Ampero Editor Stompboxes Images Hack

Since i really dislike some of the images of the stompboxes in the Ampero Editor, especially the Boss ones, i made a package of alternative images. 

Here is how to install them: 

 1) Browse to the Ampero Image folder: 

C:\Program Files\Hotone\Ampero Editor\Resource\Ampero\Image 

 2) Copy the content of the FX1 folder in the package to the FX1 folder in the Amparo Image folder

 

 3) Copy the content of the FX2 folder in the package to the FX2 folder in the Amparo Image folder 

 4) Copy the content of the FX3 folder in the package to the FX3 folder in the Amparo Image folder

 

 5) Copy the content of the DLY folder in the package to the DLY folder in the Amparo Image folder

 Some note on the image i used: 

 A) I've tried to guess the real model based on the hints both in the graphic and the description in the Editor. In some case the number of knobs and their function was a factor. Sometimes i just picked one as a tribute to a pedal builder i like. I may have been wrong, your help is wellcome! 

 B) You may notice that i make a fair usage of the image of the Line6 DL4 and some TC Electronics product. I've found a number of similarity and i strongly belive that the designers in Ampero modeled this products.

 C) For the Ring Eko i used an image of the Hotone Binary. It looks like noone else is doing some combination of effect, so i put an image of one of their product as a tribute to their original work. 

 Join other Ampero user here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HotoneAmperoUsers

The Marshall JTM45: A Short History

This is a silghtly different post from me.

As you'm in my honey moon with the Brit 70 - PLEXI model, i've come across this video: 

https://youtu.be/D91v5fBvfKg

That i really suggest you to watch. A lot of interesting information.

But i will spoil you one of the most interesting.

All the Marshall thing was born by pure accidental. The JTM45 was developed to be a cheap british option to the bassbreaker. The change in valve type and consequentially their ability to push more the power amp, the adoption of the 4x12 (witch it stills a must today), the overall midrange push. All was done to make the product more affordable to the uk musicians.

But go watch the video by yourself!

What we have learned so far about modeling: 3 simple rules

 So, here is how i understand it:

There a 3 stages:

1) Pre amp

2) Power Amp

3) Cab and Mic

1) Pre amp is the first and easiest thing to emulate. Indeed there are also simple analogic pedals that mimic the functioning of valve preamp with nice results. What make the diffrence in the preamp stage are gain stages and EQ stack.

2) Power Amp: a valve power amp works in a way that you can get output and headroom 3 times than  solid state amps. So you should compare a 20w solid state with a 5w valve, a 50w solid state with a 15w valve, a 100w solid state with a 30watt valve. In the same way, to get the push of a 100w valve you will need 300w of solid state power, and so on. This make comparisions a bit more difficult. So, set your expectations to one third of the nominal power.

3) Cab and Mic or impulse response. The result of this element of the equation is a powerful eq filtert. Cab and Mic (or IR) are a core stage in crafiting your tone.

the legend of the guitar woods and pickup voicing

 While my crush for the British 70 model AKA MArshall Plexi takes its course i realized where all the fuss about the relevance of that type of wood and that pickups cames from.

With certains amps the difference in tone from one guitar to the other is about a notch of the tone knobs.

But when you have a Marshall style amp that knobs need to be maxed so there is no EQ tweak to be done. Only gain adjustment is an option.

On the other side my suggestion is: when you use a marshal style amp or model, let your guitar tone bloom. Dont let you be underwelmed by differences and peculiarity of your guitars. Just enjoy what you have!

Iron maiden Early 80 tone

 Recently i've been noodling on "Revelations" from "Piece of Mind" so i make my attemp to nail that tone.

It is pretty simple and it revolves aruond a classic plexi tone(remember that marshall amp works better with all tone knobs maxed):

As always i used the delay to "double" the guitar and added a touch of reverb. I think that maybe a plate would have been closer but i like out it sound this way,

Then i've tried to push this peset with some overdrive and got some good tone for "Loasfer Word (the big horra)" from "Powerlave". Oddly to get a closer i had to switch off the usual delay-doubler.

Here are settings of the fender overdrive for the leads:

May look like a joke but all you need is push the plexi so it works best this way... When you play liquid, rounded lead solo the full basses will help your tone. Also remember when you play that type of lead you need to be gentle in your picking attack and led the gain stages do the work.

Add delay to taste. I did no research on that so i will not screenshot a setting. i use a standard 20-30% mix with a 250ms near or less. Standard.

And finally the rythm tone for powerslave. The same plexi setting but we need to get the bass tight so:

At the time Murray had one of this in his rig:

As a bouns, if you add some chorus you can get a pretty decent tone for the interlude of "Wasting love".

Here's my subtle settings:

Maybe i should try with a flanger...

Here's some more Iron Maiden if you like:

http://ridingthemustang.blogspot.com/2016/09/resource-review-blog-with-iron-maiden.html

http://ridingthemustang.blogspot.com/2013/07/fender-mustang-iron-maiden-preset.html

Harley Benton DNAfx GiT REVIEW vs Mooer GE 150

 Today Harley Benton announced its first multi effect unit. It is priced at 144€ and goes directly against the MOOER GE 150 that goes for 159€ at thomann.de .

So many of us are wondering for a review that answer to the question: will the DNAFX sound better than the GE150?

The answer is her: it will not because it is the same unit!

Let's have a look at the basic specs:

55 amps

26 cabs

impulse response loader

up to 9 effect from a list of 151

An 80 seconds looper.

This are exacly the same of the Mooer GE 150.

But if you are not convinced, let's have a look to some other detail.

This is the back of the  units:

Also the size is similar.

Here are the controls:

As you can see we have the same konbs, the same buttons and the same lights.

So i think that if you want to know if the hb dnafx is the baregain for you all you have to do is have a look at some of the mooer ge 150 review. It is a good unit for the price.

How do it mesures in my point of view?

Effect chain is fixed and this may look like a problem, but you have the ability to get pitch shifter and delay together and this is a big point.

You only have only 2 stomps so if you want to use a 3 presets setup (clean, rythm and solo) you may need to stomp twice to change from clean to solo and back. No the fastest way. There may be other tricks like make a sequence of repating preset (ex: solo, clean, rythm, clean, rythm, solo) and go always up or control the gain with the pedal but they may work or not for you.

I would have prefer to have an extra switch instead of the pedal but it may be an interesting choice, especially for the price.

New Slash Tone Preset - Guns and Roses Era

I was revisiting my preset list to make room for a new one (post coming soon) and i found myself reworking the old Slash preset.

As i gain experience i found myself wanting different thing. And it is ok.

The original preset

http://ridingthemustang.blogspot.com/2013/08/slash-preset-appetite-for-destruction.html

was done with the intro from Sweet child o'mine in mind. I was searching for that attack and that gain and tone.

I was happy with the job but i find myself wanting something that is a bit more flexible so i set to less gain and less highs and some more bass. Obviously this has been done in the overdrive stomp.

Here is a screen of the thing:

This allows me to move better in the territory of the Marshall/JCM tone by using the volume knob. It works nicely also without the overdrive stomp but if you have read this

http://ridingthemustang.blogspot.com/2020/07/gain-stages-compression-and-tone-stacks.html

You will know that i like better the tone from layered overdrives. An interesting note is that the British 80 model is based on the JCM800 and this amp has a clipping stage to add gain to  the gain channell. In fact i think that the JCM800 was the first Marshall to use this "trick". So it is like this preset is using at least 3 stage of gain: the stomp, the brit pre and a clipping stage that i guess is reproduced by the Fender modeling.

Enjoy!

Import Guitars in 2020: High quality, High End, the new era and my opinion

As you my know, i've always gone toward what i consider the best quality vs price balance when i buy a guitar.

Cort factory in Korea has always been a good place to build guitars, but clearly remember the day i entered a shop and found for a really cheap price an Ibanez AXD81. It was made in china and it was the main reson it was not selling.

I love how it looked andd there was not a single flaw in the construction. No visual defects. No other issues.

It was around 2003-2006, brands made the first step to change the quality of import guitar. As far as i know they send people from the "custom shops" to the big factories to train both in building and QA check.

And that move leads to today market.

I take this as the main example:

It's a beautyful MAJ200XFM fro Sterling. Its priced around 1800 euros and it is made in Indonesia. It really tells us how the world is changing.

But, where do brands want to go with similar moves?

Let's look at the situation. We have all the brands that we all look at (Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, Music Man, ESP, Jackson, Schecter, Charvell, Dean, Yamaha to name a few) with their own small factory for high end production and the a small number of imort builder like Cort and World Music Instruments that ghost build the most of their lower priced guitars.

Some brand will hint this by using a different name (Squier for Fender, Epiphone for Gibosn, Sterling for Music Man) some will use the same brand (like Ibanez, Schecter, Jackson). But the stratigy is no different.

You want that guitar, you can afford the real deal, we can offer you a better deal.

But as they rise the quality (and also the price) of their import lines, they are eating their own high end market. Why?

My guess is that. You need to have a high end production, more for the reputation than for the money you directly made from that sales. Squier sells more than Fender and i think the earn from Squier (in percentage, not per single sale, obviously) is better. For a lot of reason. Production cost vs market price. Facility cost. Taxes.

So, if i build better quality import instruments that people are happy with. As a brand, i can focus on being a designer and a promoter of my brand. And let someone else do the hardwork.

That is the future i am thinking of. We will be buying more import guitar, better made, probably in the same factory, with the same quality and we will be choosing focusing on the design we like better than on the build quality.

So if i want a classic strat, i can buy a Squier, i can buy a cutlass from sterling, a charvel dinky, an ibanez AZ (to name some) just by choosing the desing a like better, knowing that it will be build by the same hand and at the same quality.

A tip on buying a guitar in the far low end of the price range. If you are buying for the chapest, as you go down there will be less quality check and the quality may vary from one to one. Go to a real shop. Spent some more money but get your hand on the one you will buy. Just check that everything is ok with your eyes. The finish, the fretwork. You wil find a better one, one that you will be happy with for a longer time. 

Be your own quality check department!

This is the safest way to buy a cheap guitar and find a good deal (the cheap guitar that rivals the expensives ones) and avoid the lemon, to avoid issues.

good luck on your next import guitar!

Gain stages, compression and tone stacks made simple

Understaing how gain (overdrive and distortion) works is a lot helpful to control your tone.

I like to think that  also your picking and the pickups are gain stages. It helps understand all the layers and how to get the right tone.

This is a bit of explaination of the "tone is in your finger" thing.

Let's say that anything that affect volume also affect gain stages and then overdrive (distortion) and tone.

Then, how hard you hit the string, the pickup power and its volume control, any gain stage that come after and you may know and control, or not.

First of all, lets get rid of one thing: the boost.

A BOOST is a gain stage that rise the volume of the signal without distorting or overdriving it. I know, the final effect may be overdriving of distorting. But that job is done by the next stage. The boost  in fact, help the following step in its work by rising the signal and making the next step overdrive sooner and better.

Since it rises the volume, usually it also compress the tone. What does it mean? Pratically, it shorten the gap between the higher and the lower part of the signal. This may be good or bad, depending on your taste and needs, and also the amount. Too much may be too much. I will come later on this because is relevant part of the gain stages game.

Usually boost have some sort of EQ controls.

TIP: any overdive pedal, with the drive control set at zero can be used as a boost. Obviouls in the same color of the pedal itself. A tube screamer is  frequently used as a mid boost by setting the drive to zero.

So, if you dont mind, i would like, after this explainations, to take all the boost thing out of the equation and concentrating on the overdrive stages and tone stack on its own.

So, why do we stack overdrives? Let's look at pedal stacking for one moment. A lot of pepole se it this way:

"I put 2 overdrives on my pedalboard, a light one (we will give it a value of 3) and a mild one (we will give a value of 5), if i use it together i wil get an higher one (3+5=8!)"

But it not just that. 2 gain stages gives you a slightly different result than a single gain stage of the same "amount". Flavor apart.

Now lets get into it! Let's consider something relitively simple like a plexi. Britsh overdirve in one of is classic incarnation. As we raise its gain from 0 its sweetspot we may notice the first rule of the gain game,

High frequncies distort sooner. 

I think this is the gold rule when you manage gain stages.

Lets think american vs british. american is mid scooped, british is mid pushed. You get something noticeably different when you push the gian in the low overdrive territory. At hte same amount of gain, the american amp will have a lot more high freq overdrive, and a lot less mid freq overdrive, resulting in a arsher, raw overdrive. On the other side the britsh will even mid and high freqs, making the mid frequences overdrives at the same time of the higer ones. This will. result in smoother tone.

So we can see, overdrive flavor has a lot to do with how much we can distort various frequency.

But if you where in the golden era of the plexi you would have want more of it. The first thing to do was rise the volume and use the power section as a second stage with the obvious porblem of the volume.

Then, people like Jose Arredondo stard modding amps to get more gain stages. Modern amps have more gain stages, both valve and solid state. The classic JCM800 has a clipping stage to name one. Just like a fixed overdrive pedal in its gain channel.

Why? 

How to evolve your guitar tone

How do you master the tone of our guitar?

How do we find our how sound?

How do we make a step forward in the path of guitar voicing?

Here's my perspective.

We all are in love for the tone of some artist. And most of us have a phase where we try to emulate someone else tone. We read, we search, we experiment, we copy we clone.

It is ok. It is good. It teach us something.

But... most of us want that same exact thing, in the good and in the bad.

But there is more about it. Just listent. Find that part of the tone you love that really strikes your heart. Focus on that. Give you the ability to really understand how that part work. Make it your. And then try to change the rest. Make it different, make better. Take out what you feel wrong, impefect, unneeded. Put in something else.Pick that something from different recipes and make your own recipe.

Petrucci Allround preset AKA Ultimate dual channel solution

As you may know i am struggling finding a solution to for the limited stomp preset chaning offered by my beloved mustang I v1.

My comfort zone would be the ability to have the classic 3 channel solution at my feets:

1) clean

2) crunch rythm

3) lead

But i can have only 2 of the 3 and this has alway got me mad...

I recently found a solution that consists in using a pedal platform oriented clean (i discovered that my sparkilng cleans preset are really bad as platform!) that can handle a decent MB emulation from the Zoom Multistomp to use for the crunch rythm and the other state of the footswith is set to the lead tone.

It is a compromise: the crunch is only decent, as i state, and the clean is not the wonder.

So today inspiration leads me to something different:

Introducing MB CRUNCH 1 DC MORE aka PETRUCCI ALLROUND PRESET.

After i found a very good tone to perform Damage Control (see the DC in the name) i decided to try to find a sweet spot between the gain i need for the rythm and the gain i need for the sole (that is obvously MORE!!!). Again is a compromise: it is a bit less tight and clear and  a bit less headroom in the rythm and a bit less gainy for the solo. But just a bit. And has no 450ms delay when you are soloing. I could use the classic trick of the pitch shifter for the shot delay and the proper delay for the longer one but i would have ruined the tightness of the preset and render it unuseful for the rythm section. It is a compromise, but is a really comfortable compromise. And, oddly, it works on an LT25 or LT50.

(oh! and i recentrly discovered that all my preset are also available to download in the fender library for the new GT and GTX models! So plenty of compatibility!)

And it only works very well on my JP70, but i guess that with some tweaks it will work better also on the SZ, but not in the same patch!

I most admit that i am pretty excited about this preset!

John Petrucci Lead tone: a small guide

First of all a small introduction on the basics amp tones of John.

Petrucci uses like 6 different channels, just like a standard clean/cruch/lead but everything is doubled.

2 cleans

2 crunches

2 leads

with small differences

the 2 cleans are in a separated setup (different head and differnet cabs) for 2 reasons:

1) smoother switching between channels

2) i likes better 2x12 for the cleans and 4x12 for the leads

other than this he uses glassy fenderish clean with no brackup, adding compression, chorus and delay where is needed.

Reverb settings: JP does not use any reverb, BUT you may want since it is added in production on the records. Usually a small amount of plate is the default, an hall will also do. Nothing that "color" your tone like a '63. This goes for both cleans, chuches and leads.

Addendum on reverb: JP uses, at least on leads, a dual stereo delay setting. One delay has 602 and the other has 460ms, both 3 repeats. The texture of repeats of this settings offer both clear repaets to sustain the fast notes runs and reverb like ambience. If you dont have 2 delays (and the Original Fender Mustang hasnt) i may want to try to set your delay at 460 (like me) or 602, 3 repeats, around 30% level and add the missing ambience with a trusty reverb. 

Pickup configuration: most of you will agree: Petrucci Di Marzio are amazing, but this is not the whole point. I think that part of the pickup evolution is just an adjustment do different woods. Indeed you can see the the old pickup still get mounted on certain guitars and i think it mainly depends of woods and weight of the guitar. The main target is tonal consistence across the various guitars without changing amp settings. And the other point is the balance between neck and bridge pickup. If you tweak your amp for the neck liquid tone you may not have that cutting and tight tone on the bridge. And that is foundmental. John Petrucci uses specific pickup based on the position on the fretboard: neck for the higher frets, most times, and bridge for the lower frets, and the same solo. If your pickup arent balanced the same way it will be a problem for you. My main guitar has an hotter bridge PU and a cleaner neck pickup, more clean oriented than solo oriented. I've found a setting that is a good middleground and get me close but not that close.

Riff vs lead tone: a small guide

Since my view of this has grow a lot recently (especially in the lead departement!), i want to share a small sum of my finding here with you.

Yes you can use a single tone of both, many do, but what if you want to spacialize and get the most of both worlds? And whay if you want to know what are the difference?

GAIN:

You dont want too much gain on your rythm but you may want more gain on your solo. Way? Rythms need to be tight and "clear" and solo may need sustain. You want the feel the attack and the stom while you strum, one side and want you note to last as long as it can to the other.

DELAY:

Same goes for the delay, Riff want no delay or a very short slap to "double" your guitar. On the opposite when doyng a solo you want athmosphere you want your fast notes melting and messing with the repeats

EQ:

Again your riff need to be thight, with a good amount of highs (but always keep away that arsh taste), while avoid the honk of a exagerated mid and you want to tame your basses so it is not too boomy or undefined.. Thats the recipe, you know. And the solo: the solo needs to stand out, so you need some more mid to cut through the mid, and your highs need more basses and more mids to get full and rounded. Check with your neck PU if you have too much basses listening to the tone of the A string between 10 and 15 frets. Yuo need that notes to be usables. Many uses the neck pickup for the higer frets but i think that you may want to tame your highs and to keep the brighe pickup usable in that zone for the sweet armonics that it makes when you it more than one string and bend!

Fender Mustang new superclean tones

I've worked on my clean recently.

I've noodled with all my preset and decided that the 65 Twin Reverb.

I like that glassy superclean tone, and i like it to be clean with my humbacker.

So, i set the gain all the way down, and bass and middle really close to that. treble at 5 (because trebles give you the definition, the attack of the note!). Cranked the volume at 9 and added a compressor post gain to raise the volume (set attack and threshold way down, ratio at 3, release at mid).

I loveit! And so responsive to the change of pickup, very acustic!

I called this "65 TW PURE"

BUT

Yes there is a but!

All that trebles! So bad as a pedal platform! I mean drive pedals act very bed with all that trebles. Sound so sterile.

So i decided to make room for an alternative.

I made a new preset: the "65 TW BALANCED".

TREBLE=4,MID=3,BASS=2.5

Not as wonderful as before, a more humbled tone i will say. But this is good enough as a pedal platform. Drives are warm now.

So the idea is: When i play a 2 tones song, i can use the PURE setting, when i need a 3rd tone, i can relay on pedals in front of the BALANCED wrkorse!

random thoughts on guitar effect and tones

As you may have read, during the quarantine i've reorganized my presets. And then i've reorganized again and then i've changed presets. And i've startedfrom scratch my pedalboard.

I'm trying to find my way, and may be i'm fighting my own nature in the disperate grow as a guitar player.

When i was young and was playing in a band i had a clean (a la Jazz Chorus) and a high gain (a la 5150) sound. And most of the time the clean had no use. So most of the time i did not even need a footswitch.

After years, with my actual configuration (no matter what it is) the footwork is still a pain. So i'm leaning toward getting information on people using less sounds. Minimalists. And built from there. A clean, a drive, possibile with versatility. At least inside a song.

Whatching Satriani's pedalboard did not help. I realized that i dont have the mind to figure out how to use all thoose stuffs. I've learned how to use multiple delays but maybe it is just not my cup of thea.

But Joe said something interesting. When he's working the songs from the album to the tour, he play the full setlist with just one sound, to see where it works and where not. I'm giving a try to this mindset to see where it leads. And  maybe not worring if the tone i'm using for a song is the perfect one will make a better experience. Because maybe there is no perfect tone.

So i will try all the combinations, also. What if i play my "set" with just one tone (so no cleans), then just 2 and the up to 3, my actual limit?

I will let you know where i land!

Plexion (crunchbox) vs guvnor (zoom governor)

Some week ago i decided to reboot the pedalboard with the goal to simplify things up.

Obviously i keep the amp footswitch and decided for the zoom multistomp as a jack of all trades.

First thing missing was a wah, i actually am using the touch wah on the zoom, and working on a stand alone solution. Since i find the touch wah in the Zoom better than the one in the Mooer Mod Factory i gave up on the last one. I will get rid of that at some point!

But this is not point here. The next thing i noticed is that when i play Fade to black from Metallica, i am ok with the cleans and ok with the rythm, but i need a 3rd tone. A sweeth and cream britsh low gain tone.

I hunted a bit on the Multistomp options and i settled on the governor. Gain at 62, Tone at 18 and level at 78 (unity gain obviously). Tone at 18? Yes i am putting this in front to a very clean and very trebly Fender Tweed model.

Well, we all know where this is gonna lead us. Since i reboot the board i've felt like the first slot was to be filled with the plexion. Still my preferred stomp. Buy.. can we make a plexion(crunchbox)  sound like Marshall Guv'nor. Turns out that we can. Normal mode obviously. Half the gain (around 30 instead of 62 or 10-11 o'clock), tone just before half way and level just after.

What i've learn today? Since a crunchbox  is a son of the govnor, the low gain in the crunchbox sounds pretty close to the midgain in the govnor. And i am way happy about it!

The quarantine preset reorganization

Well, after i spent time with my new British full lead tone and finding that i really digit in, i needed a sweet spot in the memory of the mustang.

Long story short tell, after last renaming and sorting, after adding a pedalboard and sticking will a lower number of preset, i decided for a reorganization.

Reason are 2:

1) i like the naming i was using but it is not much evocative in the long term
2) actual system was not functional, and you need to be conmfortable, to enjoy your playng experience.

I did a lot of thinking on it i like the result so far:

Some of the main preset retain its old slot, basically:

ORANGE is near or less Dream Theater presets
GREEN is an all of classics
RED is for Metal

the basic idea is that the extarnal triplets (ABC and FG#) are in the same family, sorta of complete sets. DE are used for leftovers.

RED ABC is my allround core. 2K METAL is my trash roaring tone that can do everything, coupled with the clean compressed chorused and the new lead tone. It can cover a lot of terrain.

RED DE is my guns and roses set, i need an external wah to complete.

RED FG# is my set of Megadeth (alternative to the 2K METAL) with a random clean tone.

GREEN ABC is Satriani set, in fact i could do without the B when i have the external wah in the chain but i like having the 2K WAH around. Was a good peset!

The rest of the bank is raising from clean (#) in to blues (G) in to hard rock (F) in to a pushed britsh tone (E) in to a modern high gain cutting thin (D) that is the Mustang replica of my pre-mustang tone.

But i my kick off the BRIT 2K LEAD since i dont use it. The JCM FULL LEAD would have sit nicelyu also here.

ORANGE ABC is a Dream theater set and G# is another.

ORANGE DEF is a work in progress, i think the now renamed MB LEAD FULL (originally my "liquid" tone) will be retaired since the JCM FULL LEAD has that spot now. MB CRUNCH X i really do not remember what is for!

I will keep updated!

Marshall Britsh Lead Tone

Recently i've seen this Tom Quayle video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BRU7Hd_3dI

and some more in the past months. It uses a Solo tone that is sorta of a British High Gain Lead Mid pushed solo.

Many other instrumental guitar player uses similar tones. Marco Sfogli comes to mind.

So i decided to make my try with my trusty Fender Mustang I.

This is my take:

First thing first i maxed out both the Gain in the Amp and the Fender Overdrive Stomp. All tones on the amp are up but the trebles that are 9 out of 10 and also the presence is backed up to 3. I wanted to be rounded and not to aggressive in the high frequencies.

The result is a good tone for solo and hard rock. In the video Tom control the gain with the volume knob of the guitar. I think i used to much gain here so you wont do that!

FX are my standard settings, all packed for a classic solo ambience.

Enjoy!

Review Mustang LT25 from Fender

So i decided to write a post with some consideration on the new Fender Mustang LT25 from the point of view of a long time Mustang I user.

Why?

Because i think that this new model will take the spot of the Mustang I, so i guess someone is considering to "upgrade", many are choosing between the old and the new and are very temped to the new one. Well, it's new!

This is not a comparision between the tones of the two. We will not find out witch one does the better modeling thing.

They are the cheaper modeling amp of the line, they are supposed to be good , not perfect. And i think you can get great tones from both.

But what about features, twakability and other factors?

Let's get deep into it.

The LT25 is infact a cut down version of the new iteration of the Fender modeling, the GT line.

We got a 25w single speaker guitar amp. My personal opinion is that the closest the speaker is to the classic 12 inch the better. In that sense i  like better the single 8' from the LT25 than the two 6,5 of the GT40. The LT25 sound slightly better than the GT40 to me.

The old Mustang I was 20W, dont expect to be much difference, if there is difference it must be more in the efficence of the amp and the build of the cabinet. To hear some real difference you should get at least double the power.

As you may already have heard a 25w solid state amp has an headroom similar to a 5w to 10w real valve amp.

To my taste, it is already load for home usage.

The LT25 knobs layout is similar to the Mustang I: we still missing the mid knob. If you are an hold style dude you would have preferred a mid knob. The midrange twaking is doable via the menu on the panel, anyway.

About the menu on the panel. On the old MI the effect selection was done on the panel with a very limited 2 knob system. I will not go in deep on the old system but it was very limited and i think the on board effect where really usable only with the computer connected. There was no way to tweak the really useful Overdrive from the panel! Now there is a display and you can do ANYTHING from the amp panel. This is a real step ahead. If you dont like to have your amp connected to the computer the LT25 is seriously a better option than the MI.

On the other side consider that tweaking with the computer is faster, and once you have nailed your preset the time you spent tweaking will drop drammatically.

The thing i did not like on the MI is already there on the LT25: 1 footswitch with 2 channel selection.

To be clear, with both amp, during a song, your amp is a 2 channel amp. This is ok if your amp is only an amp. But this is also a multieffect and 2 channel becomes really limiting. this is the reason why i mainly use my MI as a pedal platform today. And i am really happy with it. I think that we really need a small and cheap amp with a 3 channel selection (at least we can have clean, dirt and lead) and the ability to change the combination with a fast menu selection, like banks.

That would have been cool. The GT40 has a better channel/patch selection, but i dont need the extra power and i am not fully convinced by that stereo speaker, as i've said before.

Modeling selection: the LT25 has some more model than the MI, but to be honest i dont think it really matter that much. You have a good selection of basis that you can tweak to go where you want.

Effect selection. Here we have a slightly better selection. Now we have the tube screamer, the klon and the RAT clones, plus the classic fender overdrive.  I like what we have, but i think that a good metal distortion and maybe a crunch box clone would have made things perfect.

I noticed that the selection of delays and reverbs has decreased, so if you are a fan of this category of effect just skip the LT25 or consider the opportunity to put a nice Zoom Multistomp in front of it like i do.

A big lack is the Pitch shifter. I made an heavy usage of the PS to double my guitar tone. Especially on dirt really made an huge difference. Since you now have to use the delay for it this is really limiting.

The final thing you need to pay attention is this: the effect chain is now locked

Presets number and quality

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