Egnater

[fritzreiser]

I had someone turn me on to the Egnater M4 preamp with the modules. Good Lord, does that sound great!!!! And I thought my Mesa Quad was versatile. Sheesh.

Has anyone here played or owned one? If so, which modules did you play?

There will definitely be an M4 in my future. Anyone wanna buy a Splawn, Mesa Quad, Furman PQ-3 & Marshall 20/20?

[Chuckracer]

Re: Egnater

I played the head version at NAMM two years ago and was blown away. I don't remember what modules were in it, but yeah, its killer!

[prolead]

Re: Egnater

I seriously thought about getting one for a while,but I got mixed reviews at HC.Never a bad one,some people said the preamp was nothing spectacular.I would also love to know if anyone here has one,I would love to hear some opinions.To me,having that much versatility could end gassing for amps.

[StuTDavis]

Re: Egnater

I own an M4 with the modules:
SL
SL++
VX++
ERECT

I'm strictly an at-home player, never play it out. To get the sound and feel I like, I use it with a ton of other junk (page below). To me, the preamp is just a starting point of basic tone, and the M4's thick tone is perfect for allowing me to modify it into really trashy thrash, while keeping very heavy lows and the kind of response/feel I want from my setup.

I play mostly old Anthrax and Metallica stuff, with a few others in there, and play along with CDs. Since I'm an at-home player, I can try to replicate the CD guitar sound without worrying about "the mix", and I'm closer than I've ever been--obviously, or I'd have ditched it all by now hehehe.

The VX++ is chimey and bright as it should be. With the right EQing, it does very tight thrash sound, and I use it for almost everything I play, to be honest. Old Anthrax, Metallica in Puppets/Justice time, other really defined thrash stuff.

The SL and SL++ are both great for anything that needs a Marshall touch. You can get a huge variety out of the SL, especially with EQing and a couple pedals. The SL++ is an SL pumped up with a little Mesa-like girth and tons of gain. I go back and forth on which SL/SL++ I use for Kill/Ride Metallica stuff...if I want it to be "classic" or "revved up" hehehe.

The ERECT...well...I am not a huge Mesa fan, in any respect. But I play some black-album Metallica stuff, so it was appropriate, and it's kinda fun to goof with sometimes otherwise. With my setup, I fairly well nail that album's tone to my ears. In my setup, it's Mesa as I always wanted to hear (full black-album sound), but never actually heard, from an actual Mesa.

Obviously, I don't have any dedicated "clean" module in there. The SL does "clean enough" for the very little amount of clean I use when I play, which is a more mellow clean anyway, as opposed to a shimmering clean.

Here's my page of guitar crap. Haven't updated in a while... I don't have the Rocktron Voodu Valve anymore. Replace that with a Behringer V-Amp Pro, and that's the current setup.

http://hometown.aol.com/stutdavis/page3.html

I've tried out several other modules, but these seemed the best mix for my actual playing use. They're all very versatile modules, with a good amount of range in tone and very useful EQs. The preamp utilizes the preamp tubes in a HUGE way, and you can hear a very big difference just tube-swapping in this thing.

Stu

[prolead]

Re: Egnater

Damn Stu,you got some nice gear.Thanks for the review,I love Anthrax,Old Metallica,and 120 others.My question is thiso you really need a lot of other gear to shape your tone with the M4?I figured straight into a VHT 2/50/2 and a nice cabinet would get you tons of versatility.I don't want to buy a preamp that needs a lot pedals to shape the tone.Any other insight would be appreciated.

[BigDaddyD]

Re: Egnater

I would be interested in the 20/20

[fritzreiser]

Re: Egnater

Originally posted by BigDaddyD:
I would be interested in the 20/20

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Darin, I asked Pete to build a Twisteramp for me. So, once I get that, I'll contact you to see if you are still interested in the 20/20.

BTW, what did you think of that TRI-OD? Did it do anything for ya?

[BigDaddyD]

Re: Egnater

Sounds cool. As far as the TriOd, I have to get it fixed before I can use it. Either that or the power supply I was using isn't working well with it, but i am using the Pedal Power so i doubt it. I think Tech 21 is here in NYC, so I might see if they will check it out. It definitely looks cool, and the reviews are great. Thanks. When do you think you will have your new amp?

[BigDaddyD]

Re: Egnater

Fritz,

I thought this was cool enough to share. I contacted Tech21 and they responded within an hour or so. For $25 they would completely go through, clean, resolder and bring the pedal up to spec...minus any broken parts. Those cost $1. Isn't that cool, especially when they new it was used to begin with. That is what you call a company with good customer service and faith in the quality of their product.

[StuTDavis]

Re: Egnater

Kev,

What anyone "needs" to use with an amp or rack setup to get a particular sound that they themselves want to hear is so completely subjective, it's hard to go into any definites.

For instance, I've heard some people say they've played a Marhsall DSL/TSL and they hear Metallica "Puppets" sound dead-on with just that...to me, it's not even in the ballpark.

Along the same lines, some guys will play the M4 through a VHT power amp and hear thrash metal right off the bat. Others, like me, need a lot more to get that sound in their playing situation to their own ears.

To MY ears, most tube amps by themselves are mooshy, blah, bland, lifeless--dead sounding. I just don't like em at all. They NEED other gear to get even close to the sound I like, to my ears. There are exceptions, most of them being newer high-gain non-Mesa amps like the Diezel Herbert, for instance. In my quest for tone, I eventually realized that there wasn't going to be any one amp or preamp that did IT for me, and started to view the preamp as just a starting point for getting my sound. That starting point has to have a general character I like, and it's got to have a strong, heavy signal to begin with, because what I do to the sound would water down a lot of thinner amps' sounds to a shrill, absolutely harsh sound that not even I would want to hear hehehe. The M4 gives me the best starting point I've had, to get me to where I want to go, with the versatility of basic amp sounds I need.

I hope that makes sense in some way hehe. I'd classify myself as a highly picky, obsessive, overly anal and detail-oriented sort of person. If it's a tad off, it throws everything off to me. You or someone else may or may not hear anything near what I hear or want to hear from my gear...and that's why I say it's just too subjective to give a hard-line answer on things like this. Saying it NEEDS other gear might make you shy away from it, whereas if you'd tried it, you may love it by itself. Saying it doesn't need other gear might give you an overly high expectation, and you'd be disappointed when you heard it, but might find the perfect sound for yourself just by adding a simple EQ. It's all up to the individual...

Stu

[prolead]

Re: Egnater

Stu,I hear ya.Everybody has different tastes in tone,totally subjective.Also,you are right that I need to hear it myself to honestly judge it.I like to keep it as simple as possible but would love to have this kind of versatility without adding too many external pedals or processors.I am going to buy it over the next month,probably take me 2 months to put the whole rig together.Thanks for your honest opinion.

[Creepy]

Re: Egnater

Stu, your gear just made me shit my pants [img]graemlins/notworthy.gif[/img] . I love you custom Carvin V.

[StuTDavis]

Re: Egnater

Kev & Creepy,

DOH! Thanks for the compliments. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]


Kev,

Anytime...if there's anything else I can help with, let me know. The Egnater isn't necessarily completely UNLIKE most other amps or preamps I've heard, but I could tell it was just going to be the best "base" to start with for my needs, that I'd heard. Admittedly, just like it says on my web page, a lot of players wouldn't dig my sound and, since I just play at home, studio or gigging players probably wouldn't get any use out of my sound. But, it doesn't mean that the gear in my setup couldn't be set up to work in either of those ways, either. With the right tweaking, I'm sure it would be great for recording or live use.

A lot of my rack and pedals are there for incrementally improving upon the last piece, or some small aspect in some way. The VHT Valvulator gives me a little bit of extra "feel". The EQ pedal up front removes a little bit of bass, and ups the mids and highs to tighten the sound. The Boss PW-10 up front adds in a little bit of distortion. And I've got a total of 3 rack EQs going (including the G-Major's--also used for Compression and a little Reverb) in there for various reasons. Then, there are the BBE and Behringer Ultrafex Pro which, to me, are instant "thrash it up" boxes, each one doing it a little differently together. And I do a lot of really freaky boosting in different places...all designed around giving me the best high-volume sound and feel at the lowest volumes. My end result out the speakers is absolutely nothing like what the M4 sounds like by itself. But, by having its good, strong base tones, it all maintains a strong signal with meaty, rounded tone throughout, and that's very important.

Expect from the M4 exactly what it's advertised as--a tube-based amp emulator. The unit and modules themselves have the basic character of the amps (or modded versions of them) that they are emulating. To me, when I first tried it out with just a Mesa power amp, it had a better feel than a lot of amps by themselves, and a lot of spunk and character.

Being completely straightforward, would I play just the M4 with a power amp like that, though? No. I wouldn't have kept it, personally. Because, like I said, I'm not that big on raw-amp sound, it doesn't suit my ears' taste and volume needs, and the M4 with just a power amp is definitely raw-amp sound. In fact, I was just about to ditch it before I added some of the other units into my rack and got lucky enough to find exactly what I was looking for somewhere in the mix of all this crap hehehe. But, quite honestly, I wouldn't have kept it, otherwise.

At that point, with all this extra stuff, I was into high-bucks-head territory, money-wise. If I were an amp-head-only kinda guy, I'd have probably gone with the Diezel Herbert, checked out the Randall Warhead, maybe the H&K TriAmp or the new Peavey stuff. To be honest, those amps give closer to my sound than any other amps I've heard by themselves--they're getting better at putting high-gain thrash into those things hehehe.

But, in the end, I was able to stick with the rack ideal that I really love, and it didn't let me down. Guitar gear is funny, you kinda have to take it for what it is, but also keep in mind what it could become, if you're willing and able to go that route.

I think guys expecting to find "their metal sound" they want to have and keep forever kind of screw themselves a lot of the time by being too unwilling to add onto their setup. They might try or buy an expensive amp they initially think they really love, then ditch it when it doesn't 100% do the job, whereas that extra little % could easily be made up by a couple hundred bucks in added gear, and they'd be happy with it for years. I feel really bad for those guys--"it was soooo close, but just didn't QUITE cut it"--because, with a little patience and a little more money, they could have got that amp's sound or feel to where they wanted it. But, hey, we're all different in what we're willing and able to go through to get "there", and that's everyone's personal decision or taste.

Stu

[fritzreiser]

Re: Egnater

I just picked up an M4 on eBay for a BIN of $1500. I was going to order a new one for $1695 from amazingtone.com, but they never returned my call. Lucky for me, as this one has 5 modules instead of the standard 4 that it would come with from the factory.

IIRC, the 5 modules are:

High Gain
SL++
JTM45
Deluxe Reverb
AC30

I was going to order 3 of those (High Gain, SL++ & Deluxe), so this works out well.

I'll post a review of it once I get it (assuming I figure out how to pay for it).

BTW, Pete sent me a coupla pics of the Twisteramp I asked him to build. Way cool (Jr.)!