Yamaha THR10 Questions

Nomad

Got one - thanks for all the comments and info.

I checked the web this morning and they had come into stock at GG in Edinburgh (earlier than expected), so I went out for a play at lunchtime. They stuck me in the little booth and left me alone for an hour and a half, by which time my mind was made up. They also price matched Hot Rox at £232.

My first impression was that it's louder than I expected, and the top end can sound a bit 'slashy' or 'attacky' when hit hard (although that could have been my ears - I jumped straight in with seeing how loud it would go). The clean amp stays clean at reasonable volumes, but can still sound a little hairy at times. The bass amp works better as a clean amp, albeit with more neutral voicing. The clean and crunch amps both have potential for edge of breakup sounds (I noted that the clean had similar characteristics to the Cub 10 when the power amp is getting driven). I need to play with the Vox model a bit more. The Plexi model is rather good - Lemon Drop on bridge pickup was very AC/DC. Haven't used the JCM much yet, but is clearly heavy rock, bordering on metal. The Boogie has loads of sustain but sounds more tonally restricted than the JCM.

I also tried it with other instruments: With my 5-string bass, it was passable for noodling although the notes below low E were a little farty at the daytime volume I was playing at. Had a little try with electro-acoustic into the acoustic amp, but need to play with that more. With a harmonica (Superlux mic), I got instant feedback (amp was on the desk in front of me), but driven tones sounded promising through headphones. Mono analogue synth into the bass amp sounds absolutely fine. Hooked up to USB, Windows Media Player can be told to send to the THR interface (but needed to be closed and restarted).

The preset behaviour is a bit weird. It seems that only a given control changes if you adjust something after calling up a preset, but with some oddities...

If you pick the room reverb in the software, and then tweak it, it changes back to the default for that area of the control. So you can't set a room reverb and then adjust its strength on the amp - it jumps back to spring or whatever. Similar with the tremolo - I set the rate at 6, but when I tweaked it to change the depth, the rate went back to 8. If you set up an amp model with a different cab, and then change amp model, the cab changes as well; and when you then go back to the model you used in the preset, it picks the default cab for that model. The gain, master and tones can all be tweaked without the models and effects changing, so it seems to me that the presets are better seen as presets for amp and cab combinations and/or effects that you don't tweak. From a starting point of five presets, you can then switch off the effects and have five amp/cab presets which you can tweak for gain and tone (and dial in whatever default effects you want), and five custom, non-adjustable effects patches, where you can then dial in any of the default amp/cab options and tweak gain and tone. Within the effects patches, you can still keep a custom delay/reverb setup and tweak the modulation effect, or keep a custom modulation and tweak delay/reverb (so, actually a pair of custom effect settings per preset, either of which can be tweaked, leaving the other unchanged). So, a bit annoying that you can't adjust the custom effect patches, or keep a custom cab model with an amp model, but when its behaviour is understood, it's actually pretty flexible.

The feel and response is very good, especially with the cleaner sounds - easy to play soft and keep it clean, and then dig in for a bit of breakup, and the way it does it sounds pretty convincing.

Overall, I'm pleased so far. Much more neighbour compliant for late night noodling, and the sounds are very usable.