Amp in a box pedal for straight in to PA

BobTheSalmon

Hi folks

I'm looking for a pedal sized amp or amp in a box pedal that I can use at the end of my normal board, when I accompany an acoustic guitarist and singer at out of town shows.
The idea is that I turn up with guitar and board and plug straight in to the desk and use fold back.
I have never gone anywhere near this approach before and obviously would like it not to feel too different to playing with an amp (although I of course understand it is).
Any thoughts appreciated... SansAmp? Orange Terror Stamp? One (or more) of the Mooer amp sims?
Thanks! 

Beexter

I haven't played one but this is pretty well the reason the Strymon Iridium exists. An HX Stomp is another great choice (which I can personally vouch for) 

BobTheSalmon

Ah yeah of course the Iridium... Will check it out and hx stomp. Thanks

Grunfeld

BobTheSalmon said:

Any thoughts appreciated... SansAmp? Orange Terror Stamp? One (or more) of the Mooer amp sims?
Thanks! 

Couldn't help but notice you mentioned SansAmp.  There's a nice one at a nice price in a signature quite near here...

PS for what it's worth I used to run the SansAmp GT2 almost at the start of the chain to set the basic amp tone.  Then a few pedals, and all going into a clean amp (or occasionally PA).

NelsonP

Others to consider:
Atomic Amplifirebox mk2
Boss GT core
Humbolt Simplifier

fretmeister

Line6 HX Stomp. Or the bigger Helix if you have the budget / space.

AntonHunter

If you're new to the concept, I heartily recommend the Joyo Amercian Sound for this to try out in principle. I'm sure the more expensive things listed sound better, but this is really great for the money.

StruanRobertson

Iridium is excellent.

susbemol

If you wanted to stay analogue, it may be worth considering one of the VOX Valvenergy pedals too.

Otherwise, I think it is hard to beat the Iridium if you have the budget and it covers what you're looking for.

Hattigol

Have a look at the Audio Kitchen stuff. Not cheap but you never see a bad review of them.

TheBigDipper

The BluGuitar AMP1 is a (large) pedal-sized analogue guitar amp (100w) that will run without a speaker load and do exactly what you want - sending a line level signal to the desk with (or without) an emulated speaker. It's my main "band" amp and does the job. 

ICBM

I use a Mesa V-Twin. It has a whole catalogue of frustrating annoyances*, but it's still the best-sounding thing for this job I've ever heard. I've owned three of them - one twice, so four times really! - and the annoyances always made me sell them, but having finally realised that there's really no substitute for the sound I've learned to live with it and this one isn't going anywhere...

*Not least - it's huge, heavy, ugly, takes a non-standard power supply, has a noticeable switching delay from bypass to on, when you're using it direct to a PA the bypass mode is *mute* (and is easy to hit by accident), the power jack is in a stupid place and easily damaged, one of the most useful features is hidden under a plate on the bottom, and so on and so on. But it sounds brilliant!

ArchtopDave

The new Thermion Zero looks nice... Got approval from Pete Thorn.

AntonHunter

TheBigDipper said:

The BluGuitar AMP1 is a (large) pedal-sized analogue guitar amp (100w) that will run without a speaker load and do exactly what you want - sending a line level signal to the desk with (or without) an emulated speaker. It's my main "band" amp and does the job. 

How do you find the speaker emulation?

springhead

I recently bought one of the little Mooer amp sim pedals. No. 8, the boogie one. I wanted something tiny that could fit on an existing pedal board for the occasional gig where it would be logistically easier to have no amp. I’ve done one little gig with it and it was fine. I kept it mostly clean and used a dirt pedal when needed. Need to experiment more, but it’ll be doing another gig in a week or so.  I liked that you can turn off the cab sim as I’ll be using it in the loop of a TC plethora which has cab sims that are probably better.  

Snags

The cheapo way is with a JoYo/Anmoon "American Sound" or similar (they do different ones for different flavours of amp). About £20-£25 which is good enough for proof of concept.

After that you can start spending proper money

I have an American Sound on my HXFX board for going straight to PA. Only had to use it a couple of times, but was reliabily informed it sounded fine by people in the audience. Certainly better than I sounded

Nikc

I've got the atomic amplifierbox 2 I use a small pedal board - Looper, Amplifire, O/d, TS9 and Tuner - sounds great very portable

andy_k

Small powered board with tuner, Sansamp Flyrig, Mooer Radar, and a couple of choice drive pedals = flexible emergency backup, and useful studio tool.

TheBigDipper

AntonHunter said:

TheBigDipper said:

The BluGuitar AMP1 is a (large) pedal-sized analogue guitar amp (100w) that will run without a speaker load and do exactly what you want - sending a line level signal to the desk with (or without) an emulated speaker. It's my main "band" amp and does the job. 

How do you find the speaker emulation?

Depends on the purpose. I've got the first version of the AMP1 (they're calling it the Silver edition, now). The emulated speaker output is an analogue set of filters. For recording, it sounds OK but not stellar. For feeding a PA at a gig I think it's perfectly usable and there was no benefit (to my ears) in taking an IR box along as well. I set up my onstage sound using the cabinet and give the PA guy the emulated feed if they need to reinforce anything in the room. Newer AMP1s (the Mercury and Iridium editions) may have some extra features. I believe it's now possible to turn off the emulation if you want to feed into an IR box, for example. 

For recording, a mic and speaker is still the best - but inconvenient. I can get a decent recorded sound by using the emulated output and adding an IR in the DAW. But it's about your own ears and preferences, as always. I'm sure some people will be unable to use a sound I like and vice versa. 

TBH, for the OPs purposes, I'd probably use an American Sound pedal. I acquired one without meaning to (long story) and it's quite good at clean tones but a bit noisy if you turn up the gain. For a silent stage, based on a clean amplifier sound and with no need to ever use amp hi gain sounds (using gain pedals instead) it would be a good bet. 

AntonHunter

Thanks for the reply @TheBigDipper, all analogue speaker simulations are not created equal I've found. I love the one on my American Sound (for the purposes described) but found the one on my Quilter Interblock 45 to be way too fizzy with gain sound.

I had hoped the Quilter would fill the role of an AMP1, but might end up shelling out on one, or a Milkman The Amp100 depending on how gigging looks when things properly start back. Another thing I'm thinking about is how easy it would be to modify the Quilter, if it's all analogue circuitry, whether changing a value of a component here or there might yeild soke good results. But I have little to no electrical skills and I've now gone significantly off topic, so I'll leave it there!

ewal

+1 for Joyo American Sound and siblings as a cheap but excellent way of trying things out.