AFIII Comparing the Old Drives to the New Drives!!

LucasLeCompte

LucasLeCompte

Experienced
Now I did this comparison way before Cliff went crazy with firmware updates lol. I didnt want to compare them on 4 because I wanted to just test the differences in the drives. I picked a few drives and gave them a test run on 3.01 and 3.02 on their default settings. I also compared them in front of some of my high gain patches. All settings are the same throughout. I will include the time stamps so that way you can skip around!



0:46 FasBoost Old
0:56 FasBoost New
1:03 SuperOd Old
1:13 SuperOd New
1:20 T808 Old
1:31 T808 New
1:38 T808 Mod Old
1:46 T808 Mod New
1:55 M-Zone Old
2:04 M-Zone New
2:11 6160 T808Mod Old
2:35 6160 T808Mod New
2:51 Recto Red 1 Fet Boost Old
3:11 Recto Red 1 Fet Boost New
3:30 SLO100 T808 Old
3:50 SLO100 T808 New
4:10 Angle Severe FetBoost Old
4:30 Angle Severe FetBoost New
4:50 Wrap up
 
To my ruined ears the direct comparison exposed an overall darker sound almost on every models in version .02
But i think the nu versions are maybe more "real" sounding coz the "digital icy" perfection is now gone and if one need more brightness can tweack it in again with tone control and/or eq.
The sound that is totally changed is the M-Zone. I don't like that original "phone call buzz" sound (to me is good only for a doubled track to add some gritty to another track)... but the nu version to me sounds like a totally differnt drive pedal.
But let me say that for this kind of comparison that djent beast with active puppyes in not the best!
To put under the light a drive sound to me the best way is a superclean Strat with single coil and a superclean "pedal eater" amp like a Fender or an Hiwatt.
Anyway... the point is: all the 02 are darker.
 
This is a big tonal change! I'm actually surprised that if they sound real now... how far off were they? Will definitely have to do the same test with a real tubescreamer to compare. Good stuff Bukey! My homie.
 
ML SOUND LAB said:
This is a big tonal change! I'm actually surprised that if they sound real now... how far off were they? Will definitely have to do the same test with a real tubescreamer to compare. Good stuff Bukey! My homie.
Click to expand...
I remember a few years ago, right after the drive models were "G3'd", I got insulted by a lot of people cuz I wrote they still didn't sound as good as my real pedals and the algorithms weren't on par with the amp block.
Now it seems I was right then :rolleyes:
 
DLC86 said:
I remember a few years ago, right after the drive models were "G3'd", I got insulted by a lot of people cuz I wrote they still didn't sound as good as my real pedals and the algorithms weren't on par with the amp block.
Now it seems I was right then :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
There's also the fact that a truthful A/B will be really hard to make. You're always running a real pedal in a loop and impedances change in real life and all that... but should be possible. Will have to try it out.
 
ML SOUND LAB said:
There's also the fact that a truthful A/B will be really hard to make. You're always running a real pedal in a loop and impedances change in real life and all that... but should be possible. Will have to try it out.
Click to expand...
Yeah probably not possible to make it 100% accurate but the differences I heard when I did it with old models were far beyond what the impedance could cause.. Some were really off, especially those having bass and treble knobs instead of tone (tube driver, bb preamp, etc..)
 
I've found that the Drives work much better on a Clean or Crunch Amp. There is also truth the concept that some Amps take pedals much better than others. If you want to hear the true character of the Distortion Pedal, try it on a clean setting of a Fender Deluxe or Princeton.
 
Although pedals are essentially really simple I think they're misunderstood by many people. So many people f.ex. say they "boost" their amps with pedals... when in many cases your pedal will lower the volume of your signal even with volume on full. F.ex. a tube screamer on full volume is lower dB than my guitars in many cases. (losing low end plays a big part) I'm personally not very interested in drive pedals because I prefer to use an amp with the drive sound I'm after and that turns drive pedals into pre-eq only. That being said I love the mid range honk that you get from f.ex. tube screamers with the drive on zero but still it feels like using a gimmicky cheap pre-EQ with a $3000 amp.
 
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