Mercuriall Audio SS-11X.

[cprompt]

Holy ballbags, this sounds amazing. The presets alone are worth the price of admission. It just sounds exactly how I want to sound, even with my awful playing. If only I wasn't skint this month.... but definitely on my "want" list. It has real bite and aggression, but sounds full and chunky too. I'm sure the clean sounds are nice, but... metal is where it's at for sure. Awesome!

[Burillo]

Hey!

Thanks a lot for your feedback! All good points and food for thought.
Well, I guess we are on the right track and will convince you with our next plugin

PS. Yeah. I guess we will not model any new Screamers in the foreseeable future =)

whatever this new neural blah thing you came up with, you're definitely on the right track as far as i'm concerned. by the way, i think this new tech also fixed my other gripe with Mercuriall plugins - in my experience, built-in stomps work perfectly, but your previous plugins (going back to the free JCM800 ones) have reacted very weirdly on distorted input (e.g. after a stomp plugin), especially if it was peaking above 0dBFS. SS-11X doesn't suffer from this - it takes external stomps very well. so yes, maybe your next plugin will finally make it to the finish line

however, i must say that amp sims (both your and your competitors') reached a point where i cannot really tell the difference between them in terms of accuracy of simulation, and it's mostly about the "timbre" for me now. i loved SS-11X, but if i can get very similar sound from another plugin (free one at that!), then you'd have hard time convincing me to part with cash. Mercuriall plugins have built-in stomps - okay, but i already have enough stomps, and i have no problem putting them before SS-11X. you have cabinets built-in - okay, but i have Torpedo Wall of Sound with ~50 cabinets purchased, and also Recabinet since version 3, so you're not going to woo me with those either. i understand the value of having everything in one plugin, and i'm by no means suggesting you don't include this stuff in your future plugins - it's good to have "all-in-one" kind of presets, it's just that in a saturated market, that may not be enough.

at this point (and speaking for myself here, as owner of Thermionik, Kuassa, Amplitube, Torpedo WoS, Recabinet and S-Gear, not to mention free ampsims...), there really are three ways you can make me buy a plugin - price in no-brainer territory (~$25 or less), model of some rare gear that i cannot get anywhere else and that sounds unique, or if you modeled a piece of gear that is "conventional", but extremely versatile and enjoyable to use and with reasonable price. SS-11X could fall into all three, but doesn't quite make it into either.

it's versatile, but IMO not versatile enough. if it was a plugin that can truly do it all (bluesy sound, tight rhythm, saturated hard rock sound, scooped metal sound, etc.) for the price of SS-11X - sure, now we're talking. if it was an emulation of Brian May's Deacy amp (which has long been my wet dream as far as ampsims go) - shut up and take my money, even at twice the price (i paid $70 for Brainworx Chandler amp, and i couldn't have been happier!). if it's SS-11X, but at half the price - we wouldn't be having this conversation too but as it stands, it's certainly a great plugin and i would recommend it to anyone - i just don't see how i can justify buying it myself given its limitations and its similarity to other stuff i already have.

that said, i'm now very interested in what comes next for Mercuriall

[Barmaleus]

Understandable and interesting points, Burillo!
Such detailed comments are always a pleasure to read through and make some notes.

[Burillo]

oh i got plenty more where that came from! by the way, does the hardware SS-11 also sound so smooth and polished in the mid-highs? it almost feels like it's gating my finger squeaks and only letting through the actual notes

[jbraner]

I think all the Mercuriall amps sound great! I haven't had a chance to demo this yet - but for $29 (since I own the other amps) I don't think it's going to need much of a demo before I click "buy"

EDIT: I use Torpedo WOS too, and have plenty of great pedal plugins (and a couple of "real" ones) - so I just use Spark/Reaxis and now this - for the amp.
I'm interested in trying SS-11X through the Reaxis power amp before going in to WOS speakers (mind you WOS has a power amp in it too - which I've never used) or maybe this won't even make a difference in the plugin world.

[Burillo]

poweramp in WoS is actually pretty cool, but IMO it's waaaay too obvious. power tube distortion is usually much more subtle than that. it's as if the plugin screams at you "hey, look at me!!! i'm a power amp, and i SATURATE!!!". that said, it really works well with more dry SS-11X-like sounds, so you should try it!

[jbraner]

Thanks Burillo - Reaxis has a power amp too - (and you can disable everything else).

[ilmai]

Maybe it's just something I missed, but a feature like ReAxis where you can lock pre/post effects when switching presets would be super useful, since I like to use external cab & reverb plugins.

[klinge]

I tried the demo yesterday. I'm not playing metal so my focus was on the clean channel and crunch channel on low/medium gain. There is some very nice sounds in there. The clean channel is bright and crystal clear and seems to be really responsive. Using the clean channel with a grid slammer pushing it a little also got me some good tones.

I also tried disabling the cab impulses and placing the free Ignite Amps TPA-1 poweramp simulator and a separate IR loader after the SS-11. To me this sounded great. And with the added benefit of being able to adjust poweramp sag, poweramp overdrive and presence via the TPA-1.

A question: is it not possible to disable the cabinet IRs but still use the reverb IR? I tried this but the result was no sound at all coming out of the plugin.

[bishop666]

small box - big sound - well done

[Barmaleus]

oh i got plenty more where that came from! by the way, does the hardware SS-11 also sound so smooth and polished in the mid-highs? it almost feels like it's gating my finger squeaks and only letting through the actual notes

Well, what you hear is how hardware behaves. So yeah =)

[Barmaleus]

Maybe it's just something I missed, but a feature like ReAxis where you can lock pre/post effects when switching presets would be super useful, since I like to use external cab & reverb plugins.

Hey!
Because SS-11X is super-easy to work with, we thought the "lock" feature is not needed.
But we'll think about it.

[Barmaleus]

A question: is it not possible to disable the cabinet IRs but still use the reverb IR? I tried this but the result was no sound at all coming out of the plugin.

Indeed, not possible.
Something we might adjust in an update.


Thank you everyone for all the comments and questions, appreciated!

[ilmai]

Because SS-11X is super-easy to work with, we thought the "lock" feature is not needed.
But we'll think about it.

That's actually a good point, there are indeed far fewer controls in there compared to ReAxis for example. It still kinda threw me off though, since I like to first browse presets when getting to know a new plugin

[SLiC]

A question: is it not possible to disable the cabinet IRs but still use the reverb IR? I tried this but the result was no sound at all coming out of the plugin.

Indeed, not possible.
Something we might adjust in an update.


Thank you everyone for all the comments and questions, appreciated!

Quick question - On some of the screen shots and from some of the comments it looks like there are 'presets', but I cant find anything on my version (nothing on the top bar) is their supposed to be?

PS- sounds great!