INTRODUCTION
What is AMP CENTRAL?
Amp Central is our answer for modern guitarist who still love to use any tube based amplifier in live or
studio situation, even where silent stage is required.
Amp Central, as the name suggested is a hub to connect your amplifier to the outside world, without
the need of a real cabinet or any volume at all.
THE CONCEPT
Since few years, digital systems became very popular in guitar amplifier market, replacing real amps in
most of “inconvenient” gig where a proper stage volume was not possible, or for example, during
practice sessions at late night.
What we found is missing in the world right now between other various choices is what we call a “total
experience” of a real amp-speaker interaction. What me mean, is, simulations/profiles could work in
some situation in term of pure sound, but how about the feeling under your fingers?
It’s the same as you were playing your amp thru a real cabinet? Of course, no.
What could we do to improve the experience of a “fake” or profiled amplifier, played with headphones,
which in most cases yields bad results?
Well, we came up with a solution and we brought a couple of different technologies into the game,
one very old and one not so old, respectively called
Dummy Load
(in our case a Reactive Load) and
the
Impulse Response
technology.
It’s a known fact your tube based amplifier needs to have a cabinet wired to the output jack when
used, or at least a proper load, the potential penalty could be the reduction of output transformer’s
life, or worst, its total fault.
With this in mind, we built the very first stage of Amp Central, by creating a proper dummy load, or
better, a Reactive/Resistive Load, to mimic the best approximation of a real cabinet. We've gone fully
analog with best available components, something audiophile experts will appreciate. Audophile
capacitors, custom made inductors, superior ceramic resistor, just to name a few..no digital processing
or equalization is applied up there, we do believe your amplifier needs a proper analog load to sound
and feel at its best.
Where do we go from there? Amp is now safe and running, while no sound will come out of it. At this
point we decided to embrace digital world, with
Impulse Responses*
technology.
With Amp Central we wanted to offer the best of both worlds, by offering the possibility of playing
your favorite amplifiers and not a simulation/profile, with some Impulse Response of your favorite
cabinets.
This will be YOUR and not someone else's sound. Your own amp(s) and possibly your own cab’s I.R.
*An Impulse Response is in layman's terms an equalization, or a “snapshot” of your favorite mic’ed
cabinet, to be applied to the raw sound coming out of your loaded amplifier. Return act as the complete
sound (amp + cabinet + mic) as you should hear from your studio monitors, or headphones.
