do those out really easily. And for the most part, you would leave everything and it has headphone auxiliary had phone level, which is really interesting. Technically I believe you can do that with uranium. I did not see a way to do that with the ACS one. Let’s see resonance. Mike positions.

So that’s something that the cab Zeus offers. This does have some fun features. I think that I know this is really big and this is a really big pedal and worship. And when I got one, someone made a comment that is very praise and worship. I actually got this as a contest. I never like, yeah, this is not, not a product placement I can say about it.

What I will. I think the name is silly. This kind of big one. And then the name is silly. I think it’s very complicated. And I would have to imagine, like, I would have to think that people would rather upload for the most part. I feel like people who care about balance XLR outs versus just the normal TSS out.

And she became a lot. I feel like those people would be the ones who would be more upset that they couldn’t upload their own cabinets, impulse responses. That’s just what I would expect, but I guess not styled and three bandy hue, volume out gain resonance presence. And that involves the, it was, it does assess power, have similar presence and resonance.

And then there’s this toggle. Can you tell I have not, super-duper dug into this one. I mean, I don’t have a dental up on it. Yeah. So it’s cool. I’m excited about it. It’s another, it’s another option for me and I like that. Alright, let’s talk about the ACS one. I’m going to talk about this and kind of the striving to radium in the same way.

No balance XLR out. You can upload your own impulse responses. You can do separate and they ready to get, you can do separate cabinets. On the left and the right on this, you can, you basically do separate amps and the lifts and the rice separate, separate eat Q separate game settings, separate amount of room volume.

And that’s another interesting thing that I don’t believe the simplifier has, unless that is hiding under residence or presence, which it might be. Especially if you’re DIY recording. And you don’t want to plug in a whole other river pedal, but you just want it to not sound like. Completely dead. So I hate when people describe, like he say, Oh yeah, we use this hall reverb to give it a sense of space because that’s literally what the effect does.

Reverb literally gives an effective space in the room that you are in. And so room really just helps control. Like it’s, it’s, it’s literally just a very subtle, more subtle in the Radian, less subtle on the ACS one. Room sense. So kind of a gentle echo from just kind of a normal normal room. So just to make it feel more alive.

So most people, I think, kind of use their own reverb if they’re, if you’re using this on the end of a pedal board And if you’re playing actually live it, is it all you want is a sense of space. You mean we don’t need that, but if you’re recording direct, you absolutely do so. Yeah. That’s kind of, you know, that’s definitely one of those mileage will vary.

Like with the radium, I record every demo, but if I’m recording a river by turn off the room, every other instance I do. Use the room, otherwise everything would sound super weird. And you wouldn’t know why. Once I filmed the whole demo realized I had her the room down and I’m like, Oh, that’s why I’m not liking this very much.

Cause I had my any ears in and it just felt dead. It’s just give me a while to realize that’s why it feels lifeless and sad. And that’s why I don’t like it. So then I had to go in and like, Put a gentle room, Reaver plugin on this drive demo or whatever the hell I was to Emily, it’s all a better, easy, easy enough solution.

Not really what I wanted to do. So yeah, that’s kind of a rundown. I think if there’s anything that you take away from this it’s that, you know, I think amp and boxes like this are. Pho nominal. I think it’s just, it’s just like magic and it’s pretty amazing how good they sound these days. I love it for, for silent practice for direct recording.

Again, I use one live, so if I’m playing like something, that’s like at least a nice ish club, I use my milkman, the amp, and it sounds really good. I get lots of compliments on my tone at shows. But know that if, if you don’t have one that can do a power ant out, that’s like not a power. They can’t, they can’t power a speaker cab.

You need to have a backup option because if you, if, if. Even if they can put you through the PA, you won’t be able to hear yourself. And if you can’t hear, you’re like nothing like strikes more pit into the heart of a musician than not being able to hear yourself on stage. And, you know, you don’t want to have to be workshopping some sort of solution like between sound check.

If you get one at a video that’s like that and the actual. You’re probably just doing a lion check. So then you have like literally no time, you and I just had to run up to the, another guitarist and be like, I messed up, can I use your amp? And they might say no, or there might not be another amp. Then in that situation before where someone asked to borrow my amp and I was like, I don’t have one.

You’d have to literally use my, my weird ass. Pedalboard don’t touch the Grazer because you will be confused. That’s, you know, they’re great solutions and I love them. I use them. I think I just want people to, to, to have the information, they need to choose the best pedal amp solution for them. And if you’re playing live.

I think something like the milkman or the power stages, the better solution. If you’re, if you’re not quite sure what the monitoring is going to be like, or if there even is. A PA that they are interested in putting anything other than vocals into, cause I’ve also played gigs. Just call the venue ahead of time.

Y’all I, cause I mean, I’ve played gigs where they say they don’t want to put the guitar through the PA and they just want to put the vocals through the PA and I get it. I get it. Cool. Well thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding, obviously. So this obviously Parson’s video included, paid promotion power stage.

The cabs is mana. The ACS won the Iridium the boss GT 1000 core, the poly digit. Those were all sent for me to demo review, discuss and simplifier. I won in a contest and took me a whole last year to get it. And I was so bummed that it took so long. I still haven’t really done, done a demo or anything with it.

I’ve had other things to do. And that’s great. Please like comment, subscribe. If you plan on buying any of these, please, please, please consider using the affiliate links in the video description. If you scroll down to the bottom of the video description and we’ll say support, get offset by one’s a reverb blade was a Sweetwater link once a distro kid Lang if you do want to.

Record some fun things. You’ll save 7% on your first year of district kid with that leg. Yeah, we have merged like this for fuck’s sake shirt. We have a Patrion, you get early access to videos like this one. When I can remember you also have input on things like what, the kinds of videos we do, you have to talk to us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Until next time. Thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding until next time. My name is Emily goodbye.