Ok..... I only got to spend about an hour with the amp. My wife suffers from tension and migrain headaches and she wasnt feeling too good. Good thing is where I play is apart from the house so I didnt bother her playing loud but still didnt want to play too long cause I needed to get back and get the kids taken care of and in bed. Now that I have that taken care of I'll give first impressions.
This review will be a bit rambly and I will do more in depth review once I get more time with it.
I played my Tyler through one of my 2x12's that has two G12h's in it. I really want to play this through a D12. First over all impression is the amp is a really good amp. It has a very good loop and the masters work really well. I was able to get good, clear, non buzzy tone at low levels but it didnt get really compressed and remained clear up loud. The amp has good feel and didnt feel "fake" like other amps Ive tried.
On the gain channels, like George said there is alot of Marshall in there for a VHT. It has the Marshall immediate upper mid bite, if you dial it that way, I call it the Marshall quack and I really like that about amps as I feel it helps you cut live. But there is also that VHT tone mixed in. For metal guys you can scoop it out to get a more metal tone. The amp isnt dry at all IMHO but is very punchy and tight. I kinda know what people mean by "dry" and this amp isnt but it isnt Bogner squishy either. To me it was like the Deliverance meets a CL but nodding much more to the Deliverance. Has plenty of gain for singing leads without pedals.
The clean really really surprised me. Very nice! All the modes worked really well as well as the boost on the clean. I was trully surprised by the clean as it was nice and bouncy and with the modes and eq it went from full and thick to nice and funky spank. The clean could also could get a nice grind going too but you have to the volume up to get more gain so you have to up your gain channels volume too. That said the lead and crunch can clean up very well with the volume knob so you could have a nice spanky clean and leave the warm full cleans to the crunch or lead channel and just use your volume knob to get you there. This is trully the first modern gain channel switcher that does that this well IMHO.
Compared to my Shiva it has a more "classic" Marshall bite in there IMHO but has more gain and a bit more tonal versatility if you want. The cleans are about on the same level to me.
Honestly I need to spend more time to play with the eq and switching modes to see how trully versatile it is. Tonight I just messed with the modes and eq until I got a tone that I liked, set each channel to be that tone with variations in gain and slight eq differences and had fun.
Here are couple of cool things that I didnt know it did: One is the level on the loop can be set a bit louder so when you hit the effect button on the foot pedal it can act as a volume boost too and again the loop sounds really really good. Second of all it remembers what you had "on" on each channel kinda like the JVM. So say you set the lead channel with the boost on and the effects on, set the crunch channel with the boost off and effects off, and set the clean effects on and the boost off then when you switch to each one it remembers what you had on and off. VERY COOL!
Well... I'll post more on the amp after I get more time with it. So far it's a very nice amp and if you like VHT's I think you'll like it. I like it so far...... is it OMG the holy grail amp? No amp is IMHO but its my favorite from VHT so far and I will be keeping it around for awhile to play with some more and Im thinking I may meet up with Thump and get one of his D12 cabs. I really want to hear this through that cab. Like all amps it wont be for everyone and I highly recommend not going solely off the clips. The amp sounds much different in person in a good way. No offense to George and the Monkey fellow over at HC who did a good job with their clips.
