Reactive load noob question.

Tex Mexico

So I'm sick to the back teeth of plugins and modellers and chasing the "least fake" versions of the tones I want. I have access to a brace of very nice guitar amps that I would like to record, but long story short my home studio room is acoustically sub-optimal and a couple of those amps require cranking to hit their sweet spots, to levels that my neighbours and my hearing won't tolerate.

I've previously enjoyed good results recording with a Marshall SE100 loadbox/emulator but I no longer have it and not inclined to put time and money into finding another of what is realistically now an obsolete product.

I'm looking at the Koch Dummybox and the Two Notes Captor 8, both are available at similar prices and deliver the features I'm after, which are:

- Volume attenuation
- Silent/attenuated recording (I do still want to combine with real mics when I can)
- Emulated and unfiltered outputs

This is basically all I'm looking for in this, so I guess my questions are:

-I'm leaning Captor as it's universally praised, where the Koch is a less popular product. Am I wrong?
- Is there some other product I should be considering, and
- Other than onboard IRs (which I don't need, I've got all kinds of software IR loaders) and more controllable attenuation, are there other benefits to the Captor X that make it worth more than double what the Captor costs?

Thanks in advance.

Dodge

IIRC the Koch is resistive, not reactive.

I have a couple of Captors - there are load boxes with much more realistic impedance curves (the Suhr, for example) but the Captor sounds decent.  I had a Suhr one, I don't any more - it wasn't worth the extra £ IMHO.

Modulus_Amps

Where as I thought the Suhr one was worth the extra £ and haven't plugged into my two notes since getting it

susbemol

As demonstrated above, you will find many very different opinions on this.

Your own results might depend on the amp and how you set it.

I have owned both the Suhr and the Two Notes and used them side by side a number of times. In my opinion, there was very little between them but YMMV.

Daiganzen

Get the 2notes as it’s the best bang for your buck. If you can stretch it get the Captor X it’s has so much functionality it can be used however you want

koss59

Modulus_Amps said:

Where as I thought the Suhr one was worth the extra £ and haven't plugged into my two notes since getting it

Out of interest, what did you think was better about the Suhr?
You read a lot a lot about the impedance curve from probably most people that don’t understand what that means never mind hear it.

Im currently using a Revv D-20 with built in two notes which I love as it doesn’t give me option paralysis but I’m interested in possibly changing to the Suhr and a seperate head if it was an upgrade in tone/ feel.

Modulus_Amps

@koss59 said:

Modulus_Amps said:

Where as I thought the Suhr one was worth the extra £ and haven't plugged into my two notes since getting it

Out of interest, what did you think was better about the Suhr?
You read a lot a lot about the impedance curve from probably most people that don’t understand what that means never mind hear it.

Im currently using a Revv D-20 with built in two notes which I love as it doesn’t give me option paralysis but I’m interested in possibly changing to the Suhr and a seperate head if it was an upgrade in tone/ feel.

I have the two notes live unit, which is a great idea and I did a number of recordings with it. But I could never get the the sound and the feel to be close to playing through the actual cabinet. It was stiff with no bounce that you could feel when playing through a cab.

 With the Surh inductive load the feel was the decider for me. It felt like I was playing through a proper cab with the bounce. They do sound a little different too.

The two notes live load was a very simple inductive load that presented a simple curve but did no really present a closed back cabinet curve with the resonance in the right place like the Suhr load does. I know as I stripped them both apart.

Now the Capture X may be better / improved. I don't know. But I still own the Suhr and have built several similar ones too, with re-amp power amps and they work great.

Pete Thorn did a video years ago comparing the different loads, it is worth looking up.

koss59

@Modulus_Amps appreciate the reply mate, thanks.