Rob Jackson has releases ANALOGyAMP, available for $2.99.
ANALOGyAMP takes its inspiration from the small, low wattage US all-valve guitar combo amplifiers from the 1960’s, still extremely popular today both onstage and in the studio. These amps had a single volume control, a simple bass and treble tonestack, and built-in tremolo and spring reverb. ANALOGyAMP follows the same design, adding an optional 10″ or 12″ guitar speaker cabinet emulation and a stereo ADT (automatic double tracking) effect.
Typically these amps would start to break-up with the volume control set to around half-way, aka “the sweet spot”. At this setting, the amp would be warm and clean(ish) but if you were to “dig in” the amp would start to compress and distort more. Past this point on the volume control, the amp doesn’t actually get much louder – you just get more distortion and compression. The character of the distortion also tended to be very raucous and unrefined, coming exclusively from the 6V6 power tubes.
ANALOGyAMP has been designed so that your starting point is “the sweet spot” and you add more gain from there. You can also “channel switch” between two gain settings for a lead and rhythm sound for example. As you crank the gain up on ANALOGyAMP, the tonal character of the distortion shifts into darker / more wooly territory – think 50’s “Tweed” type breakup.
Digital modelling of guitar amplifiers has become incredibly forensic over the years, but this comes at a cost – both to your CPU and your pocket! I wanted to take a step back and look at the tonal character of some of my favourite classic tube amps as a whole, rather than individually modelling all the parts, e.g. valve stages, transformers, speakers and microphones, etc. My ultimate aim was to create something a lot less complicated and CPU-friendly, that could take a guitar signal, and produce a pleasing amp-like tone, hopefully reminiscent of the actual amps that inspired me during the design of ANALOGyAMP.
ANALOGyAMP isn’t trying to be everything, so it won’t do high gain Rock and Metal tones for example, in the same way you can’t make a Princeton sound like a Plexi or Triple Rectifier. However, if you’re more into vintage clean / edge of breakup, or Classic Rock type sounds, you might like ANALOGyAMP as much as I do! There should be a few demos on YT by now, so please do go check ’em out, and hope you decide to give ANALOGyAMP a try.
Watch the demo video HERE.
ANALOGyAMP is available to iOS and MacOS users (AUv3).
For more information on ANALOGyAMP, click here:
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