Fractal Audio AMP models: Euro Uber (Bogner Uberschall)

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* EDIT: Up-to-date information is available in Yek's Guide to the Fractal Audio Amplifier Models *

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Euro Uber: based on Bogner Uberschall

The Uberschall was one of the early really, really high-gain amps. Reinhold Bogner himself calls it “Armageddon in a box”. The amp has got a clean channel but that’s not what we’re here for. The ultra high-gain channel is the unique selling point of this amp. And that’s what we have access to as a model.

The Uberschall is around 100 watts (EL34, KT88 or 6L6 power tubes) and it specializes in heavy grinding lows and insane gain. It has a single input. I believe that the modeled Uberschall is the original amp (with EL34s), not the later “Twinjet” version, but that really doesn’t make much of a difference.

Bogner:

“Uberschall is the German word for Super Sonic and we designed this amp primarily for extreme, heavy and aggressive styles of music. Detuned or baritone guitars crave this amp.​

We unleash mayhem with the super aggressive high gain channel with gain, bass, middle, treble, volume and presence controls. You think you've heard BASS before, no way, the UBERSCHALL can crush on demand. Even with extreme gain and volume this channel stays massively focused and resists mushing out from the heaviest right-hand attack. Have some crazy effects? Put them through the tube buffered effects loop. Power comes from a throaty EL34 output section.​

Our UBERKAB is perfectly matched for the thunderous UBERSCHALL. This 4x12" straight front speaker cabinet features a black front speaker grill with silver piping and a combination of front loaded Celestion Vintage 30's and G12T75's wired at 16 ohms. This combination unleashes the aggressiveness of the UBERSCHALL amp, plus helps to maximize the low end and give great cutting power to the mids and highs. Our standard Bogner 4x12" cabinet, with Vintage 30's, also sounds great with the UBERSCHALL but we wanted to offer a cabinet that was fine tuned for the flame-throwing UBERSCHALL."​

The controls on the high-gain channel are: Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence, Master.

The Uberschall has an enormous amount of bass, which can be overpowering. Try the Cut switch in the model if the bass is too booming.

Also very important: the Middle control. Turn it to hear the impact on the tone. Manual:

“The "Midrange" control is very interactive with all the other tone controls; you can go from a hollow scooped-mid setting to an aggressive in your face and on your throat kind of intensity.”​

Cliff:

"People think Bogners are dark but they really aren't. The reason they seem that way is the pot tapers. Most people assume knobs should be set somewhere around noon. If you do this on a Bogner it's like turning the treble way down on a Marshall. Close your eyes and adjust the tone controls with your ears. Don't be afraid to turn them way up or way down." source.”​

"Human nature is to put the knobs near noon. We are reticent to deviate much from noon. Amp designers exploit this and use different tapers to change the sound of their amps WITH THE KNOBS AT NOON. A prime example are Bogner amps. Everyone says "Bogner amps are dark". No they aren't. But he uses a Log10A taper for the treble pot. It's a standard Marshall tone stack. Usually a linear taper pot is used for the treble. The treble knob at 5.0 (noon) on a Bogner is equivalent to the treble knob at 1.0 on a Marshall. People put the knob at 5.0 and go "wow, this amp is dark". No it isn't. If you turned the treble up to 8 or 9 it would sound a lot like a Plexi but humans are reticent to turn the knobs to extremes. Amp designers know this and exploit it to give their amps a "signature sound"."​

"The feedback circuit is responsible for the behavior of the Presence and Depth controls. Certain Bogners and Diezels have a unique type of feedback circuit. There are no new parameters and nothing to do except twist the Presence and Depth knobs to your desired tone. Note that an Uberschall doesn't have a Depth knob. The default Depth value when you select the Euro Uber model is equivalent to the amp's fixed depth circuit."​

The tone of the Uberschall is also available as a standalone Bogner pedal. In a similar fashion you can turn the Amp block into a pedal, by disabling the power amp section of the amp model (turn down Supply Sag until it says: “P.A. off”).

The accompanying cabinet is Bogner’s Uberkab, a 4x12 with V30 and T75 speakers. These are available as stock cabs.

More IRs of Bogner cabs are available in Cab Pack 9 and Cab Pack 14 (which includes Cab Pack 5). OwnHammer also has a large collection of Bogner IR libraries.​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E-ghBgnjD0







 
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The manual has some specific information about the Presence knob. I chose not to mention that because I don't know if that specific behavior has been copied to the model. Plus: that behavior was changed in the Twinjet version.
 
I have played 2 Ubers and loved them, planned to buy either that, Shiva or Mesa Mark V but went with the AF2 instead. The thing is, just like with the Shiva, I just can't get anywhere near the tones I got from the real amp, the tones in the Axe FX are way more focused and almost honky compared to my real world albeit limited experience.
 
Information from the manual. I'd be surprised if this weren't modeled since it is a characteristic of the tone stack and the feedback circuit both of which are modeled based on cschematics and measured values (G3). The model would have to be pretty inaccurate to not give some of this behavior since it should arise naturally from the ckt topology and it part of the entire point of the amp.

We designed this channel to sound massive and to stay tight and focused even at extreme gain and high volume levels. One of the most unique items is our "Presence" control. It's an amazing combination of a midrange-presence control. As you sweep through its range you will notice an incredible variety of tones this one control allows. For an extremely aggressive sub-harmonic bass and scooped-midrange sound, keep the presence off or very low. A huge 3-dimensional tone can be found by running the presence around 2 o'clock. Pushing the "Presence" control to maximum will allow you to cut a sonic path through the mix by reinforcing your midrange and slightly rolling off the sub-bass. Trust us: REALLY check out the presence control to unleash the hidden secrets of the UBERSCHALL. The "Midrange" control is very interactive with all the other tone controls, you can go from a hollow scooped-mid setting to an aggressive in your face and on your throat kind of intensity. The "Bass" control allows almost a sub-harmonic low-end to be added, at high volumes be sure to keep the bass down a bit to keep your tone focused like a laser beam.

Also, Line 6 said they modeled this in the *XT*. So, if the L6 model from three generations back had it, I don't see how the AFX models could possibly NOT have it.
 
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I adore this amp. It's my favourite.

I found the best IRs to work with it are ones that would normally be a bit harsh on the top end. You need to crank the treble on this to really open things up anyway, but having an IR that gives it a bit of an edge as well helps too.

Bass is a diiiiick to control with this monstrosity though. The difficulty I had was that when I had a tasty amount of bass for chugs, there wouldn't be tasty bass for anything ELSE other than chugs. So I'd turn up the bass a smidge and it'd be roaring and screaming and then flub on chugs.

My solution was to pull back the bass using a GEQ. Be careful though because one of the best parts about this amp IS the amount of bass. It gives your playing huge amounts of swing and movement and if you kill the bass, you're going to kill one of the most awesome things about this beast. Make sure you have plenty of bass in your tone, but work hard on taming it so that it doesn't get out of control.

I found cranking the treble to be far more helpful than cranking the presence. To me, cranking the presence added some clarity, but it also added a boatload of fizz. YMMV. There seems to be a tasty connection between presence and mids though so it's worth messing with. I was just able to get the high-end I wanted out of the treble control more so than the presence control. Mine is on 2.

Dynamic Presence on the other hand can do some awesome things as well. If you like your tone but wish it was a bit clearer or had some more attack? Play with that. Some great stuff can be found with that knob.

Also, with quantum, mess with the bright setting. I've got my bright switch on and I've boosted the bright by 1.00 as well. Bought out some more colour.

Scooping mids with this amp is a bit of a shame as it's got really lovely things going on in the mids. I think this is what I love best about the amp. If you treat it nicely, the mids will sing and everything will be almost pretty. Then you choke down on your strings, chug like a Russian with a bottle of Vodka and suddenly windows are rattling. I found that adding mids didn't make things pointy and unpleasant, it just kinda made things a bit mushy, but again, correct use of the Treble\Presence can help compensate for this.

Something I had a lot of fun with for a while (but it didn't work with the songs) is to use a FAS Boost pedal with it. Low gain on the amp, high gain with the FAS boost. A treble booster did good things at bringing some brightness into it and things got pretty transparent which was great. My only problem was that it wasn't particularly tight. My pickups aren't wound to have a super-tight chuggy feel though so maybe if you do have some Djenty sorta pickups, it might do some awesome things for you.

The only tricky part I've found about using the Uber is that I still haven't found an amp to pair it with. When you get your Uber screaming, it'll be a sorta all-encompassing guitar sound. Huge bass, screaming mids with a lot of distortion. It ends up taking up a fair bit of sonic space and getting bass sounds or other guitar sounds to play nice with it was tricky.
 
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Nice, various tips to dial in this beast. Sure, they differ, but just like with real amps there's no 'right' or 'wrong'.
 
Bass is a diiiiick to control with this monstrosity though. The difficulty I had was that when I had a tasty amount of bass for chugs, there wouldn't be tasty bass for anything ELSE other than chugs. So I'd turn up the bass a smidge and it'd be roaring and screaming and then flub on chugs.
Try a multi-band compressor block after the cab block to just target the 65 to 280Hz range only. Clamp down just enough to take the flub out of the chugs.
 
I love this amp sim. in the Axe Fx.
It is, well .. was my go-to amp, before re-discovering the Savage models in FW 2.04.
The Überschall is such a beast :D
 
Nice, various tips to dial in this beast. Sure, they differ, but just like with real amps there's no 'right' or 'wrong'.

I know! I'm excited about trying these this evening!

For me, the Soldano SLO pairs nicely with the Uber.
Hmm, I'd like to check that out but I never seem to have luck doing 2 amps blended, do you have a preset you could share!

I love this thread Yek is doing, I'm learning alot trying new things and having a blast. It's one of the first things I look for every morning.
 
Hmm, I'd like to check that out but I never seem to have luck doing 2 amps blended, do you have a preset you could share!
I'll have to check when I get back in the studio, but I don't think that I have one. I know that I used that combination on one project, but I don't blend in the Axe-Fx. I always double track and sometimes quad track. This one in particular was quad tracked with two Uber and two SLO.
 
Typo in the first paragraph where it says uberkab instead of Uberschall, tried this model out yesterday and got along with it much better than I have in the past. Though I remember one of the Quantum updates saying this model was "figured out" so that may be a big part of it. One of the few models where I can use T75s without feeling it's too harsh
 
When I said that it's hard to pair this amp with something, I meant as a double-track. I like to use 2 different amps when recording to get some wider sounds.

In the meantime, I revisited the presence control. There IS some really good stuff there. I've now got it up around 6. I would recommend getting your attack and high-end correct, then experiment with presence.
 
The chugs can be a tad loose . I haven't tried the Multi band comp trick. I just put a TS808 drive in front and pow, tightens up nicely. I've always liked this amp model plus I like saying " Uberschall "
 
Try a multi-band compressor block after the cab block to just target the 65 to 280Hz range only. Clamp down just enough to take the flub out of the chugs.

Struggling to get this right... ending up with a pumping effect, any advice on what to set the parameters to?
- Compressor noob!
 
Struggling to get this right... ending up with a pumping effect, any advice on what to set the parameters to?
- Compressor noob!
I happen to be in the studio today. Not much time, though. Threw this patch together real quick. Normally, I'd do all the filter and multi-band compression in my DAW, but here it is to the best of my ability in the Axe. Notable changes made were KT88 tubes and driving the preamp in the cab block with the Modern type. Adjust the threshold in the comp. to suit your guitar and avoid pumping. Just shave off enough. Also adjust the drive on the preamp in the cab block to avoid clipping. Other than that, make some minor tweaks here and there to compensate for your gear and you should be good to go. Let me know how it goes for you.
 

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When I said that it's hard to pair this amp with something, I meant as a double-track. I like to use 2 different amps when recording to get some wider sounds.
Okay, didn't know that you were only double tracking. You just said:
haven't found an amp to pair it with
Just be careful when going for wider sounds and only double tracking. Using extremely contrasting timbres on different sides can cause people to experience feeling off balanced.
 
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