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Had a duoverb for a while - which I believe is vetta based (but with much less bells and whistles)
I really liked it - if I hadn't had to downsize from a stack I'd probably still have it.
At low to medium volume it's actually very good - it sounds fuller, punchier and more open than a normal Spider. But at high volume it does that typical digital-amp thing of going harsh and losing dynamics - oddly, when you play really hard with it cranked, it gets *quieter*. It is a very loud amp though, so it's questionable whether you would need to get it up into that region normally even at a gig.
Spiders losing presets is problem I've come across a couple of times, although they're not too complicated so it shouldn't take too much effort to re-do them. It would be a major hassle if it happened at a gig though.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I thought it would sound garbage but it was ok. Not great but it sounded ok, Usual disappearing in the mix I remember from L6 amps but could have been the way he set it up.
Preamp is digital but has an input valve and pi valve, so it does sound quite valvey. Doesn't do mid gain at all, it's either high gain or clean, there is no middle ground.
As @ICBM quite rightly says, there is NO VALVE AT ALL in the preamp section of the amp. However, the modelling has been tweeked to work in conjunction with the output stage to provide a much better feel, especially at volume.
Spider Valve Mk1 combos (or rather the units that don't have "Mk2" on the front panel) suffer flash memory problems and eventually die completely - the display gets "black bars" instead of the usual alphanumerics. This is *not* repairable as there are no chips left (they were pre-programmed by the contract manufacturer and Line6 do not have the equipment to reblow the software) and there are no boards left. I helped clear out the old Line6 repair shop when the UK operation shut down...
The best Spider Valve was the 100w head. Unburstable and fantastic sounding. Also, they have a brilliant cabinet simulated output that is not controlled by the master volume. This is key because the engineer can get a great FOH sound from the amp and leave the player to adjust his own on stage volume.
The knobs - yes they did crack on the early models. They were shocking, tbh. They were upgraded fairly early on and there were metric shed-loads in stock last time I looked.
The biggest shortcoming of the Spider Valves was the ridiculous volume control sweep. It went from nothing to *arrrrrrgggghhhhh* (much like an older HRD) in the first 2% of the volume sweep, then it was progressively louder til it got to 1 o'clock, then got no louder. It was supposed to then drive the output stage for fatter sounds but by this point it was way too loud and the effectiveness of this was... limited. I'd also venture that the sounds are a bit "LA" for me - even the Marshall sounds can be a bit smooth and a little too middly, but I never found that they were lacking in volume... far from it.
In short... the combos were *OK* but the heads were superb.
Vettas...
Jesus where to begin?
Loved by many but having gigged one (it crashed mid gig) I wouldn't say I'm a fan. They are also getting very long in the tooth and parts are REALLY scarce. They also were never very reliable. However, the processing and capabilities for sound creation meant they were in a class of their own - the complexity of them is astonishing. There aren't many amps I can think of that can do what they do... and they were very expensive when new (£1295 IIRC - and that was nearly 15 years ago) so they are a bargain these days, if you can find one that works 100%.
EDIT: I just realised that my profile picture is of a Vetta II in/out board that came in from a shop for "bad out of box".... it turned out the muppet new owner had tried to update the amp by plugging a LAN network cable from his computer into the Variax input (same form factor, very different protocol) and the resulting fire blew both the Vetta and his PC to bits. Twonk.
Can be had for peanuts these days too.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd