Electric Guitars and Racing Cars: Sound famous fast

The awesome VT40+

To any serious gamer or flight sim fan they will find this little baby a piece of cake to fly. In fact, even an old school purist like me can get this in the air. Even with its 13 knobs and 9 multi-purpose push buttons this wasn’t enough to deter me. Having a Lamborghini capable of 300kph doesn’t mean you have to take it all the way. I haven’t got past first gear in manual and this thing is steaming.
I’m not joking, I have the amp in Manual (mode), the amp selector on Clean in STD (green Mode) and with just the effects available I can get anywhere from the mellowest of jazz tones to the wildest metal sounds without looking at any of the other 32 amp models. Switching out of Manual to Preset mode we can spin through the 99 amp presets. These are someone’s idea of how the amp models should be used. As it says on the box, Sound Famous Fast, I presume these are the sounds that will do the job for you? With the Preset LED glowing green these awesome sounding presets have used a particular amp model and applied the basics only: gain, EQ and volume settings. You can switch through the 11 amp models to audition all the Basic (green) presets. If we move one button to the right of the amp selector knob, now we can toggle through two additional banks for a variation of the amp models. That’s 33 amp models. Now we can punch the Preset button to orange and have all that again with someone’s idea of the amp models, this time with effects. And here come the steak knives.. we can go red on the presets button and enter song mode where someone (the busy bee boffins at VOX) have duplicated guitar sounds from your favourite guitarists and songs they are known for. You too can sound famous fast. Here's just a few of the on board presets and I haven't even touched the sides. From squeaky clean jazz tones to outa-space synthesized guitar sounds, all from the VT40+. These sounds were recorded with my Strat using a dynamic microphone and the results have not been enhanced in any way. Have a listen..

Considering many of the great recorded guitar sounds have come from a one knob Fender Champ you can see where the Lamborghini analogy comes in, but that’s what it’s all about, amp modelling at 300kph. So what the heck is amp modelling anyway? Well it’s claimed by the model makers that they painstakingly gather up a bunch of scratchy old vintage amps plus some overpriced ‘boutique’ amps, turn them inside out and save the results then try to tell us they have created a ‘model’ of an AC15 (or whatever). Perhaps someone did this originally but I’m thinking they just buy a pre-programed generic chip and add the appropriate names to the models. Having been a modelling amp user from when it was invented (way back last century) I think you have to forget about the names given to the models and use your ear. Who cares what it’s meant to be as long as it sounds good. Well VOX haven’t let us down there with the VT+ series. These amps definitely sound great. There are 33 so-called amp models, there are 99 pre-programed presets. There are 2 banks of 4 user-storable presets you can punch through with the panel mounted buttons or toggle through with the optional foot switch. It is extremely easy to load in one of the zillion presets, finely tweak it to your liking and save it under one of the user buttons The VT40+ is easy to drive and the pilot’s handbook is easy to understand and to take the analogy a step further, I haven’t crashed it yet.
If you think you will get the clunky sound of a nice old George Harrison AC-30 with EL84’s and a pair of Alnico Blues, then good luck. The good thing is you can’t get hurt in a flight simulator. This little amp (did I mention loud?) will get you anywhere and have you sounding famous fast. No kidding.