This particular amp does requires a speaker cabinet to produce sound. I can be connected to a PC or Mac via a usb cable and you can then direct audio out of the amp to your computer without the need of a speaker cabinet. It can also send audio out of the XLR connector on the back of the amp to a PA system or stage monitor so it's pretty flexible.

@@FastRedPonyCar Thank You for your quick response, great channel, subbed!

@@mattdylan664 Thanks!

I’ve seen quite a lot of reviews for this and I think this one is my first like. Relatability pays off. Keep doing u

Yes on both channels

Glad it helped! It’s a great product. If you decide to buy, consider using my affiliate link in the description 👍

I think either the Switchcraft RMAS1 or Radial JS3 would work for the vocals. You would I think need one of those nice buffered mic splitters to send the mic signals. I use the RMAS1 all the time at acoustic gigs and it's outstanding (quiet and built like a tank). For the ZLX's you set the FRFR mode as a global EQ voicing but you can still EQ the channels individually.

@@FastRedPonyCar Thanks👍

I think all the Jack's come with 6L6's from the factory but can be swapped for EL34's.

Thanks. It was the only way I could think of to convey the sound changes. I'll do this sometimes at sound check before shows if I need to adjust the EQ settings in the PA mixer

Nah I don't dig in that hard.

Seems like the powerstation could be eliminated from that signal path. Running the 9005 would make the Fryette redundant.

@@FastRedPonyCar not really,the synergy modules are just preamps..plug into Fryette,turn it up LOUD to get some power amp mojo, then send the line out to the 9005 to control the overall volume….same as you would do running an amp head into a load box,then to another power amp….obviously if I am running the modules into an interface and studio monitors,I don’t need the 9005,because the amplifier in the monitors is doing that job..it’s just taking the sound of a cranked up amp,knocking it down to line level and reamping it,just making the modules and the Fryette the “amp head”..

@@scottpeters4401 Ah ok I was under the impression that you were running the 9005 out to a pair of cabinets or something and if that were the case, you'd get your power amp coloration from that and not really need the Fryette. Since recording this video, I've run the SYN1 into the Fryette and then into the OX Box for reverb/delay and then to my interface and it sounds outstanding. IMO, the OX box is one of the best things I've ever bought in a LONG time. ZZounds sent it to me to demo but I liked it so much I ended up buying it, which is also what I did with the Neumann MT48 interface.

@@FastRedPonyCar yeah,if I am running live or thru cabs,the 9005 powers my cabs…think of the Synergy module and Fryette as a Marshall head…you load it down with a load box,crank up the volume of the amp until you get the amount of power amp saturation you want,silently,then send the line out into another power amp to make that sound louder or audible..basically I am treating the modules/Fryette as an amp head…this way makes the modules sound more like the amp,than just connecting them to a power amp..the IICP module sounds insane in this setup,you get some of that power amp grind of the original amp..or the Plexi module where you really need that power amp saturation to get that sound..The Ox is great..I own more load boxes than anyone should,if I didn’t have the AxeFXIII,I would definitely use the OX..the stereo room mic’s are killer..I am thinking of getting the Ox Stomp just for that feature alone..

LOL It's definitely not for everyone. Then again... there are tons of guys who swear by the BC Rich guitars that I think are the most hideous things ever created.

Yep! They're on FloydRose's website. I think it could potentially be a nice add-on if you have something like a TP-6 tailpiece

Yeah one of the best sounds I've heard from a clean amp was from a blue angel 4x10 combo years and years ago. And yeah, the liquidy gain structure and flexibility are all great on this amp but the Mark low end is more bloom and less boom. I'm testing the Orange OR30 right now and side by side with this Mesa... man the Orange is just a sledgehammer. Much more raw and pure sound but also much less flexibility and of course, just 1 channel. I 100% had more fun with it on stage than the MKV though and I really enjoyed the MKV on stage. It was great but man... the Orange made up for the lack of flexibility with just a filthy high gain no nonsense ripping high gain sound.

@@FastRedPonyCar Spot on....and yes, I agree with every word on that OR30. I'm still a huge fan of the Rockerverb. That's a GREAT company.👍

It's ok that we don't like the same things. It's not a bad amp but seeing countless other badlander videos echo the same sentiments about the lack of saturation leads me to believe that my complaints are valid.

Thanks man. Yeah I've tried to approach my channel and reviews from the working musician's perspective. Too many times I've either been sent something or bought something that I initially liked at the house but when I got it on stage, things just took a turn for the worst for one reason or the other and a lot of other gear reviews just seem to be more of a quick sound test and reading some marketing bulletpoints and moving on to the next product. Most of this stuff that I'm reviewing from Zzounds, I've spent several weeks with it and taken it to one or more shows before getting in front of the camera so I really know what it can and can't do and it's usually long enough for the honeymoon phase to come and go.

Nothing wrong with not having a link with an instrument. Sometimes you just need something to function as a utility instrument and I think this thing having the flexibility to cover several styles gives it that advantage but I think owners and potential owners of an instrument like this would be aware of the strengths as well as shortcomings before they decide to buy... kinda like how I knew my Godin multiac steel was not going to sound as good as my Martin but that it would be a lot more comfortable to play on stage sitting down, faster neck and less feedback problems and that this PRS wouldn't have a rich of an acoustic sound compared to the Godin but it would have a nice electric pickup sound for leads that the Godin doesn't.

@@FastRedPonyCar I felt an instant bond with each of the PRS I bought, Core or SE, but this one doesn't match with my playing. Of course it's versatile as hell, of course it's a beautifull guitar but I think I was kind of desappointed when I received it... And I really wanted this guitar! But even with good magnetic pickups I'm not in love with this guitar, which is not the case with the rest of my collection. That's why I insist on the fact it's definitly a matter of personnal taste and not a quality/conception problem! I repeat it: that's a very good guitar👍

Yep. Shecter are killing it right now. You have to throw another $500 into the pot to move up to an Ibanez Prestige to get (my opinion after owning a couple prestige RG's) a marginal increase in instrument quality. I think the ESP LTD M-1000 is probably a strong competitor but you lose the nice figured wood top options that Schecter have and it seems like this guitar, the Aaron Marshall, Keith Merrow, John Browne and the Rob Scallon model all offer a very similar vibe and type of instrument but with different aesthetics and pickup/bridge options. Seems like for this price point, Schecter have the market locked down. I haven't played any of the China made Jackson Pro models yet so the jury is still out on those but the chinese built epiphone dave grohl ES335 I'm testing out right now is exceptionally well done.

@FastRedPonyCar I have a tram j-craft prestige, but the pickups sound weak. They're the old "Infinity" pickups, and they sound flat. But the neck is beautiful. I also think the Epiphone LP sounds and looks great. But Schecter seems to be knocking them out of the ballpark with their guitars for the price.

I don't think the DGT will replace a LP. I know quite a few guys who have bought and sold numerous PRS's and then finally caved and got an actual Les Paul and the buying/selling ceased... well it at least ended them trying to get a LP tone from a PRS. Just won't happen. Nothing sounds like a les paul and honestly buying anything else (besides a Japan off-brand LP like I did with my Tokai) will leave you disappointed. Also, I've got the Dave Grohl 335 I'm reviewing and it sounds totally different than this PRS. This PRS is much more of a fluffy and soft and smooth tone vs the Grohl. Pickups may help but it's a pretty big gap in the sound. Honestly, I wouldn't try to leverage one instrument to try and get at mulitple iconic sounds. The PRS does the full hollowbody soft smooth sound really well and the Piezo is a huge deal if you are a gigging musician and need one instrument to cover a lot of ground. It's why this thing is such a hit with the praise and worship players. If you want strat/tele but something with a bit more grunt, that Fender Tele Deluxe I reviewed not long ago does that really well. The coil split is a bit help and although the full humbucking mode doesn't have the fatter sound of a real humbucker (these are a Z coil type humbucker), it does have a chunkier sound than any normal single coil tele/strat.

I helped my wife pick this one, as she wanted a smaller hollow body guitar. And we were impressed with the setup out of the box. The binding is gorgeous. There a couple things I didn’t love, but they were easily changed. The first was that I’d kinda love having the se locking tuners stock. I did end up buying those for her for her birthday though. And like you said, a switch would be nice, but I guess they needed to nerf if somehow compared to the core. The last thing was that I kinda can’t stand the look of those knobs. It just look so off on this model, to me personally. My wife agreed, so we changed them to the darker amber PRS style lampshade knobs. And now everything is right with the world 😊

@@Ari_Calamari Nice! Yeah locking tuners (especially at this price) should have been included. I can't imagine that the bean counters projected a volume of sales of this model to warrant cutting what I imagine is $20~30 in their cost from the price tag. Lehle make a switch called the Dual SGoS Amp Switcher and for those who want to do the same type switching I programmed into my FM3 but without using a modeler, that's the best option I've seen to cleanly cut and switch from one signal to another. The only trick is if you want to do an acoustic loop and then do lead work over that with electric pickups. I ended up changing my FM3 so that the acoustic output is always on. This way, I can play a rhythm part and get the loop going and then hit the switch to cut the acoustic INPUT, the loop keeps playing since the output is not cut off and now the electric pickups input and output are active. Really fun instrument to switch sounds like that.

I've never personally plugged into one of the smaller EVH's but I have a friend who has owned quite a few 5150's and he likes the Kraken just as much. Honestly, for me personally, the Kraken gets the nod due to a warmer and smoother crunch channel. It sounds more natural of a low gain crunchy classic rock/blues voice than what the 5150's have (Which to my ears is more of a high gain signal that has had the life choked out of it). I think if I were needing an amp with less focus on cleans or classic rock, I would probably lean to the 5150. Also, don't count out the Bluguitar Iridium. That thing RIPS and it's tiny.

@@FastRedPonyCar Thanks for the reply! Makes sense! I like both a good clean, rock crunch and high gain rhythm so maybe the Kraken would be a good choice :) And….I’ve been playing with the Iridium since it came out :) Really love that amp(apart from the clean not having a high headroom at band volume…it distorts really fast) and cannot wait for the AmpX!!

@@bengirard1984 Yeah I think I sold my iridium too hastily. I had several things I'd spent money on and ended up keeping the Synergy SYN1 and selling the iridium. I want to try the Mercury too. The AmpX is going to be great when it comes out but it sounds like Thomas has been struggling with the high gain sounds from the unit. He'll get there though.

@@FastRedPonyCar Yeah the last interview I've seen from him was about the high gain stuff, true. He will get there, I have faith in him, but I must say that I contemplate more and more the Fractal FM3 (or FM9) or the Synergy stuff (there's a Randall RM100 close to me on sell at a great price that is tempting haha) to be honest at this point in time. It's just that I'm 40 and I'm getting tired of brining heads to gigs haha So I still would prefer a one-in-all solution that would sound great like the AMP X (hopefully) will.

@@bengirard1984 I hear that. I'm 43. The less I have to drag in and tear down at 1am, the better. I did the minimal pedalboard rig for about a year with the FM3 and it was great. Zero complaints. Had the rack mount AxeFX III for a year before that and also great but I didn't use even a fraction of that thing's power which is why I downsized to the FM3 and it was perfect. I got bored (as we always do) and went back to tube amps but instead of dragging a cab to the gigs, I used the captor X for a while going to the PA and to an FRFR behind me, I used my THD Hotplate into an OX Stomp for cab sim (which I liked better than the captor) and lately, I've been taking the OX Box and I feel like it's the best I've tried. The Boss Waza TAE is really powerful but you're limited to 1 IR and even with the best IR's I've got, it still doesn't sound nearly as "right" as the OX Box does. I think that the Iridium/Mercury into the OX Box would be a sort of best of both worlds in terms of still maintaining a lightweight pedalboard rig but still having the OX there for running a world class speaker sim into an FRFR for a much louder stage sound if you need it and a great DI signal to the PA. The thing I really like about using the OX live (which the WAZA box can do also) is have the headphone output going to the FRFR and using the headphone volume knob to control your stage volume totally independent from what goes to the house so the sound guy can still maintain control over that. I don't like relying on a monitor mix coming from the board for my FRFR because I ONLY want guitar signal through it and I don't want any weird or questionable EQ choices the sound guy decides he wants to make to be coming out the FRFR behind me. For what it's worth, the Synergy preamps into the OX Stomp sound good. I did a vid on the Bogner XTC module (the only one I've got right now) and it's great with no power amp but only sounds that much better when I fed it into the fryette powerstation but it wasn't by any means lacking just going straight to the OX stomp.

its okay

I've heard mixed reviews of the Syn 50 and that Steve's LXII power amp is the better of the two. Either way, I'd rather save a bit more and just get his fifty/two/fifty unit or maybe a Mesa Fifty/Fifty.

For my gain I set my clean channel to about 11 oclock and for the 2 channel its at 2 oclock. My mid for clean is 2 oclock and 11 oclock in 2 channel. My clean treble is at about 1.5 oclock and for my 2nd channel its at 1 oclock. Clean presence is 11 oclock and 10 oclock for 2 channel. I only use the graphic eq in the 2nd channel. Don't need to use it on clean.

@@marcfrenette1599 Yeah I've messed around a lot with the EQ and the different modes definitely require a different approach to the EQ based on which mode you're on. The guitar and cab also play a huge role in how the amp sounds and reacts so it's hard to say that there's a 1 size fits all EQ method. My Mesa studio preamps I had in the past would vary wildy on where the EQ worked best depending on what power section or power amp I ran them into. Some could tolerate the bass control being cranked and others needed it pulled back a lot more. The MK IV that I had for a couple months (the guy who owns it is the guy who built my silver jubilee) had to have it's bass control at 10 o'clock or lower or else it would get really muddy but it was also a much thicker and smoother voiced amp than this amp, my MK V or the Studio Preamp. My full size MK V never liked going past noon on the bass control on any of the 3 modes on channel 3 which is why when this amp stayed tighter and cleaner with the bass control much higher, it surprised me and was one of the things that led me to suspect some voicing changes vs the 90w version.

Different models tone up different...I have one with non standard tone controls (mine are TOO much..I have them almost off on all channels!!!)

I just did a review of the Dave Grohl 335 and used this amp with the bass pulled back. Check it out if you haven’t already. Kinda didn’t make too much difference it seems. 🤷‍♂️

It does ok with the volume knob. It still wants to be rowdy. If you setup the pedal to footswitch toggle between a saved preset and the "live aka- where the knobs are set" you can get a 2 channel switching setup but if you want something more akin to a true 2 channel setup, I would recommend checking out my video on the Friedman IR-D. Great pedal with a slightly more modern voice and 2 separate channels. If you went that route, you could use the pod go for effects in the IR-D effects loop and even integrate midi switching. If you haven't played around with any custom cab IR's yet though, I feel like that's the real key to getting the L6 stuff to sound their best. I had the Helix LT for about a year and have owned the stomp HX for several years and they both need custom IR's to really sound great. I think the Ownhamer IR's are pretty good and ML Soundlabs has great ones too. If you really want the most authentic sounding vintage plexi in a box though, nothing can beat this but the IR's they put into this unit are not nearly as good as the Friedman pedal and if you haven't seen it yet, check out my video pairing this with the UA OX Stomp. It really elevates this pedal to the next level.

Thanks bro 💪 I will for sure go for the Friedman ❤

@@wolfheartguitar Great choice. Either one is awesome. If you want to help support my channel, there’s a Zzounds.com affiliate link for the Friedman in that video I did.

The turbo lag is there but it's not a slow vehicle. The different engine/trans settings can eliminate a lot of the perceived lag. Transmission setting 1 is a more relaxed setting that always will put the car in a higher gear/lower RPM and same with the engine modes... you can have it more tame with a more relaxed throttle response or make it more aggressive and sharper throttle response. The car makes peak torque at around 3K rpm's and if you're using launch control, you're launching at around there anyways so there's zero lag but if you're in comfort mode and just punch it from a dig, yeah it's going to take a second to spool up. The B58 in the M340i I drove spools faster and hits peak torque sooner but it's obviously quite a bit less torque overall and HP. If I had to guess, BMW probably are tuning the boost curve a bit on the safe side in 1st gear to protect the engine. The M40i X3 would be a great daily as well and a lot less $ but still a very potent and tunable engine if you wanted to ever make more power.

@@FastRedPonyCar Awesome thanks for the feedback man. Very helpful.

@@FastRedPonyCar I'm seriously considering the M40i as well, but the seats are rather uncomfortable. Trade-off I suppose with better low end torque/ride quality in the 40i vs. much better seats and performance in the X3MC.

No quite the opposite. The Nitro will easily erase any other amp on stage. Doesn't matter how much wattage it has, the nitro with a good cabinet is the loudest/clearest/hardest hitting amp I've ever plugged into. This includes modded JCM800's, 100w SLO, Modded Uberschall, Plexi Superlead, etc. It's actually ridiculous but an EQ pedal in the loop or using a multi-fx unit in the loop that has an EQ can easily tame the low end.

@@FastRedPonyCar Thanks man. I have much respect for your playing and gear videos. I was watching Kyle on his channel, who I really like, talk about how the Nitro would be best for a one guitar band and the Quick rod best for a rwoguitar band thinking the Nitro would mostly just cover the low end but get eaten up by a more mid heavy amp. But I don't know if he was just surmising without the experience like you. I'm thinking of getting a Quick rod, Nitro or Bogner Ecstacy and I know you said your XTC was a bit too polite and got eaten up. Supposedly the Nitro is easier to play than the stiffer Quickrod. Wish I could play them all. I might get frustrated having to always find creative ways to cut out the low end. I've had bassists get frustrated with my Dual Rec and Mark V in the past, so I can't imagine the Nitro.

@@Bognerman14 Hmmmm…which speaker cab/speakers do you have? I ask because the nitro is extremely picky about its cabinet and speakers. Part of it is simply needing a cabinet with the right amount of resonance to articulate all that low end, but on the other hand, really stiff cabinets like Mesa cabs will sound extremely dry and one dimensional. The nitro is not a very saturated amp gain. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the Mesa Badlander I tried out on the channel but the Badlander just doesn’t punch anywhere in the sound like the nitro but is more forgiving with the low end. I honestly prefer to have too much of all of that and just dial it out rather than trying to produce it when it’s not there to begin with. Edit: have you tried a Marshall DSL 100? It’s kinda like a Nitro dialed back to about 8 instead of 11.

@@FastRedPonyCar I have tried a DSL and TSL in the past but it's been a while. My buddy had a DSL for my last metal project and he actually sounded great. I was using a modified Dual Rec and Archon at the time. I agree. I like having the extra bass that I can dial out. My DR has tons of lows but with the right boost, I can sculpt what I want. I have other amps too and settled on several 412 and 212 cabs. My goto speaker combo is Mesa V30 and Redback. I also have some Creambacks laying around.

@@FastRedPonyCar I a mostly a redback, greenback, creamback and v30 user. Looking at the Bogner XTC or Splawn.

Yep that's the finish. I'm used to the phrase raw nickel as it seems like the name that this type of hardware finish has had for decades now.

​@@FastRedPonyCar That's a great finish! Thanks a lot

Not surprised... just disappointed that they didn't use noiseless singles instead as this guitar seems to be marketed as a super strat style instrument where as the boden classic would have been the more acceptable single coil hum/vintage sound

Thanks man. Yeah sometimes not getting into the technical weeds on stuff like this helps. If you do end up deciding to buy this unit, consider using my affiliate link to help out my channel. Zzounds does price matching too.

Wired per the Seymour Duncan instructions with a 3 way Les Paul style toggle switch.

Never mind figured it out based on some of your screen shots

Cool man. I'm class of 03 and my wife is 05. We met at the 2002 homecoming game.