Product Reviews by KVR Members

In the 1980's I had been one owner of the original "Rockman" headphone amp, but - to be honest - it did not really convince me sonically very much. Much less in direct comparison to my Vox and Marshall amps at this time.

I never owned the Sustainor, but still remember the very positive reviews, it got at this time. So I tested the Overloud version and was very positively surprised. Due to the much better, more flexible options this unit really gives you very nice, good sounding tones, which sound much more convincing to me than the ones, which I got out of my "Rockman". My favorite sound is Edge in combination with Auto Clean and only little compression.

Adjustable Treble Trim, Phase Notch and Treble Boost allow very good fine-tuning. (If you manage to find the original manual somewhere in the internet, to know, what all the different switches and controls really are good for. Unfortunately the plugin does not seem to have a manual included, which would be very helpful, as not all switches and controls are really self explanatory in this case. I would have given 5 stars for the quality of the plugin, but I reduce one because of the missing manual and description of all the functions. Also the Push-Pull-button/switch visualization is made bad in my opinion, at first you do not really know or see, if you have activated or deactivated a function.).

The Chorus/Delay section also sounds nice, especially the Chorus, while the 200ms maximum time of the delay are a little too short for my taste, but it also has a very special tone and works good. But I anyway prefer using the Sustainor alone.

The original gear - if it is available somewhere - is not really cheap, and at least some decades old, so also not always in the best condition, therefore - in comparison - this plugin is a much cheaper and always flawlessly working option, to get exactly these tones and a lot more than only 80's tones as well.

A really well made simulation of some nice, good sounding non-tube units.

Not really a distortion, rather a fuzz pedal in my opinion, due to the loose, obviously unfiltered, very fuzzy sounding bass, which unfortunately is not even adjustable. Does not sound bad, but also not outstanding. What I do not hear is anything unique.

Any average Rat or DS-1 plugin does a better job in my opinion, if it comes to distortion, any average Tube Screamer or SD-1 plugin, if it comes to overdrive.

I personally would not want to place it in front of one of my favorite tube amp simulations, as they sound much better without such a transistor/op-amp/practicing amp tone voiced plugin like this.

On/off switch is missing, apart from other necessary or even essential controls. Amateurishly looking GUI.

Nice first try maybe, but still far away from a lot of meanwhile usual more professional features, looks and tones.

___.

Addition to your response (I obviously can only add it here):

With more professional features I mainly meant more control options for the user. This plugin would have been nice maybe 10 years ago, when good sounding, usable pedal plugins still were rare. But meanhwile we have 2022 and this plugin is released in a meanwhile completely overcrowded market and also the quality as much as the implemented features hav improved a lot during the last years.

So meanwhile you can also get pedal simulations, which not only simulate some analog circuits or tones, but also add some features, which the real pedals do not offer, but which are possible in the digital world, like eg. sound independent input / output level controls, additional filtering options or controls for mixing the processed and the original signal, some offer different voicings due to popular modded versions of the real pedals or comparable additional features, which improve usability and user-friendliness, just to name some examples.

In direct comparison to such plugins a single knob solution is not really a very convincing, alternate, competitive offer in my opinion.

With amateurishly looking GUI I meant the blue color, the Strat potentiometer knob and the unprofessional looking typography and design, which reminds me of the 1990's. (You just have to look what competitors make different.) From the symbolic and color psycological meaning this look do not really match a distortion pedal very much. If the pedal was a clean booster I'd say, ok, but a distortion pedal needs a more powerful, darker, dirtier look than light blue and yellow or at least a more neutral one. In other words, the look sends another message about the content than the tones do.

Just my personal impressions, on the other hand I find it positive that somebody releases a different, more individual solution and not just the next Tube Screamer release, from which meanwhile anyway are more than enough existing.

The tube simulations basically sound good, but the output level is extremely low if not to say, much too low.

Next problem I have, the sonic results, you get from tubes, depend - apart from a lot of other factors- very much on different values of resistors and capacitors on anode, cathode and grid, what I hear here, basically is a very clean setting, without any - for guitar or bass - usable saturation or overdrive.

If I eg. stack two 12AX7 and a 6L6 or EL34, the result with saturation levels at 90-100% still sounds much cleaner and has a much too low output level than eg. a simple Tweed Champ circuit with only one 12AX7 and a 6V6 (or even 6L6), so these simulations do not at all behave and react like tubes in a typical tube amp circuit, rather like tubes in an old radio or another audio circuit.

Constant level control is - in my opinion - not only a useless feature, if it comes to tubes, it also affects the results in a very negative way, as it makes it impossible that cascading tubes can react like a real tube circuit, as an essential part of a good tube amp sound is the fact that the different stages overdrive in a controlled way the following ones. If they cannot, as the level is always automatically reduced before, you do not get any authentic tube overdrive, what is exactly, what's happening here. Then it also is no authentic simulation but just some fantasy programming without any connection to the physical reality of real tube gear.

I also do not see the sense of negative saturation, if positive saturation finally only results in (too) clean sounds.

I also tried to add the plugin after an already good tube amp simulation, but the results did not improve much, all I heard was a much lower output level but no real sonic improvements.

Good idea, but not a very convincing realisation. As it is, rather a toy but a usable plugin, at least for me, sorry.

Nice plugin. On the one hand it does what it should, saturation sounds good, on the other hand I miss at least a hp filter, to avoid to much fuzzyness especially in the bass range, which - for my taste - saturates much too intense, if you eg. want to use this plugin with guitar or bass.
Even better a more complex control would be, eg. an adjustable tilt filter or some additional frequency dependent controls, which allow more precise, separate saturation intensity adjustment for at least bass, middle and treble range.

Really nice and good sounding and working spring reverb.
Well adjustable, even more flexible controls than most real hardware spring reverbs offer.

The bitcrusher allows some additional lo-if colorations, which also work well.
Nice, twangy, typical spring reverb, to be honest, I have already heard some commercial spring reverbs, whose tones convinced me much less.

As spring reverbs can sound very different, it might be a matter of taste, if you like the character of this one, but you hardly can do much wrong, as it is freeware.

Looks interesting, but unfortunately the VST3 it is neither recognized of any of my DAW's nor of any of my VST-hosts. (Reaper, Cakewalk, Cantabile, GigPerformer). Manual selection also does not find the VST3 file. Hope, this issue will be corrected in version 1.0.

Good collection of clean(er) to vintage crunch tones / amps. I personally usually prefer collections like this one, which include a lot of different amps over the ones with single amps.

My favories here are the TweedPro and even more the usually (as amp simulations) hard to find Supro T and Wem Dominator, which more or less has been the template for the Marshall 18.

Even today really "magical" amps with a lot of unique character, or even more unique character than some modern amps. Less gain but more "tone", so to say.

A lot of great sounding, but usually harder to find amps (amp simulations) for the money. Most probably not everybody will like all amps the same, but everybody easily will find some favorites in this collection.

Has become one of my favorite SuperCabinet IR's. Some people seem to compare the ET-90 with a Classic Lead or G12-H Anniversary, in my opinion it has it's own voice. Very well balanced, with a lot of British character, but also with a nice treble smoothness, which works well with vintage amps, but also can be useful if you want to reduce some treble harshness of eg. a JCM800 or similar amps, without losing dynamics and bite.

Just discovered this amp simulation and was very positively surprised.
Good, very naturally sounding, typical AC-30 sounds, clean as well as overdrive tones sound and react very authentically.

The 3 built-in cabinets also work fine (BRIT MRS 4X12, BRIT VX 4X12, USA MES 2X12), I personally also would have liked to see the typical BRIT VX 2X12 Open Back too. CAB BYPASS allows the use of an external IR Loader and other cabinet IR's too.

The amp section alone produces enough gain, in combination with the additional overdrive pedal you can play almost everything easily, maybe apart from Metal.

Oversampling is adjustable from 2x to 16x. The small FX-section also surpised me positively, the Klon Centaur Overdrive harmonizes in my opinion extremely well with this type of amp, much more than eg. the more common Tube Screamer, which I never really liked very much, the - for me much more musically sounding - Tape Echo also is much more preferred from me than other types of Delay, the Ambience Reverb works fine too, although here I had preferred - of course - a Spring Reverb instead. Nevertheless a good selection.

The amp section alone produces enough gain, lust like the real amp, adjusted right the amp plus overdrive combination also can add some more Plexi character, rawness and bite to the tone, so with this combination you can adjust and play almost everything easily, maybe apart from Metal.

A nice, small, not overloaded, good sounding amp simulation for convincing British vintage clean, crunch to overdrive sounds.

Fair price for the quality. Recommended.