Sans Amp GT2The SansAmp GT2 is a direct-in or preamp-in tube amplifier emulator. Basically, that means this product helps the user reproduce that warm, natural sound of a tube amp, all while allowing the tonal personality of the instrument to remain unaltered. To go a step further, the GT2 doesn’t just emulate a “generic” tube sound, but instead can be adjusted to emulate the tones of some of the worlds greatest tube amps like Fender, Marshall, and Mesa/Boogie. And the best part is that getting these great tones is easy.

Review:

As I usually do after receiving a new piece of equipment, I did a quick read

through the owners manual and was happy to find that it looked like operating

the GT2 was going to be a piece of cake. It was! On that note, I feel the need to

mention one of my favorite “features” that came with this Tech21 product. The

funny thing is, it’s not even an option on the unit itself, but instead something I

found in the owner’s manual a quick-start, sample-settings guide. These few

pages are a great idea, and a great way to get someone started using the GT2.

Although I personally like the challenge of tweaking and changing settings in

search of that perfect tone (regardless of what type of equipment I’m testing),

the fact that I was able to get into the ballpark of a sound I was looking for

quickly, was definitely well received. This is also a nice benefit to those

musicians that may not be familiar with the classic tube amp sounds being

emulated here. They may not know what they’re looking for and this gives

them great place to start.

Now, back to that tweaking I said I love so much. The SansAmp GT2 has 4

guide knobs and 3 “Character” switches. The “Drive” knob controls the overall

amount of gain and overdrive. The “High” and “Low” knobs are active tone

controls. As the manual states, boosting Low and High compensates for the

limited range of speaker cabinets and combos. The “Level” knob adjusts the

output level without altering any of the tonal characteristics. But it’s in the

character switches where things start to get really interesting.

There are 3 “Amp” switch settings located on the SansAmp GT2 and each one

represents a different style of amplifier. The “Tweed,” “British,” and

“California,” represent the Fender-style, Marshall-style, and Mesa/Boogie-style,

respectively. The “Mod” switch is used to influence the gain of the Amp-style

selected. 20lean” resembles a stock tube amp set up, while “Hi-Gain” and

“Hot-Wired” push out a more overdriven sound. The last of the character

switches is the “Mic” switch. Here the “Classic” setting increases the mid-range

and gives greater definition to the notes. The manual recommends this for

classic early tube amp sounds and for live applications. The “Center” setting

gives greater high mid-range and increased low end, and is recommended for

getting a bigger, stronger crunch sound. And the “Off-Axis” setting is similar to

the Center setting, but produces a smoother sound with less upper mid-range.

Now that I had an understanding of what these controls did, I was ready to

start the fun. I first plugged my ESP LTD 300 guitar into the SansAmp GT2, then

ran the GT2 into our Mackie 808S Powered Professional Mixer that supplies

power to our two 300 watt speaker cabinets. I decided that I would try some of

the sample settings from the owner’s manual to get started with. All of these

sample settings provided great sounds, but I soon found myself in a frenzy of

knob turning and switch pushing. I was finding that I could produce so many

great sounds with this little box that I couldn’t make up my mind what I liked

best. Was it the Marshall Plexi style, or was it the tone I got when I started with

the sample setting for the Boogie Original style, then added a bit more low end

and drive to the mix? Decisions, decisions But hey, that’s a good thing, right?

Versatility and variety are always positives regardless of what kind of gear

you’re working with and those are certainly things you get with the GT2.

Next, to be sure I gave the GT2 a good, well rounded, working over, I decided

to see how it sounded through a guitar amplifier. I knew it sounded great

through the PA, but would it shine through an amp the same way? To my

pleasure, it did! Using the same guitar, I ran the GT2 into my Fender Princeton

Chorus, solid state amp. I used the clean channel on the amp and left all of my

EQ settings as I normally would when playing. I then tried out all of the favorite

settings I had found from my previous session, and the GT2 reproduced them

through the amp splendidly. I was even able to improve on a few of the sounds

by activating the chorus function on the amp. I love what chorus can add to

some sounds and had a blast letting the creativity flow. As a matter of fact,

keep in mind you can use a variety of other effects with the GT2 as well. Try

adding some delay, reverb, chorus (like I did) or even a wah pedal to really

shape your sound. The manual will even tell you where in line (before or after

the GT2) to place the additional effects.

The next test was to see what the SansAmp GT2 could do for an old 15 watt,

Peavey practice amp. This idea stemmed from me seeing the lonely, neglected,

little piece of equipment sitting in the corner of a friends’ basement (he

apparently upgraded to a bigger/better amp and the Peavey’s been untouched

ever since.) I first tried out the amp in its natural state. Before the GT2 was

used the overdrive was existent, but not very impressive, and the overall sound

was, as you might expect, just kind of blah! The addition if the GT2 breathed

new life into this little amp. Of course, it wasn’t the quite the same as playing

through the other higher quality rigs I was using earlier, but I do have to say

that I was pretty impressed with the quality of the sounds coming from that

little amp after the GT2 was added.

Last but not least, I cozied up with our PC here in the office studio and began

laying down tracks with the GT2. What I found was that the delicious sound of

the GT2 translated into perfectly recorded tracks in Cakewalk. The only thing I

had to do to keep the sound from having that familiar “direct-in” sound was

liven up the reverb and add just a hair of delay. This gave some body to the

sound and made it more natural sounding for recording purposes. It’s easy to

overlook this if you’re used to using a SansAmp for live performance because

you get the body from the acoustics of the amplification equipment and room

dynamics. However, when recording direct just keep in mind that you’ll need to

tweak the sound oh-so-little to get just the amount of ambience you’re looking

for