Cravat

Interesting, but very different amp plugin concept, especially for clean to edge of breakup or crunch sounds and for tweakers, but also (maybe still) not totally perfect in my opinion.

A manual with some more detailed informations would have been helpful, also at least some hints, on which all these fantasy named components are based. Due to the big differences, which result in the use of more or less components dynamic levels can vary intensely, I also found the Drive section not so great sounding, especially not in combination with the Open Razor and Bartitsu amps, I found Post Drive (I suppose, this simulates power amp saturation) sounding better to me. (Later I found out, that Tuner On obviously adds some unwanted distortion to the sounds, deactivating it really improves the results, especially if you use the Drive section.) After a while I even managed to adjust Open Razor to sound well usable for me while my favorite at the moment became British Saddleback. In principle the amps give you nicely different voiced sounds, just like the preamps do. This is a plugin for subleties, although a lot of subtleties also can alter a sounds intensely.;-).

Adding a gain control to both the Preamp and Amp section would have been an advantage, Drive alone for me does not do the same, while Post Drive does a great job.

If you take the time to find out, what's working well and how to adjust and optimize the sounds to your personal wishes and if you have managed to level out things properly, you can get really great sounds, due to all the component combinations in almost endless variety. But, as already mentioned, not everything automatically sounds good, so storing the results, you like, as your own presets is recommended.

The preamps and amp models really sound differently, also all the fine-tuning options and the Sweetener in principle work fine, at least, after you have learned, how to adjust them nicely, first it can look complicated, but in fact it is not really, so definitely useful, not to speak of all the different compressors and their options. Tightness or even frequency adjustable HP/LP filters, or comparable sound shaping tools are available in both pre- and post-editing sections.

Certainly no plug and play plugin, you could even be disappointed from the first results, but if you spend some time with it, you can get really wonderful and also very different sounds out of it with both American and British and both vintage and modern characters and for all these sounds you needed a lot of different, and also not so cheap gear in reality, which you here get in a single package.

You also can deactivate eg. the Drive section and the Cabinet section and use external plugins and IR's instead, but as a basic sound source, also with other external effects this plugin works very well, so it also can become a nice "pedal platform" for effects like eg. wah, chorus, rotary, univibe, phaser, tremolo, tape echo, delay, polyphonic octaver or harmonizer, (spring) reverb, ...

Despite of my few complaints I give the plugin the highest rating, first, because it is something really unique and different, the plugin market is so overcrowded with always the same things, a lot of plugins just copy each other or the same real gear and everyone promises, to have made it better than all other ones, so this plugin takes itself out of this - marketing - competition in some way, which I really appreciate, second, because for all the options and features the price is more than fair.

_.

Addition: Just got the update to the 2.1 version, which improved some things positively, certain things now even sound and react more naturally, the interaction between preamp, amp and drive stages seems to have been harmonized more, so especially "hotter" sounds are easier adjustable and sound better to me, also an additional (zero watt) power stage has been added within the Type (amp) section (including damping, presence and resonance) and the tuner does not affect the sounds anymore.

As the plugin is now, it's only up to the user, if it sounds great or not. All, you need, is there...

...and even a lot more...

Very well done.