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VT Bass Rackmount...

#101
At my acoustic gig last week I used the solid state channel of the genz to eq the vtrm to be as flat as possible when the vt's controls were all at noon. (gain at 9:00 with the input on the back of the rack in the attenuated position, my bass distorts the regular input, it's very hot) When set up like this I got a great sound going direct to the board, no amp ever used at acoustic type gigs. It also made the vt's controls even more responsive, useful and musical. Made the overdriven tones sound more "real" as well. Im thinking that I'll use this type of setup when my 1212/5 cab finally arrives. When using the nv610 I set the controls as mentioned above and use the genz's tube channel set flat. It's great to have this option. I still really wish that tech21 had included the speaker sim defeat to get rid of that big bump at 3.2k like the vt2 does. I would need much less or no eq from the genz that way. If anyone is doing a mod, I'd like to use it. Either way, the vtrm is really working well for me. I don't suggest changing the jumper settings as the stock settings sound the best. Some people might like the hp filter removed but, I find that it makes the bass control too wide. Oh, at the acoustice gig I still use the rolls crossover to remove everything below 80-100hz.
 
#102
I got a chance to check one of these out, and there are some really great overdrive tones to be had. The tube emulation is also really nice sounding. That said, I was a bit surprised and disappointed at the lack of clean headroom. Turning the character left cleaned things up but produced too much mid scoop for my taste. Putting it about noon necessitated keeping the gain low to off to get a clean tone. Kind of a bummer for me.
 
#103
I just picked up one of these and it should be here Monday. For now, I'm going to be pairing it with my MB800 power amp. I hope it's not to "shrill" of a setup as the GK amp (IMO) can sound a tad cold. Hoping the VTRM can warm it up a bit. Everything I've read says it will. Can't wait to see what tones are inside this little box.
 
#104
Yeah, I can't get a clean tone unless I use the padded input on the back. A really good sounding, fairly priced unit. You just need to work around a few things. I'd like to check out the new hot rodded plexi pedal as well.

When using the genz to flatten the vt I found that I can get away with really turning up the character passed noon and using more gain while still sounding useable at a real gig. The vt does get too compressed at those settings to be very useful to me but, they sound good all the same.
 
#105
kringle77 said:
Yeah, I can't get a clean tone unless I use the padded input on the back. A really good sounding, fairly priced unit. You just need to work around a few things. I'd like to check out the new hot rodded plexi pedal as well.

When using the genz to flatten the vt I found that I can get away with really turning up the character passed noon and using more gain while still sounding useable at a real gig. The vt does get too compressed at those settings to be very useful to me but, they sound good all the same.
Click to expand...

To follow up: with my active Sadowskys I have to keep Drive less than 10 o'clock to avoid too much distortion, especially if I'm pushing Character right of noon. I also have to avoid too much bass boost on the Sadowsky onboard preamp (but that's SOP for me anyway).

Yes, there's definitely compression going on when Character goes toward the right. That can be mitigated to some degree by reducing Blend from full. I normally keep Character close to noon, but for songs where I want more overdrive I will push Character to the right, and pull Blend back to between 3 o'clock and noon.
 
#107
JGR said:
I got a chance to check one of these out, and there are some really great overdrive tones to be had. The tube emulation is also really nice sounding. That said, I was a bit surprised and disappointed at the lack of clean headroom. Turning the character left cleaned things up but produced too much mid scoop for my taste. Putting it about noon necessitated keeping the gain low to off to get a clean tone. Kind of a bummer for me.
Click to expand...
I keep both RPM and VTRM in my rack, foot switched.
 
#108
I was just thinking after I posted that one of these babies run in parallel with an RPM and blended in for some grit would most likely sound stellar. I did this initially with the RPM/RBI, then went to dual RPM's running one dirty - the VTRM has much cooler overdrive so I bet it would be even better.
 
#109
Do any of you guys run a HPF with your VTRM? I know the VT is high passed but wondering what the rolloff frequency is? I've gotten so used to fdeck's HPF on my board but don't know if running that and the internal one is too much? Guess I could always take my fdeck series 3 and back it down to 35 hz.
 
#111
JGR said:
I was just thinking after I posted that one of these babies run in parallel with an RPM and blended in for some grit would most likely sound stellar. I did this initially with the RPM/RBI, then went to dual RPM's running one dirty - the VTRM has much cooler overdrive so I bet it would be even better.
Click to expand...

I really need to try VTRM and RPM in parallel. Much as I love the sparkly Presence control on the RBI, the VTRM is bright enough.
 
#115
At tonight's gig the VTRM just killed again. I started out mostly using the Reiner pre, but halfway through we started slamming our heavy songs (Metallica, Seether, Nickelback, RATM, Alice in Chains, Judas Priest, etc) so I just plugged into the front of the VTRM for extra crunch. I used the settings below, which turned out to be very similar to the previous gig, even though there was a lot of knob tweaking in between.

IMG_20131214_245838_105_zpsbs1dsbtt.jpg



OBTW, the VTRM can dial up this sound quite easily (wait a couple secs for the bass solo):
http://youtu.be/LgsoymLte20?t=2m02s
 
#116
What are most of you guys using for power amps with the VTRM? Does it play well with Class D stuff? I don't have a dedicated power amp at the moment so my initial thought was to pair it with my GK MB800 effects return. It only a 1U and that would be a pretty light way to go since I could fit both in a 2U rack. I just don't have much experience with pre/power setups.
 
#117
I am probably in the minority but, I use the vtrm in the master fx loop of my genz benz sm9.2 where I use the amps preamps and eq. But, it works just fine running directly into the amps fx return. I find that the vt sounds a bit more lively and has more "juice" when running with the genz preamp and eq in front of it.
 
#120
Had a nightmare/great gig last night. 1.5 hours each way in a terrible snow storm where the roads were drifted completely over in many places. Cold as hell. First half of the night was the acoustic portion where I used no amp, just ran the solid state channel of the genz to flatten the vtrm with controls at noon. Sounded great again. Second half was with the electric guitars. Used the tube channel of the genz feeding the vtrm with my normal settings and that worked great as well. We sounded awsome. Im really loving this preamp. Again, I like it much more when used with another preamp. Im thinking that running a summit audio pre in front of it would kill, but I'd miss the eq options of the genz so, this is the way my rig will stay. I need to start messing with the blend alittle more to see if I can get the tone grittier without out all of the compression.
 

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