Review: AmpLion & GK Apmplification 2 by Audiffex

A couple of days ago, I received these two awesome amp plugins from Audified. Luckily for me, I was just working on a guitar driven track, so, I decided it would be a nice idea to test them both in real life situation, and I’ve got to say, they both sound wonderful, with lots of sonic options and great modelling of well-known stuff. Let’s check em out!

AmpLion

This is the guitar amp modelling, but it’s much more than that! It’s actually a very complete guitar rig (no pun intended) modelling, that brings you tuner, eight pedal slots which can be configured in series or parallel with effects like distortion, wah pedals, dynamics, chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, EQ, octave and volume. It is worth mentioning that all these pedals are recreations of well-known pedals, and they sound pretty much alike their hardware counterparts, next, you get two amps plus two cabinets you can mix and much to your taste, from Fenders to Marshalls to Mesa Bogies, you got pretty much all your guitar amp colour palette covered, and with the addition of separate cabinets, well, you can really get creative in here. But, hey, the best part, is you can use two separate amps and cabinets, each one with its own settings and mic, this gives you a lot of options to mix and match!

Speaking of mics, you can choose how would you like to mic each cabinet with four different well-known dynamic models and other four, also well-known condenser mics. You can adjust the position and distance of the mic, as well as the axis (great for distorted guitars!), finally, you’ve got yourself a rack with more effects: dynamics, chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, auto-pan, eq, octaver, delay (which sounds specially good), reverb, plus a noise gate at the beginning of the chain and a limiter right in the end.

I know there are lots of guitar amp simulation plugins, but, this one is especially good for the versatility of options, and by how good, specific things are modelled. I mean, body and brilliance are just as close from the real deal as you would expect.

It won’t dry your CPU if you are using a small buffer, and you won’t probably even notice you are actually recording through a plugin, and that’s probably what’s most important, you can feel you are recording through an actual guitar amp, and that makes everything else so much easier!

Pros

The sound is great, the versatility is great, how easy is to dial the proper sound is awesome, and of course having two separate amps and cabinets males the possibilities almost endless.

Cons

I can only think about two cons (well, one of them is not actually a con, but more an idea of what would have been even cooler!): I didn’t find a way to use, lets say, a MIDI expression pedal to control the Wah pedals, and I actually think there’s not a way to do so, but, please, if someone knows a way, let me know!!

UPDATE: You can link any MIDI controller to any parameter of AmpLion – in MIDI Menu when used in standalone mode. In DAWs you can do the same using automation of the plug-in, then routing your controller to the automated parameter. “Evrika!”

Now, this is more a request than a con, but, wouldn’t it be awesome to have at least one option of a ribbon mic for the cabinet? maybe in a future version?

GK Amplification 2

GK, in case you didn’t know, stands for Gallien-Krueger, and they make really cool bass amps. This plugin models three of the GK amps: the RB heads (800RB and 2001RB), which are essentially bi-amped bass amps with some tube colouring, which is absolutely great for rock and roll. If you are not familiar with the GK sound, well, this heads, can pretty much sound like a classic Ampeg tube amp, but, they are definitely more versatile.

The other head modelled is the MB150, which is a solid state amp, with a completely different colour.
Again, the GK plugin, lets you use two separate cabinets, with pretty much the same mic models than in the AmpLion, and the same ability to set the mic position, distance and angle.

I’m not a great bassist myself, but I do have a partner who is a great bassist, so, we D.I. his bass to test the different amps and possible cabinet combinations. We both thought it sounded great, with many options for styles such as rock and roll, reggae, jazz, etc. I pretty much liked a lot the distorted sounds you can get from the RB amps. You can also get some pretty nice slap tones, and there’s a built-in limiter that won’t let you clip hard.

Pros

Very versatile, I mean, you can use this plugin almost for any kind of bass you want. I mean, if you want to, you can use just the amp, with no cabinet at all. Running two cabinets at the same time, can add some pretty wild stereo effects to your bass tracks!

Cons

Well, I can’t actually think of any cons. This amps are very well made modelled and sound very much alike the GK amps.

Also see: inValve Effects Review

[author image=”https://www.producerspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/piggy-sounds-logo.jpg” ]Rafael Hofstadter is a recording and mixing engineer and sound designer with 10+ years experience in playing and programming synths, recording, mixing and producing pop/rock/folk albums. He also runs piggysounds.com.[/author]