Saint Mike DSP

Surprisingly good high-gain amp sounds for a freeware plugin. Does, what it should and this very musically. No typical digital shrillness or harshness, but nicely balanced sounds, which can make a real tube amp obsolete. Dynamical reaction is good, so is the harmonics reproduction.

For my ears no typical Marshall, Rectifier, 5150 or Soldano sound, it has something of all, but no too intense uniqueness, but the result sounds really good and is widely usable, in my opinion not only for Metal.

Three complaints nevertheless: No informations about the used cabinets/speakers, for me 1 and 2 sound very useful, while 3 sounds too thin for my taste (I think, this is based on an EVM12L or Legend cabinet), while the addtional cabinet section controls are very useful.

The second one concerns Transpose, for my taste, even if I followed the manual instructions, too much latency, I also had preferred a mixing option with the original signal, so that you could use this function rather as an octaver.

The third concerns the noise level, without using the noise gate you will not become very happy with the sounds, but the noise gate works good and this problem you also have with a lot of other high-gain amp plugins too.

In comparison I find the full version a little bit overpriced, but it certainly also will find it's fans. I think. Good work, so certainly worth giving it a try.

this website needs to make a correction - Saint Mike DSP is still promoting his Ceiling Fan plug-in as "free" not 24.95.