After owning an Ultra for about ten years, I finally dug out my wallet and bought a III. I came close to buying a II on many occasions but I never felt a burning need to upgrade because the Ultra always did what I needed it to do. I lurked here and at The Gripe Page just to keep track of what was going on.
Anyway, I ordered the III on Sunday and got it Thursday. Thanks to Fractal for making that go smoothly.
When I fired it up, I was surprised at the silence. The Ultra sounds like a jet warming up (I never got around to replacing the fan), but the III is completely silent. Zero fan noise, zero hum or hiss, even with my guitar plugged in, even after I disabled the noise gate.
I’ve gone through most of the presets and found that the cleans and mid gains are perfect. The mid gains are particularly inspiring. However, whoever did the presets has a different idea of lead sound than me. I’m not a fan of the completely dry, mid focused V30 + SM57 in your face sort of tone, which is how most of the crunch and lead presets seem to be done. I’m after the softer EJ sort of sound.
So I dove into the editor, via the front panel. The editing concepts and functions are close enough to the Ultra that I was able to quickly find my way around. I went straight to the cabs. Holy smokes, you read about 2000 cabs, but it’s quite another thing to audition them. The cab filter is a great tool. I wish it could filter on mics as well as cab type. Anyway, after putzing around for a while I found what I needed in the legacy cab bank, my tried and true cabs from the Ultra were there. They’ll do me until I find some new combinations.
After I put in the cabs I liked I played around a bit with the cab mic, did a couple of tweaks to the amp, a JTM45 I think, messed around with a drive, added a bit of reverb, and bang got a great EJ lead tone. No extra eq at all and no deep parameter dives. The lead sound is much brighter and up front than I could ever get with the Ultra, but it’s not harsh at all. I’m happy, especially since I can tell there’s a lot more that I can get.
All the effects are really seem to be a big step up. The new drives are very nice. I love the new reverbs, they’re so clear it seems like I can use a lot more reverb than the Ultra without burying the tone.
Anyway, back to the music room, I have about 300 amps to audition. ;-)
Anyway, I ordered the III on Sunday and got it Thursday. Thanks to Fractal for making that go smoothly.
When I fired it up, I was surprised at the silence. The Ultra sounds like a jet warming up (I never got around to replacing the fan), but the III is completely silent. Zero fan noise, zero hum or hiss, even with my guitar plugged in, even after I disabled the noise gate.
I’ve gone through most of the presets and found that the cleans and mid gains are perfect. The mid gains are particularly inspiring. However, whoever did the presets has a different idea of lead sound than me. I’m not a fan of the completely dry, mid focused V30 + SM57 in your face sort of tone, which is how most of the crunch and lead presets seem to be done. I’m after the softer EJ sort of sound.
So I dove into the editor, via the front panel. The editing concepts and functions are close enough to the Ultra that I was able to quickly find my way around. I went straight to the cabs. Holy smokes, you read about 2000 cabs, but it’s quite another thing to audition them. The cab filter is a great tool. I wish it could filter on mics as well as cab type. Anyway, after putzing around for a while I found what I needed in the legacy cab bank, my tried and true cabs from the Ultra were there. They’ll do me until I find some new combinations.
After I put in the cabs I liked I played around a bit with the cab mic, did a couple of tweaks to the amp, a JTM45 I think, messed around with a drive, added a bit of reverb, and bang got a great EJ lead tone. No extra eq at all and no deep parameter dives. The lead sound is much brighter and up front than I could ever get with the Ultra, but it’s not harsh at all. I’m happy, especially since I can tell there’s a lot more that I can get.
All the effects are really seem to be a big step up. The new drives are very nice. I love the new reverbs, they’re so clear it seems like I can use a lot more reverb than the Ultra without burying the tone.
Anyway, back to the music room, I have about 300 amps to audition. ;-)