Guitar

Amp

A guitar amp: Clean, Crunch and Lead voicings, a tone stack and a power amp.

Amp window
Amp, the main screen.

Overview

Amp is our own design, not a copy of any brand: Clean with plenty of headroom, Crunch at the edge of breakup, Lead for solos and heavy riffs. There is no speaker inside: put the Cabinet after it.

Getting started

  1. Choose a voicing, set Gain, shape with Bass, Middle, Treble; add Cabinet after it.

Controls

VoicingClean, Crunch, Lead.
GainHow hard the preamp is driven.
Bass, Middle, TrebleThe tone stack, 5 is flat.
PresenceBite and air after the power amp.
MasterHow hard the power amp is pushed: denser and squashier.

Settings

The gear in the header opens the settings panel; it covers the lower panel until the gear is clicked again.

TightTrims the lows before the distortion, for tight palm mutes.
Amp: Amp, the settings panel.
Amp, the settings panel.

What the screen shows

The tone across the frequencies, and the preamp’s curve with a dot at the input’s level.

Amp: Lead voicing.
Lead voicing.

Tips

  • For metal, Lead with Tight on and Middle a little down.

Technical notes

  • 4x oversampling, so high gain does not create false tones; 6 samples of latency, reported.

Common to every plugin

The headerEvery window opens with the same header. On the left a dot-matrix display shows the main reading large and the details under it; text that does not fit scrolls. Next to it a hint with a coloured dot says what the plugin is doing or what to do next. On the right: Undo and Redo arrows (up to 100 steps of everything done in the window), the Bypass button, and the gear, which opens the plugin's settings panel when it has one.
BypassWith Bypass lit, the plugin lets the sound through untouched. It is the same switch as your DAW's own bypass for the plugin, so either can be used and automated. The input is held back by exactly the plugin's latency, so the timing stays right, and switching fades over 10 ms, so it never clicks. Bypass is not part of Undo.
Input and OutputMost plugins have a column on the right with a pair of VU meters for the input and the output, each with its own gain knob (plus or minus 24 dB). Analog shows the classic VU scale, dBFS the digital one. A click on a meter opens a large view of it. The CLIP lamp lights when a sample reaches 0 dBFS.
KnobsDrag a knob up or down to turn it. Knobs that go both ways, or that have a natural middle, catch briefly at their centre. A double-click returns a knob to its default.
About and the demoA click on the xsidfx logo in the footer opens About. In the demo version the plugin's name ends in (demo), its settings are not saved with your project, and About opens each time the window does.