Eleven Rack incoming

[Jbird]

Does it go to eleven?

 

[smurfco]

It does!

I spent some more time with this late last night. For $350 this thing is awesome. It does not sound quite as good as getting out the SM57 and micing up my DRRI but it's actually not too bad, and with some tweaking may get pretty close.

The stock patches are, as expected, pretty goofy - they all have a ton of effects turned on. Where I really started to like things was when I turned all the effects off and tried to just emulate an amp - Super Reverb, Vibroverb, Deluxe, etc. It sounds much better that way. The stompbox effects seem pretty good for the time and modulation based ones, but just OK for the distortion (though the overdrive isn't bad).

I still need to figure out bitrate etc stuff because everything I'm recording is playing back at a slower speed, but once I do I'd be happy to record a demo going through a bunch of the settings and using different guitars if anyone's interested.

And as far as late night jamming, this thing is a 1000% improvement over the Vox AmPlug I'd been using.

I approve!!

 

[bsman]

This thing sounds pretty good! And I was able to get the gator box I ordered for it bolted to my desk. It does not sound as good as using a microphone with a real amplifier, but it definitely sounds better than I was expecting it to. This will be perfect for playing at night. I recorded a quick demo with my jazz master but I think a bit rates are off because the MP3 sounds slowed down. But if you want to hear it… https://www.dropbox.com/s/psf6s263ch4eigd/JM-ElevenRackDemo.mp3?dl=0

I need to spend some more time with it and get it dialed in, but I am very happy with this so far

I love (and covet) your setup. I need to sell a few more guitars and amps to make space for a recording desk like this.

 

[micwalt]

Yeah, presets on things like this always sound stupid. Just dialing in a nice amp tone, then adding a bit of whatever effect(s) to taste always yields better results.
BTW, the guitar tracks I did for the Beatles thing were all recorded direct with a Fryette Valvulator. How did you think those sounded?

 

[smurfco]

I love (and covet) your setup. I need to sell a few more guitars and amps to make space for a recording desk like this.

I appreciate that, but no need to covet too much. The desk is one my dad found for me at Goodwill, it's just a big computer desk. I ordered a wooden 4U rack thing from Gator and bolted it to the bottom to hold the eleven rack. It works well but I bang the shit out of my knee all the time. Also, you can't tell from the pic, but this is in the corner of a very small bedroom and when I go to record keys I have to put the keyboard up on the computer desk because there's nowhere else to put it.

If I ever get a bigger place with a spare bedroom I'd make a more luxurious setup, but for now this one gets the job done. It's mighty cramped though.

 

[smurfco]

Yeah, presets on things like this always sound stupid. Just dialing in a nice amp tone, then adding a bit of whatever effect(s) to taste always yields better results.
BTW, the guitar tracks I did for the Beatles thing were all recorded direct with a Fryette Valvulator. How did you think those sounded?

They sounded great! I still need to get Brad to mix that down. We're heads-down on our final Bird Index mixes as we have a mastering session scheduled for June 2 but I think we didn't have too much left to do on the intro, and the reprise isn't that far behind.

I still need to do my individual track

 

[micwalt]

They sounded great! I still need to get Brad to mix that down. We're heads-down on our final Bird Index mixes as we have a mastering session scheduled for June 2 but I think we didn't have too much left to do on the intro, and the reprise isn't that far behind.

I still need to do my individual track

I'm very much looking forward to your upcoming album. The snippets you've been dropping sound amazing!

 

[shoeless]

Yeah, presets on things like this always sound stupid. Just dialing in a nice amp tone, then adding a bit of whatever effect(s) to taste always yields better results.

Why is that?! It doesn't seem to matter who the manufacturer is, but the pre-canned stuff always sounds like crap. With all the money they pour into R&D of a product, you'd think they'd pay someone a few hours labor to come up with decent sounding patches.

 

[smurfco]

Why is that?! It doesn't seem to matter who the manufacturer is, but the pre-canned stuff always sounds like crap. With all the money they pour into R&D of a product, you'd think they'd pay someone a few hours labor to come up with decent sounding patches.

I think they try to make each patch some zany thing, like most of the presets have some sort of delay, phaser, reverb etc. all going on at once, to show the "wow factor" of everything the unit can do.

But I just want something that I can use instead of plugging into my tube amp. I'm not trying to recreate The Edge's tone here. So the presets are pretty useless for me other than as very general starting points to tweak.

The computer-based editor is REALLY easy to use for this, by the way. I was messing around with the knobs and display on the interface for a while and it's not bad as far as things like this go, but still kind of clunky. Then I installed the drivers and the computer-based editor and it's MUCH easier to create, edit, and save patches.

(not my screenshot but I guess that's obvious from the amp model being used)

 

[Chad]

I think they try to make each patch some zany thing, like most of the presets have some sort of delay, phaser, reverb etc. all going on at once, to show the "wow factor" of everything the unit can do.

But I just want something that I can use instead of plugging into my tube amp. I'm not trying to recreate The Edge's tone here. So the presets are pretty useless for me other than as very general starting points to tweak.

The computer-based editor is REALLY easy to use for this, by the way. I was messing around with the knobs and display on the interface for a while and it's not bad as far as things like this go, but still kind of clunky. Then I installed the drivers and the computer-based editor and it's MUCH easier to create, edit, and save patches.

(not my screenshot but I guess that's obvious from the amp model being used)

When I opened this, I couldn't see your last comment and was wondering what the hell you were playing

 

[shoeless]

I see volume and wah pedal sims. Is there an input for an expression pedal? There must be.

 

[smurfco]

I see volume and wah pedal sims. Is there an input for an expression pedal? There must be.

There is.