On January 10, 2013 08:15:11 PM Tim Goetze wrote: Applied patch. The model seems to still make very little difference. Hard to tell, but it seems like only model 7 sounds different than the rest. Also hard to tell but the brightness seems to make no difference. Should there be so little difference in these settings? I seem to remember the old VTS model setting changed the sound more. Anyway, so far it sounds really good. It seems a /lot/ more beefier than the old amp VTS. I recall having to run a separate distortion plugin into the old VTS. No more. Thanks. (Another) Tim.

[Tim E. Real] Situated rather early in the signal path, the tonestack's influence on the sound will lessen as more gain is applied. (The model switches found on commercial amp emulators will very likely also change a host of other circuit characteristics in addition to the tonestack, so the sound change will be much more pronounced. I prefer to expose those characteristics with fully independent controls.) The current tonestack model 7 is from a very small amp and it comes with an unusually great amount of treble cut and bass boost designed into it, probably intended to compensate for the poor bass response of the small loudspeaker and casing. The 'bright' filter is located between the two saturating stages so, like the tonestack's, its effects are less pronounced when high gain drives the poweramp stage into heavy saturation. Also, when you turn up 'gain' and/or 'power', the range of the 'bright' control is reduced in order to unmap unusable regions of the parameter space. Anyway, you may still notice that lower 'bright' settings can help to clean up hi-gain noise, especially in notes higher up the neck. You could replace the 'bright' filter with a more intricate arrangement (I've been thinking about an experiment with a 4-way eq) to get further sound shaping options, but I think that more meaningful control over the hi-gain tone can be had by routing the amp's output through an additional equaliser. Given the abundance of good eq plugins, there seemed to be no good reason to put one into the amp itself (though that may change too). Very glad to hear you like it. I mostly play a cleanish sound (everything at default settings) but at some point it became apparent that even the clean tone will only work well if the amp can produce a great hi-gain sound. Thanks, Tim

[Tim E. Real] Heh, I'm the one boasting about "meaningful control interfaces" when in reality the effects of some adjustments can be diminished so much by other inputs. And with Bruno reporting similar issues that makes you two and me one, so: my mistake! (It would really be nicer to have control changes be more readily apparent as audible differences, but right now I don't see an easy way of doing that without sacrificing some subtlety. Keeping it in mind though, perhaps a solution will present itself with time.) Thanks Tim, Tim