Not to be a negative Nancy, but am I the only one not digging the Tucana model?

I made a quick, 6 scene preset with this amp last week and played it live last weekend with my Gibson SG. It sounded wonderful for what I was doing. Cut great, lots of sustain, cleaned up beautifully with the guitar volume. I'll definitely use it again.
 
... The gain staging, overdrive voicing and output stage are night and day to ANYTHING Mesa, ...
I was confused by the comparison to the MESA. If anything, it sounded like a Marshall-Diezel hybrid to me. The note definition on the Tucana is excellent at high gain. Thanks for building this awesome amp.

I am using IR Teh Shure Sm57 B6 from Clark Kent's recent IR release; MESA 4x12 V30s. Set the mic type to null and the proximity to taste, start at .1, leave everything else stock. I can nail Adam Jones' tone with the Tucana 3 fairly stock.

After a firmware update, I always perform a system reset and update all presets. As well, I typically start with brand new patches; not necessary, but more as a control to test my patches against. Reset the amp block and then deselect and select the amp type in that order then I'm good to go once I've identified the appropriate cab type in the wiki. For my patches, I just deselect and select the amp type.

It's usually drool time after that :)

Have fun playing today everyone!
 
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You don't need to crank the real amp to get a ton of overdrive. I actually designed the original for myself and I play in a rock cover band. There's nowhere I would ever be able to get the amp to the point of pushing the power tubes in to overdrive.
You gain stage a design based on its application. For a design that needs a lot of overdrive at a low volume, you do most of that and the harmonic makeup in the preamp. The Tucana falls in to this category.
An amp like the JB100 is designed to be run flat out so there is much less preamp gain as the output section becomes more criticAl to the overall overdrive generation.
Too much of both and mud is the result.

The master volumes in a 500 seat club rarely get above 10 O Clock on the real amp and at that point there's still tons of clean headroom left. Of course the power amp adds to the harmonic content, but it adds very little overdrive.

Another interesting point to note is that the Tucana has a high pass filter in the power amp feedback loop, which gives you a nice tight low end because the bass is subjected to more gain. For an amp designed to be pushed hard in to power tube overdrive, this should be omitted as all bets are off in the feedback loop when you hit the rails. In other words that filter requires headroom to function properly, as does the presence control of any amp where it's a component of the feedback loop.

exactly, that's why i said it wasn't about pushing the tubes to get break up, just to make them breathe/work.
 
i think this is a great amp sim, it's a little dark to me, but so is the Triptik...(the Triptik more so). i don't see how anyone could say it lacks gain, though. I mean, it's not a raging metal monster but has plenty of gain for almost any other application. makes me wonder what some's definition of enough gain would be!!
 
It's one of the warmest & most dynamic low gain American flavored sounds. If you don't go for that kind of thing, you won't like it...

I remember being a younger player and not being impressed with the Mesa Mark 4 because I couldn't get a Metallica tone out of it. These days, I very much enjoy the Mark series for their lead sounds...
 
It's one of the warmest & most dynamic low gain American flavored sounds. If you don't go for that kind of thing, you won't like it...

I remember being a younger player and not being impressed with the Mesa Mark 4 because I couldn't get a Metallica tone out of it. These days, I very much enjoy the Mark series for their lead sounds...

i can totally see that...but even at a defaults it's a pretty gainy tone. the way some are commenting you'd think it's almost clean with the input and od controls maxed.
 
Real world, It has the same amount of actual gain as the Triptik. Way more than most people would need for recording or live playing.
Input gain on 10 o clock, gain on 2 o clock is a 70s /80s lead tone, put the input level up to 2 o click and it's a very sustained lead tone or a very modern heavy rhythm tone. There's a clip somewhere on Facebook of me playing sweet child live with a Tuc 3 . The input gain was in 12 o clock and the gain control on 1 o clock with no pedals in front.

I played around with this amp for a couple hours the other night... Never got a chance to report back.

I also can confirm that it seems less gain-y than the Triptik to me.

I tried setting both the Input Drive and Overdrive knobs about 1 o'clock, Master Volume around 10. It did not seem to have as much gain... I was also playing at gig volume.

But I could get what I wanted, gain wise, with more knob twisting... I am not a high gain guy, so no big deal. I am still feeling my way around this model.

I think it has a distinct sound, and in particular the lower strings have a very different vibe than most other amps - maybe related to that filter you referred to in another post up-thread?

This may be what makes it feel like there is less gain - because the low end is a different beast than most people are used to?

Also, I found it wasn't a tone I was really digging when played solo, but I put it over a loop of some clean chords and it sounded great!

It also seems very sensitive to pickup differences... More so than other amp models in the Axe Fx. I tend to play a lot on my neck pickup (stacked humbucker) but liked this amp much more on my bridge pickup.

I felt like I need to lower the default Presence of 5 to around 2-3 for my tastes.


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I double-checked the gain and it is correct. It's plenty gainy here. It's a rock amp, it's designed for old farts like us who don't use gobs of gain to cover our mistakes. We just let the mistakes come through and laugh 'em off.

Hey... I resemble that remark :mrgreen.
 
The MV defaults to 4. That's what threw me off for a while. I assumed it was a MV amp and was normally played with MV 3-4 not MV 10.
 
You don't need to crank the real amp to get a ton of overdrive. I actually designed the original for myself and I play in a rock cover band. There's nowhere I would ever be able to get the amp to the point of pushing the power tubes in to overdrive.
You gain stage a design based on its application. For a design that needs a lot of overdrive at a low volume, you do most of that and the harmonic makeup in the preamp. The Tucana falls in to this category.
An amp like the JB100 is designed to be run flat out so there is much less preamp gain as the output section becomes more criticAl to the overall overdrive generation.
Too much of both and mud is the result.

The master volumes in a 500 seat club rarely get above 10 O Clock on the real amp and at that point there's still tons of clean headroom left. Of course the power amp adds to the harmonic content, but it adds very little overdrive.

Another interesting point to note is that the Tucana has a high pass filter in the power amp feedback loop, which gives you a nice tight low end because the bass is subjected to more gain. For an amp designed to be pushed hard in to power tube overdrive, this should be omitted as all bets are off in the feedback loop when you hit the rails. In other words that filter requires headroom to function properly, as does the presence control of any amp where it's a component of the feedback loop.

The MV defaults to 4. That's what threw me off for a while. I assumed it was a MV amp and was normally played with MV 3-4 not MV 10.

According to the post above, it IS a Master Volume amp... ;(


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