Jesse Daly
New Member
Hello all. I have been hovering in the Fractal forum for years, but I finally decided to join as I am seriously eyeing an fx8 and an Engl e530.
A little background on my situation... In 2007 I picked up a Mac Book Pro and guitar rig with the foot switch, sold my Mesa recto verb 2x12 combo and picked up a PA and a solid state power amp. In 2010 I built a pair of custom cabinets (4x8" & 1x12" speaker each), and I bought a N.O.S. Rivera Hammer 320 power amp. I continued to use guitar rig as a preamp & effects solution. In 2012 I upgraded from a PreSonus Firepod to a Universal Audio Apollo quad for my recording needs. Then in 2013 I picked up the newly released Engl amp emulation for UAD and I stopped using guitar rig all together. The improvement in feel and tone was dramatic.
I'm using the UAD Space Echo, Cooper Time Cube, Moog Filter, and MXR Flanger. But most importantly I am running the AKG Spring Reverb on an aux bus. I run guitar-->Morley Wah-->4 channel amp selector-->line ins 5-8 on the Apollo. Each of those Apollo channels runs an instance of Engl VS646 set to clean crunch rhythm and lead. Each of those are then bussed in parallel to aux 1 & aux 2. Aux 1 runs the 4 effects, and aux 2 runs the spring reverb only. This allows me to run a specific amount of reverb for each channel. And fwiw I still use my old guitar rig pedal as a midi controller which drives a macro program which causes actual mouse clicks on screen to engage/disengage each of the effects on Aux1.
The whole thing is a bit clunky, but it sounds good and it works.
Now I am considering picking up FX8 & a real Engl e530 preamp. This would be a lot cleaner than my current setup, possibly sound a bit better, and free up several channels and a ton of dsp on my Apollo.
The FX8 is super versatile and can obviously pull off every thing I am currently doing and more, I'm pretty stoked about it! BUT what I need to know first is will the FX8 spring reverb hold a candle to the UAD AKG Spring Reverb?
A little background on my situation... In 2007 I picked up a Mac Book Pro and guitar rig with the foot switch, sold my Mesa recto verb 2x12 combo and picked up a PA and a solid state power amp. In 2010 I built a pair of custom cabinets (4x8" & 1x12" speaker each), and I bought a N.O.S. Rivera Hammer 320 power amp. I continued to use guitar rig as a preamp & effects solution. In 2012 I upgraded from a PreSonus Firepod to a Universal Audio Apollo quad for my recording needs. Then in 2013 I picked up the newly released Engl amp emulation for UAD and I stopped using guitar rig all together. The improvement in feel and tone was dramatic.
I'm using the UAD Space Echo, Cooper Time Cube, Moog Filter, and MXR Flanger. But most importantly I am running the AKG Spring Reverb on an aux bus. I run guitar-->Morley Wah-->4 channel amp selector-->line ins 5-8 on the Apollo. Each of those Apollo channels runs an instance of Engl VS646 set to clean crunch rhythm and lead. Each of those are then bussed in parallel to aux 1 & aux 2. Aux 1 runs the 4 effects, and aux 2 runs the spring reverb only. This allows me to run a specific amount of reverb for each channel. And fwiw I still use my old guitar rig pedal as a midi controller which drives a macro program which causes actual mouse clicks on screen to engage/disengage each of the effects on Aux1.
The whole thing is a bit clunky, but it sounds good and it works.
Now I am considering picking up FX8 & a real Engl e530 preamp. This would be a lot cleaner than my current setup, possibly sound a bit better, and free up several channels and a ton of dsp on my Apollo.
The FX8 is super versatile and can obviously pull off every thing I am currently doing and more, I'm pretty stoked about it! BUT what I need to know first is will the FX8 spring reverb hold a candle to the UAD AKG Spring Reverb?
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U Pete!