Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu
Thanks for the info, I can imagine it's a difficult task to decide how it should work and integrate with the plugin. A short description and some kind of rating system would certainly help with choices, especially as the library grows in the future. I can't believe how many heads there are since I first bought Headcase, I'm guessing you're already at the point where you can officially say there are more amps available than any other product!
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@Stu
Easily outnumber any other plugin in terms of heads. However, thats not down to us, thats the community that has done that. So we have a few less right now because of the little stumble we had. The heads are still available, but not through official channels because they were not collected with a distribution agreement in place. If we ABG were collecting them we would have made sure that a distribution agreement was in place. However while most of these were being collected Scott and I were busy on building HC so VAS was doing the collection. I had two head counts given to me, one was 199 heads, the other was 285. Either way, lots available..
@xethicx
It should not matter what sound you are looking for, high gain, crunch etc, because you can open the head up and simply add or remove gain if you want. If you want to have more poweramp distortion than gain stage distortion thats possible too. Although the classic modern high gain sound is best with a clean poweramp..
One of the downfalls of head case is the speed at which it loads presets, and heads, this is because it has so much to do. Other products already know what they are loading in that their signal path and schematics are already built. Head Case does not have this, it has to build its schematic internally every time you load a head. It has no idea what the cutoffs are, what curves are being used, how many, or even what they look like! Now not only does it have to do all that, but it also has to ensure the schematic it is building works, and is safe.(no volume spikes or uncontrollable feedback for example)
Any change in a schematic. no matter how minor, affects and causes calculations throughout the entire schematic. In some cases large changes like signal routing changes cause an entire schematic redraw. For example change the tonestack position, or add a tonestack into the poweramp. Both of these changes will trigger a complete schematic redraw.
Anyways, what I'm getting at is Head case will NOT be a good solution to use Live. Instead, we have what used to be called the Preampus line, but now called Tone series. All of these heads, including Keith Merrow's head the Series 60 will be bult into that suite. Its going to be a no nonsense, no bells and whistles fast as fu#k suite designed for live use. It will have only the effects that are most used. Wah Delay, Chorus, Flanger, OD, FUZZ Tremolo. Stereo effects include Aftershock Delay, Ping Pong Delay, Chorus.
A single cab interface.
Here's what is special about Tone..
You can also order it customized with any head you want built in head case. When the HC heads in Tone switch, they will also switch at somewhere around 5-12 ms.
So, I would hold off on HC if you are planning to use it for live, its not a good fit for that, "Tone" however is a good fit for that. Tone is going to be about 40 dollars + any customizations you want. You will most likely not need any customizations to Tone, it will have enough flexibility and work right out of the box. Its just that some people want to design their amp in head case builder and use it live. In that case they would get their heads added to tone.
@ivansc
We spent at least quadrupple the time on achieving the crunch and mild breakup tones than we did on high gain. High gain is a relatively simple sound to get to. Once the wave is squared off, where do you go from there? The only thing to remember about High gain tones is that the filters you are using cannot have high Q to them, its like filtering the high end portion of white noise. Add a strong q to that and all you'll end up getting is a wah sound.
I wish I could get to making some more heads and videos for HC but we are in the middle of remaking the entire website, as well as updating all the freeware. Both of those things have been badly neglected throughout the head case development so I am concentrating on that now.