Product Reviews by KVR Members

Since 6.0 I'm having problem with the export of Reaper, as the .wav file export doesn't seem to work properly, whyever, and I did not find the mistake. So I had been looking for an alternative and had chosen Waveform and Cakewalk for my shortlist. I did not feel very comfortable with Waveform, as a lot of things worked quite different than in Reaper, I also found the basic structure less convincing, but Cakewalk I really liked from the beginning. Good structure, easy access to the - for me - necessary features - and an - in my opinion - simple, very logical structure and a good quality of the results.

Did not use it very long up to now, but I'm very pleased, even more as this nice DAW is freeware.

Works great! Obviously only monophonic, but this very well! The octave and modulation section also work fine. I hope that there also will be a (commercial) polyphonic version available in the future.

I did not try it with vocals but with bass and guitar as audio sources, and the results sounded very convincing.

By far the most naturally sounding RAT simulation, which I've heard up to now. Works great in front of vintage amps, but also works great to beef up modern amps, in my opinion with sonically better results than you can get with a Tube Screamer (simulation).

The same great sonic quality as the Nembrini Clon Minotaur, which is one of my favorite overdrive pedal simulations up to now. Even better, that Nembrini Audio offers so good sounding pedals for free.

An OCD or maybe also a COT50, SHO or Zendrive II simulation also would be fine in this quality.

Good, very natural sound. I only would have liked a slightly better adjustable, faster attack, maybe as option. Nevertheless great tones.

I must admit that I never have been a big fan of any Tube Screamers (independent of the version), although I liked the SD-1 to some extent. So I modified a real SD-1 to more bass and exchanged the silicone diodes to LED's, which made a much better sounding, more dynamically reacting pedal out of it.

The Green Reaper, especially in 316 and LAFF LED mode is the first pedal, which comes close to this sound.

I really like the idea of implementing differently modded versions / circuits, and they all sound good, very much depending on individual likes and with which other equipment you want to connect the pedal.

Also very helpful I find the global control section, especially the "to amp" switch and the "mix" control, which allow better adjustment.

The pedal also seems to work and harmonize well with some of my favorite amp sims, which is not always the case. Some gear sounds great alone or in specific combinations, but also can make things worse in other ones.

I usually don't use overdrive pedals very much, but this one seems to be able of improving the sound into a direction I like.

Long overdue that this pedal gets a good sounding simulation.

Sounds good, nice, natural tone with some additional British bite, the additional voicing variations make it more flexible than the real pedal, also useful is the mix control.

I only wished that a Timmy and Zendrive II plugin in this quality also existed. (From my two other favorite overdrives, the OCD and Klon Centaur meanwhile fortunately at least some plugins are available.).

2 in 1!

For me the first convincingly sounding, reacting and behaving Plexi simulation, which I've heard within the last 22 years.

In fact this plugin are 2 amps in one, a regular 1959 Super Lead and a EVH modded Brown Sound Plexi, which is some sort of beefed up Plexi with more, slightly fatter punch, gain and - most important - even inceased harmonics reproduction. Also important for this sound is the Variac, which reduces power voltage and therefore also internal voltage. The result is more saturation but less headroom.

One of the advantages of the EVH mod for me is, that the modded SLP still sounds like a real Plexi and not already like a JCM800, which happens with some other mods.

The 6CA7 power amp tubes sound - more or less - like a hybrid between an EL34 and an 6L6, which means, that this amp on the one hand definitely sounds like a (very good) Plexi but also has some more, very musically sounding upper mid and treble transparency as well as a more intense bass than you might expect from a typical EL34 Plexi. Even a little bit similar to a modded Bassman or JTM45, so the Standard voicing is - in my opinion - the perfect amp for Classic Blues Rock to Hard Rock. The Brown Sound Mod also adds some mids and is the better choice for heavier, fuller bodied late 70's, early 80's tube overdrive tones, although also the Brown Sound Mod doesn't change the amp to a modern high-gain amp.

The special G12M / D120 cabinet is an interesting thing, especially for the Brown Sound mod, but I personally also would have liked an additional G12M or G12H 412 cabinet for the standard amp, maybe instead of the Soldano or of one of the V30 cabinets. On the other hand you anyway can load external cabinet IR's and even mix them, so this is not really a big disadvantage.

One thing I've noticed is that - especially in Standard mode - this plugin reacts much more sensitive to guitar, pickups, pick attack than most other amp simulations, but also to the used cabinet IR's. Very similar to the real amp, but without it's wall breaking loudness.

Especially the linked channels allow a very intense control over gain and tone, but therefore not all possible settings automatically sound right or great, also because this amp (simulation) reacts very interactively with all the rest of the used gear. On the other hand you have an excellent control over bass, mid, treble and - of course - gain.

So once you have learned how to tame and adjust this sonic beast properly, this plugin can give you these absolutely awesome, outstanding, iconic tones, which you hardly will get from any other amp (simulation) and which we all know from a lot of legendary recordings, extremely well.

My personal - in this quality long overdue - guitar plugin of the year! (Or rather of the decade?;-)).

Thank you very much, Mr. Nembrini.

One of the best, most naturally sounding overdrive pedal plugins, I know.

Sounds very convincing, if you look for these typical "Dumble-in-a-Box" Klon Centaur tones.

Works great in front of (too clean to slightly overdriven) vintage amp simulations. A perfect companion for Tweed amps, for vintage Vox or Marshall amp, but not only, also works great in front of more modern voiced amp simulations. Even sounds very good alone or only with an additional cabinet IR.

My personal perfect combination is this pedal in front of the Nembrini MRH159, all you need for almost every kind of music.

An OCD simulation in this quality from Nembrini Audio also would be nice, I think. If possible, with different voicing options, eg. between the V 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0 GE versions.

There are a lot of Vox simulations available, but up to now they did not really convince me very much, even less as I've been playing a real Vox for years - decades ago.

This one is - in my opinion - not only the most authentically sounding simulation of this iconic amp, I also like a lot that it includes the authentic 3 channels, 6 inputs plus Reverb and the Vibro-Trem circuit.

I totally had forgotten how great a Vintage AC-30 really sounded and still today sounds. So does this DC-30 simulation. Playing immediately sounded very familiar and resulted in very convincing tones - at (bed)room level - which has been absolutely impossible with the - in reality - incredibly loud real amp due to the vintage single volume design of the circuit.

The Vib-Trem channel is great for typical clean(er) Shadows or Beatles' guitars but also for these typical late 60's Italo-Western soundtrack guitars with a lot of reverb and tremolo. The built-in Vib-Trem unit sounds incredibly good and unique, very different from most pedals. Retro tube tones to die for.

The Normal channel is great for these typical warm, sweet Brian May tones, Normal and Brillant channels both can give you typical Rory Gallagher or Status Quo tones, but not only, Ritchie Blackmore also played AC-30's before Deep Purple Mk. II (Think of "Hush" or "Concerto for Group and Orchestra", Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page also in their early Yardbirds years, as well as the - in my opinion - completely underrated Terje Rypdal and a lot of other great players.

The additional Link/Bridging option here extends the sonic possibilites and is especially very useful for overdrive tones.

Basic tone is excellent, but what I really like is that these very unique, vivid Vox harmonics sound very accurate here, the gain range is very exactly the one of the real amp, also the reaction to attack is very authentically. My only complaint - if one - could be that treble in the bright channel at higher gain and treble settings may sound a little bit too sharp and still a little too digital for my taste. The real amp also is capable of a lot of very intense treble, maybe even too much at certain settings, which also can sound very biting, even too sharp, nevertheless the authentic treble tube breakup still shows some more sweetness at the same time, which I miss here a little, compared with a real AC-30. Nevertheless too intense treble sharpness easily can be compensated with the Cut (Reverse Presence) tone control as well as with the additionally built-in harshness control here.

But this is complaining at a very high level, most other AC-30 simulations, I know, are miles away from the beautiful, in general very convincing, authentic tones of this simulation. Concerning all other sonic aspects this simulation feels and plays very much like the real amp.

As the AC-30 has a rather mid-scooped sound, it also works well with pedals with some mid boost, Tube Screamer, SD-1, OCD, Klon Centaur, Zendrive are a good choice. My personal favorite is the SD-1, as it's tone additionally adds more harmonics than eg. a Tube Screamer, which even increase the already great harmonics of the amp. (If you know "Ambiguity" from Terje Rypdal (Chaser album from 1985), these are exactly the tones you get from this combination.).

Alternatively also an equalizer pedal in front can be a good choice to add some mids, without altering the amp's tube tone itself too much, which also makes the tone more similar to a Plexi, but generally the AC-30 always sounds sweeter, more harmonious, less rough than a Plexi, with more singing sustain but less dirt at higher volume settings.

The built-in cabinets sound good, the Vox cabinet of course sounds great, but also the Twin cabinet with the JBL's sounds very interesting, a quite different, but convincing voicing, but the simulations also works well with a lot of other speakers/cabinets.

An AC-30 simulation in this quality has been long overdue, as this amp is - in my opinion - even today one of the best sounding allround amps with a very unique tone, which you hardly can get out of any other amp. (Or out of any other amp simulation - in this case.).

In the future a Marshall 1959/1987 Plexi simulation in the same quality from Nembrini Audio would be highly appreciated from me, but also a Hiwatt DR-103 or maybe a Dover DA-50 simulation.

But at the moment this plugin certainly will become one of my favorite amp simulations. Great work.

Simple, useful, nice, effective.

Sounds really good, loading IR-files works well. A simple soulution, if you want to use IR's but don't need any additional editing except from mixing level.

An option to store one or more different IR folders and their content would be nice maybe in a future version.