Read the review: http://bit.ly/Tech21GeddyLee
There’s no shortage of companies out there making amp simulators, but Tech 21—with their proprietary SansAmp technology—is one of the originals, and their wares remain a must-have for many bassists. Part of the reason is SansAmp forgoes digital modeling, unlike many other products on the market, to achieve emulation with a completely analog signal chain. Bassist Geddy Lee happens to be a fan of SansAmp technology, and through a collaboration with Tech 21, the GED-2112 Geddy Lee Signature SansAmp was born. Yes, it’s a signature model, but don’t rush (sorry) to judgment. Turns out this new model could be useful for a wide range of players in a variety of applications—especially rock situations where amp-like color is desired.
Hemispheres
The GED-2112 is a single-rack-space unit with a minty green front panel sporting a little drawing of Geddy raising his eyebrow at you. (When I was trying to learn his bass parts, I got the feeling he was raising his eyebrow in judgment of my ability to replicate his bass lines, but you can decide what he’s saying to you.) The device is basically separated into two sections—a “drive” preamp section and a “deep” preamp section—that run parallel.
The drive section is based on the SansAmp RPM preamp and has dials for overdrive, bass, and treble, parametric midrange, and output level. There’s also a blend control, which allows you to blend-in the desired amount of unprocessed, clean tone. The deep section has an EQ curve preset to Geddy’s personal specs and only has two controls: saturation and output. In my opinion, the “deep” name might be a little misleading. While it sounds great, I didn’t find it all that deep sounding. To my ears, it had more of a midrange growl, which really complemented the drive section nicely.
There are two options for plugging in: either a single input on the front panel or the two on the back. You can switch between the two back-panel inputs with a button that’s located on the face of the box. It seems like it would be a nice option to be able to do this with a footswitch, but no such luck. The back-panel inputs have a -20 dB pad for receiving line-level signals.
Continue reading: http://bit.ly/Tech21GeddyLee