I went to a local Guitar Center and picked up the Spider Valve MKII head and brought it home last night.
Well, I spent a large part of the night going through the presets. There is not that many to try out unlike the Spider Valve MKI (which I have as well) so after about an hour I was pretty familiar with it.
I was told that there is no Artist presets or the 60's through 00's presets as well because users of the original said they wanted more available user presets. It is easier to work with when you don't have all those extra ones to try out (some did start sounding the same after awhile on the original).
About the sound: Even though I play styles/genres from Classical to Thrash Metal I find I prefer to have a great Heavy sound (Testament, Megadeth, etc....) with a cleaner lead tone (less distorted signal, Malmsteem, Pettrucci, etc...). I found there was really only two useable Heavy presets on it last night (of course you can tweek others or make a custom setting).
I messed around wiith a few of the new amp models in it with different guitars that I have to see if it sounded better with passive, JB/59's or EMG 81's, and the EMG's sounded a little better on it.
I felt after spending a few hours on it today that the Heavy Rhythm sound was good, not great, and I don't think it was any better than the original just a little different sounding. It can get a little bit of that heavy boutique sound on the lower strings but the higher strings sounded flat, lifeless .
I kept comparing my saved settings from the original to a few that I was tweeking on the MKII. I think I like the original better.
One main reason is that the new one, MKII, sounds flat for leads on the bottom strings. Try a lead lick like, say Wasted Years from Iron Maiden, on the original on a good Heavy Setting then try it on the MKII. You'll find it sounds flat, no great response. It doesn't have that combination of a tight but "bouncy" feel I was hoping for in it. My Marshall JMP1 preamp through any of my power amps sound way better than what I was hearing.
I do feel the Noise Gate was working great, way better than the one in the original which gives me a lot of feedback (I usually keep my volume knob a little less than completely on full volume to get the feedback to be gone from the original). I was not getting any feedback or noise when I use this one.
Another thing I noticed was that the new way of editing bass, mids, treble, etc ... has a snag in it. When you go to adjust any of them it drops a significant amount in the volume and then you have to try to find where it was at originally to see if you should have changed it from the original setting, very annoying.
I am going to return it because I originally bought the first model to use as a back up for my heavy weighing power amps or as a head that has a workable tone for jamming with friends when moving my rig would be too much for one person so I hadn't really used it much and this one doesn't seem to be a great improvement over the first one. I think I prefer the sounds from the first one but I wish I could get it to sound less fake/digital/mushy and more like my Marshall JMP1.
Anyone else compare the heads (not the combos, the speakers can make it sound different)?
I do use a Mesa 4x12 cab and two 1x12 EVM Mesa single cabs as well. This could be part of it because I did think the actual matching Line 6 4x12 cab sounded pretty good with my head when I compared the two cabs. It just would be a shame to get rid of my Mesa's because of the better matching of the Line 6 cab and Spider Valve head.
Maybe I am going to give that SV Pre a try to see if it can make the original more like what I want, great tight rhythm and bouncy/tight lead.
