Electronic and electro-mechanical instruments must be connected to an amplifier to be heard on stage and are often recorded by mic’ing the amp in the studio. Amplifiers have different sonic characters, based on their design, and different instruments benefit from different amp sounds. We have modeled a number of popular amps that have been historically used with the keyboards represented here.
As an example, the Patch, “Wurlitzer 200A – Rocker Blues,” uses an emulation of the Vox AC-30 – a popular 1960s-era British guitar amp, which was often paired with this model.
Cabinet allows you to choose the type of speaker cabinet. 1 × 12 is a smaller enclosure with one 12” speaker, 2 × 12 is a medium enclosure with two 12” speakers, and 4 × 12 is a larger cabinet with four 12” speakers.
The Bass / Mid / Treble controls let you cut or boost the tone at preset frequencies and Presence boosts very high frequencies for added clarity.
Master is the master volume control for the amp and BOOST adds volume (like a “high-gain” switch).
The AMPLIFIER section can be turned ON / OFF with the label switch above the controls.
In the Patch, “Wurlitzer 140B – Amp,” you can select various presets from an emulation of a Vox AC-30.
The selectors let you choose from 8 preset EQ and drive combinations, ranging from clean to distorted tones.
In the “Pianet N – Crunch Vox” Patch, you can select between faithful emulations of both the Vox AC-30 and the Fender Twin Reverb.
Crunch overdrives the pre-amp stage and BOOST adds volume (like a “high-gain” switch).
The Patch, “Weltmeister Claviset EP – Retropluck,” uses an emulation of the Twin Reverb.
BOOST increases very high frequencies for added clarity.
In the Patch, “Vibanet – Retro Vibrato Amp,” you can select various presets from emulations of different amplifiers.
Tone boosts the high frequencies of the selected amp and Gain boosts overall amp level.
In the Patch, “Pianet M,” we are using an emulation of the Fender Twin Reverb.
Drive overdrives the pre-amp section.
In the “Celeste – Vibra Retro” Patch, you have the option of running the Celeste through a lo-fi amplifier for a retro sound.
Speaker controls how much the sound of the amp’s speaker cabinet is mixed in.
The switches in the Patch, “Electric Grand CP70 – Amp,” let you choose between DIRECT (the signal from the instrument’s 1/4” output), CABINET (the sound of a Twin Reverb amp’s speakers being mic’ed), and TWIN (the direct out of the amp, with no speakers).
In the Patch, “Electric Harpsichord – Vibra,” we use an emulation of the Baldwin C-1 Custom Guitar amp which was often paired with this model.
The Selectors allows you to choose from preset starting points.
