Solid State amps, are they going to be here someday?

How about the solid state Crate g1500XL and g1600XL amp heads 150w/160w. 4x12 Cabs (they were loaded with G12-T75 Celestions in the day). They sounded really good for what they were in the late 80s. Great cleans and nice tube sounding lead channels. You can still find a few of them around. Need re-capping by now.
 
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IceFive said:
Marshall Valvestates would be really nice
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Agreed.

All this snobbishness about only wanting valve amp models (oh, the irony) is ignoring the many great artists and tracks that used these amps.

It's not always about violin-tone purity and earth moving lows. Sometimes it's about brash and raucous and nasty.

Switching off the power amp on existing Axe FX amps isn't likely to help, as most valve amps have valve preamps too, whilst SS amps mostly don't. Additionally, some SS amps attempt to mimic valve power amps in their output, which would need to be accurately modelled too.

As an example of nasty SS amp tones (paired with another valve combo, in this case) which are undeniably the foundation of great music --->

 
I’m not looking for solid state amps at the moment, but did play a Lab Series L5 for a couple of years back when they first came out and it was a great amp. There’s been requests for it and Dime’s version of the Randall amps for years. I wouldn’t mind seeing them added! More is more, as YJM said.
 
Boomer said:
To add to this thread in seriousness though, I'd love to see more solid state amps myself. Particularly the Kustom 200 series (Credence Clearwater Revival). That along with the Vox UL730 (Beatles during Sgt. Pepper) and the Gibson Lab Series (BB King, King's X).
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The challenge on the UL730 is finding one. They are fairly rare. I would love to see one in the Fractal roster, too....
 
Thing is, if CC goes down the SS amp rabbit hole, he'll try to figure out how to model all the subtle weird-ass SS artifacts etc and it could mean 2 months of no other updates. That's to much to ask of the spoiled, addicted, entitled user community!

Or he'll just say use a bunch of drive pedals in series and quit ur yappin'.

Sorry. It's a valid request.

[EDIT: Not a tube snob -- just joking around. I'd be curious if there is something unique/interesting from a modeling perspective about SS amps in particular that Cliff hasn't already solved modeling SS components in drives (or in the JC120). Of course non-SS folks will say all SS amps are the same so just use a JC-120.]
 
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I’ve been playing around with my valvestate 8100 recently, and I think the ‘Brit pre’ model with the power amp modeling turned off is in the ballpark. It’s a bit tighter than the valvestate and I when I did a quick tone match to compare the eq curve at the same settings, the valvestate had more upper mids. Also missing the contour control but that could probably be simulated with a PEQ cutting somewhere around 800hz to 1000hz. I didn’t get that far in trying to match it, just wanted to see how far off it was as the jmp1 topology is pretty close to the valvestate preamp.

The jmpre models didn’t seem as close whereas the Brit pre was a lot closer right off the bat.
 
TheRedDevil said:
I bought a AXE FX III Turbo some days before and I'm really missing the Lab Series L5 for a B.B. King sound and the Marshall Guv'nor Drive. For both Aion Electronics provides the schematics for the preamp: aionfx.com/project/l5-preamp/ and drive: aionfx.com/project/equinox-amp-overdrive/
Shouldn't be a big deal for Cliff. Thank you!
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I have one of these, since I sold my Lab Series L11 a few years back. Not sure why I bought it, but it works well!

 
I must be one of the few people that finds almost all SS amps to be very uninspiring judging by this thread, especially the Valvestate series. I spent the majority of my youth trying to avoid them, especially in the studio, which is very hard when your a penniless youngen working in the metal sphere.

Having said that, I would like to see a Trace Elliot Super Tramp Quad Chorus added to the lineup, mainly for nostalgic reasons but also because it was the best all round sounding SS amp I could find back in the day. Not really a compelling enough reason to invest the R&D time to add it IMHO but since we're asking.......
 
I remember a time long ago the Randall RG100 and Ampeg VH410C being the sound of New Orleans metal in the late 80's and early 90's. I'm not sure if Dime was inspired by the tones from New Orleans bands, or if it was the other way around. I just remember everyone using them back then. It could be that they were really loud amps, but they also had that really scooped sound that was popular in metal back in those days.
 
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