For those wishing for an Archon in your Axe

Which one is the real Archon?

  • Part 1

    Votes: 10 45.5%
  • Part 2

    Votes: 12 54.5%

  • Total voters
    22
  • Poll closed .
The hardest part of modeling an amp is getting the various controls to match the actual amp. If you don't care if the tone, drive, etc. controls behave the same it's much easier as we have software that learns the input EQ, output EQ and gain. The problem is then people go "the model doesn't sound the same as my amp if I turn the drive all the way up and bass all the way down".

So to accurately model the control behavior we need a schematic and the actual amp (as the schematics often don't indicate the pot tapers).

Truth is amps are more similar than people think. You can make almost any high gain amp sound like any other high gain amp with a few EQ tweaks which is basically what the designers do. For example a Bogner is basically a boosted Marshall with a different treble pot taper. Another popular new amp is basically just a JTM45 clone with a couple minor changes. In fact the schematic I got from the designer was a JTM45 schematic with markups. The scary thing I've learned is that a lot of these amp "designers" don't really even understand what they are doing. They don't have degrees in engineering and lack even basic circuit theory. They take existing designs and tinker with them changing circuit values. The basic topology of the amps are unchanged. So many of these new amps are nothing more than clones of old designs with some minor changes. Things you can do in the Axe-Fx with all the EQ options available.

There are only a handful of guys that really understand circuit theory and know what they're doing: Alan Phillips from Carol-Ann, Stevie Fryette, John Suhr, and several others. The vast majority are glorified technicians that are just making clones of existing designs with minor modifications.

A good example is the Marshall 18W. There are numerous clones and amps inspired by this design. The problem is that the original design is flawed. You can make that amp sound much better with some minor changes to the phase inverter (or grid stoppers) but none of these amps do that. They all use the same PI design which overdrives the snot out of the power tubes making the amp shift into Class-B operation resulting in fizz and crackling on the decay.
And of that handful only a few have the ears to make use of the engineering knowledge.
The reality is no one in guitar wants ground breaking, rehashing the 5 things we know and have learned to like is were it's at.

I mean without the Fender's use of Receiving manual none of them would be eating.
 
How about FAS ARCHER? Based on the Archon

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this is why i'd be excited to see some more FAS models, rather than anything else. take the 18w marshall and make the changes it needs to be a really great little amp and give it

to us as a FAS model.

Agree with Cliff.
+1 for more FAS amps , love all these models for blues , rock, hard rock, metal side

+1 on more FAS amps

:)

But do we really need new FAS amps, or has Cliff already given us his idealized amps by class? Do we just need to use the tools provided to get the tweaks? Do we really just need some new recipes to apply to the FAS models?

What types of FAS models are missing? A Vox-type amp? Maybe an idealized FAS jazz amp of some sort?
 
yes, possibly. that's why i mentioned the 18w marshall. we don't have a fas version of one of those and the blankenship is the only other contender in the axe as far as i'm aware. (and it needs some tweaking to make it less fuzzy, imo)

i don't know if the fas class A qualifies as a vox or a fender, but we have a bunch of real vox amps, so i'm not sure we'd be adding value

a jazz amp would be nice for sure, but the tube pre seems to do a nice job. i don't know enough about jazz amps really

still...it's up to cliff at the end of the day...
 
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