Several months ago, I was urged to try this sim out because it was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of amp sims. As I started evaluating it, I wasn’t impressed. It was okay, but came out around the same time as the PRS SuperModels, which I felt were just plain better overall. The STL Tones sim lay pretty much dormant on my hard drive, until I felt I should probably include it in this review.
For some background, this sim was done in conjunction with Howard Benson and Mike Plotnikoff, who certainly know rock and metal guitar production—and that’s what this plug-in is all about. Don’t expect step sequencers, a pedalboard, being able to swap out mics, place mics, use a splitter, or anything beyond the basics. You get five amps, five cabs (you can load your own impulses, which is welcome of course, but I wanted to evaluate these based on what came with the package), and three pedals—overdrive, delay, and reverb. The package goes for $129.
Out of the five amps, Amp #3 really does it for me with leads.
As I re-visited Tonality, though, I started warming up to it. I realized that my biggest problem was that I really didn’t like the cabs, which have that characteristic, digital “fizz” I dislike in many amp sims. So I tried my usual solution of notching out the fizz—what a difference. If anyone has the STL Tones Howard Benson plug-ins, I’d be curious what you think about the sound when you add a high-Q (e.g., 8 or so) cut, around 5.3 kHz, after the cabs. I then added a light, gentle high-end shelf to compensate for the slight loss of highs from the notch—and that solved the cab piece of the puzzle. Once that was squared away, everything magically fell into place.
You’ve heard of mic cabinets...this is kind of like a cab cabinet.
Because I now liked the tones I was hearing, it was time for a deeper dive. I found amps #2 and #3 to be unusually responsive to playing dynamics. You can really dig into a note and bear down on the distortion, or pull back for a cleaner sound. The high-gain amp #1 was great for sustaining leads, especially if you put a little limiting in front of the sim. The sims also seemed to benefit from putting my transient control circuit in front of an audio interface. Overall I feel the amps are at their best when driven fairly hard, although the Fenderish amp #4 is a responsive, pleasing clean amp.
The more I played with the amps, the more I found “sweet spots” that really appealed to me. And this is where the philosophy of the set also started to fall into place. By limiting your choices, and not trying to be all things to all people, you can dial in genre-specific sounds you like pretty quickly. When you find something you like, save it as a preset—done. I do wish there had been a stage of parametric EQ at the output to deal with the cab issue (like what Eleven did with its expansion pack, for the same reason), but with a DAW, it’s easy enough to add EQ afterward.
As to the pedal effects, you don’t get a lot but what you get makes sense. The overdrive adds the right amount of crunch—not enough to overwhelm, but enough to make a difference, without impacting articulation. The delay has an “analogish” sound, and the reverb is well-suited to the tones. It’s not a spring reverb, nor a conventional chamber; at short decays it has a somewhat metallic/plate room timbre. When you increase decay, the sound seems to “bloom” and cascade. It’s different from the average reverb, and an excellent complement.
Three pedals? Well, they’re three good pedals.
So, here’s the verdict. There’s a 10-day trial, and that’s enough to find out if Tonality does what you want. Just remember it’s dedicated to a specific type of sound, in a specific genre. I don’t mean that to sound limiting, because there is a lot of flexibility. Also remember that if you want to compress going in, or add chorus, or whatever, you’ll need to look elsewhere. (This is a situation where if you have Waves GTR but don’t use the amps, the Waves stomp effects can serve you well.)
It’s interesting how I went from not liking this sim to liking it, once I tamed the cabs so I felt they sounded creamier and not so “digital.” Of course, tone is subjective, and I wouldn’t assume everyone would agree—the non-EQed sound has its own character, which you might prefer. But it does point out just how subjective amp sims are, and perhaps more importantly, how many times an amp sim can be just a slight tweak away from giving you the sound you want.
