Two Rock modelling amp...

57Deluxe

so, when the premium brands like Two Rock, Friedman, Bartel and Magnatone etc start going over to digital, are you going to support them still at their ultra premium prices?

Squareheadedfreak

57Deluxe said:

so, when the premium brands like Two Rock, Friedman, Bartel and Magnatone etc start going over to digital, are you going to support them still at their ultra premium prices?

Not sure they would do this, sure they'd rather try and sell their 'rights' to other modellers, their MO & saleability comes from their premise that each 'hand built' piece hand wired, over engineered and overbuilt and over tested, aka the idea that many many man hours have gone into each piece, pushing it towards the ideas of 'art' as much as substance, created by both engineers and artists?l, alongside the promotion of old fashioned fabrication etc and the mystery surrounding vintage gear, dumble, etc.

Very hard for them to sell that from a digital point of view, so I doubt they will do that in house (and to support my arguement I own a Two Rock CRS and a Fractal and enjoy them both...)

DartmoorHedgehog

Not sure about modelling, but I reckon there would be a market for high-quality analogue solid-state amps. It seems there aren't really many "posh" non-modelling solid-state amps (Orange Crush Pro possibly, although that's still pretty mainstream). They could even make one with an output transformer - I've heard various people say that's one of the biggest factors in the difference in "feel" of a valve amp.  SS amps don't _need_ an OT so don't have one, but that might be somewhere for the fancy boutique makers to offer something different.

Danny1969

I would expect these brands to license official captures of their amps but I don't expect them to get into it themselves as Digital modelling tech and design is a completely different world to valve amp manufacture skills and techniques. 

They could get a third party company to make a DSP board and then simply put that in one of their cabs with an Icepower module. like Fender have done with the Tonemaster series.  That's very easy to do and very quick to bring to market. 

Ultimately it would be nice if the industry had some kind of standard where the modelling amp got the modelling from a cartridge, like a Nintendo console gets the game from a cartridge. This would open up digital modelling to everyone as almost everybody can afford to code but very few can afford to manufacture hardware. 

Then Two rock could sell the real thing to those who can afford it and a Two Rock cartridge to those who want that sound but can't afford it. Kind of like Helix Native and a real Helix. Nobody wants to use laptops at gigs really but a cartridge that just plugs into the top of your amp, that would something very useful yet so easy to do. 

The console amp has neutral sounding speakers and the Icepower amplifier. Plus the normal input jack, power switch, analog master volume  and 10 encoders with scribble strips that get their assignment from the DSP cartridge. The DSP cartridge has analog in, analog out, PWR and ground plus USB data + and - for the HUI protocol to assign the encoders and name them. 

You go to a gig with a pedal board but your amp can be anything depending on what DSP cartridge is shoved in the top. As modelling improves you just buy better DSP cartridges ... you don't need to buy a whole new amp. This is what I'm working on at the moment. 

digitalscream

I don't think they'll go to modelling - it's a fundamentally different kind of business, effectively based on software.

When valves eventually get too expensive and difficult-to-get-hold-of for guitarists to use them, I'd expect these companies to move to solid state; we already know that solid state preamps can sound just as good as their valve counterparts (AMT showed that pretty conclusively), and we'll probably see the long-overdue advent of indirectly-coupled solid state power sections in guitar amps.

Of course, they'll have to invest significantly in their marketing departments, because it's a lot more difficult to sell guitarists on the mojo in a transistor after they've been telling us the exact opposite for half a century.

DartmoorHedgehog

digitalscream said:

it's a lot more difficult to sell guitarists on the mojo in a transistor 

Unless it's a germanium one apparently

Lewy

Nobody seems to make a solid state amp that is a genuine object of desire....that's the key to getting people to a) spend a fortune and b) stop comparing functionality to modellers that will always do "more"

I think it's more likely that someone will evolve the idea of the solid state valve replacements - you can already get for valve rectifiers. If the valve supply becomes unviable, solid state plug in substitutes would let people carry on using them in their valve amps. And then maybe once accepted, the fancy amp makers will just build that it.

digitalscream

Lewy said:

Nobody seems to make a solid state amp that is a genuine object of desire....that's the key to getting people to a) spend a fortune and b) stop comparing functionality to modellers that will always do "more"

I think it's more likely that someone will evolve the idea of the solid state valve replacements - you can already get for valve rectifiers. If the valve supply becomes unviable, solid state plug in substitutes would let people carry on using them in their valve amps. And then maybe once accepted, the fancy amp makers will just build that it.

A couple of companies have done just that - and they sank without trace. Jet City did it with preamp valve replacements, and AMT did it with preamp and power amp units, but nobody bought them.

Lewy

digitalscream said:

Lewy said:

Nobody seems to make a solid state amp that is a genuine object of desire....that's the key to getting people to a) spend a fortune and b) stop comparing functionality to modellers that will always do "more"

I think it's more likely that someone will evolve the idea of the solid state valve replacements - you can already get for valve rectifiers. If the valve supply becomes unviable, solid state plug in substitutes would let people carry on using them in their valve amps. And then maybe once accepted, the fancy amp makers will just build that it.

A couple of companies have done just that - and they sank without trace. Jet City did it with preamp valve replacements, and AMT did it with preamp and power amp units, but nobody bought them.

I can well imagine because it's really not hard to get hold of valves, even NOS. It will only be if that changes I imagine.

Wazmeister

No, Im gonna support them in the analogue realm

57Deluxe

Lewy said:

Nobody seems to make a solid state amp that is a genuine object of desire....that's the key to getting people to a) spend a fortune and b) stop comparing functionality to modellers that will always do "more"

I think it's more likely that someone will evolve the idea of the solid state valve replacements - you can already get for valve rectifiers. If the valve supply becomes unviable, solid state plug in substitutes would let people carry on using them in their valve amps. And then maybe once accepted, the fancy amp makers will just build that it.

KORG have developed NuTubes. Not heard much on their intergration since the technology was announced 6 years ago though...

https://www.korgnutube.com/en

digitalscream

57Deluxe said:

Lewy said:

Nobody seems to make a solid state amp that is a genuine object of desire....that's the key to getting people to a) spend a fortune and b) stop comparing functionality to modellers that will always do "more"

I think it's more likely that someone will evolve the idea of the solid state valve replacements - you can already get for valve rectifiers. If the valve supply becomes unviable, solid state plug in substitutes would let people carry on using them in their valve amps. And then maybe once accepted, the fancy amp makers will just build that it.

KORG have developed NuTubes. Not heard much on their intergration since the technology was announced 6 years ago though...

https://www.korgnutube.com/en

Probably because they forgot the main point about valves - standardised sizes and connectors, so they fit in anything.

NuTubes are entirely proprietary, and so they won't even be a footnote in the history of guitar amplification.

fretmeister

Friedman make me laugh.

In an interview he thought modelling / profiling companies were stealing his product! Says the man who basically builds Marshalls with a few extra bits in it.

And then there is the Diezel VHX - an amp that knows when it has been profiled. So far they haven't done anything awful with that - such as interfering with the profiling process but time will tell.

I wouldn't have a problem with some way stopping those who buy an amp, spend 7 days profiling every known setting and then returning the amp for a refund. That is taking the piss.

relic245

fretmeister said:

Friedman make me laugh.


And then there is the Diezel VHX - an amp that knows when it has been profiled. So far they haven't done anything awful with that - such as interfering with the profiling process but time will tell.

I wouldn't have a problem with some way stopping those who buy an amp, spend 7 days profiling every known setting and then returning the amp for a refund. That is taking the piss.

If they want to cripple them from being profiled and then sell official profiles, it's a free market and  I think that is fair game. 

However they would need to price them competitively.  I do use a profiler so am a target customer. However in the 'real amp world'  I've never come across an amp that was SO different to anything else that was available that I absolutely had to have THAT one. 

If they price them too high people wouldn't buy them and would just go for something in the same ballpark.  Afterall with profiles you don't get the kudos of having Diezel or Marshall or Two Rock visible on stage...

fretmeister said:

I wouldn't have a problem with some way stopping those who buy an amp, spend 7 days profiling every known setting and then returning the amp for a refund. That is taking the piss.

Wow - never thought of that. You'd have to be a pretty scummy human being to do that. 

Sadly of course such people exist and buy guitar related gear to make a fast buck. 

guitargeek62

fretmeister said:

Friedman make me laugh.

In an interview he thought modelling / profiling companies were stealing his product! Says the man who basically builds Marshalls with a few extra bits in it.

And then there is the Diezel VHX - an amp that knows when it has been profiled. So far they haven't done anything awful with that - such as interfering with the profiling process but time will tell.

I wouldn't have a problem with some way stopping those who buy an amp, spend 7 days profiling every known setting and then returning the amp for a refund. That is taking the piss.

The Diezel's also a pretty neat product in its own right though, and models all of the pre-existing Diezel amps much like OP suggested for Two Rock.  I'd love one, but I don't need a £3k 100w head!

NelsonP

Digital is an obvious long term threat to Two Rock, Friedman and the like.

Let's say modelling gets to the point where it is a perfect replacement for an amp in the next 10 years. Two Rock could, at that point, be another Kodak. And there would be no reason to support them rather than Neural DSP, Line 6, Kemper, Fractal etc.

Laney's latest move in this area is really interesting. You buy the amp, it comes with the plugin bundled. Fender are all in on digital with Mustang, Tonemaster, Marshall have experimented with Code etc. It shows the potential scale of the threat.

Having said that I think boutique valve amp manufacturers will be just fine for a while to come. The product is still better than what else is out there and there are still plenty of (older, wealthier?) folks out there willing to pay a premium. And Dave Friedman and Bill Krinard are probably old enough and wealthy enough to not need to worry about all of this.

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/laney-bcc-ironheart-amps-plugin