OK, first impressions:
A: Its louder than I expected. You could practice with a drummer with this.
B: It has a wattage control dial on the back: its quite possible to make full volume more like TV volume. It has little discernable effect on the tone (if anything it thins it out a bit and emphasises high mids).
C: It has TOO MANY metal options. Ones that have stood out so far:
1: Modern. Cool, heavy, but not too in your face rhythm and quite a smooth lead sound. Its metal, but not line 6 "insane" setting, utterly unusably so. So far I think I'll be going to this the most.
2: Fluid. I was actually quite suprised that this does pretty much what it says on the tin: it brings out mids to emphasis legato, and it does a pretty good job of it. Really nice for tapping (something I almost never do)
3: Damaged: this sounds rather a lot like Rectumfrier setting on a cube. Its more scooped, you have to really fight to add mids and its rather unrewarding to do so, and the highs are pretty fizzy. Its not as thick and throaty as the cubes, but is less fizzy and more articulate.
D: The cleans SUCK. Royally. Well, IMO. I like a bright glassy clean, and these cleans are dull as dishwater. Cube wins for cleans hands down (which is odd, because normal valvetronix have better cleans, I think, than cubes).
E: On a few seconds play I found some of settings to be useless and/or obnoxious: molten, funked and buzzsaw come to mind.
F: Its less intuitive and incorporates such unfortunate modernisms of amp/amp sim technology as writing settings to a channel things that look suspiciously like 'programming'. One for the cube: its all there at the turn of a dial or two.
G: There may be a way, but I dont think you can combine effects. I couldnt give a $%&#, because I dont use them, but the cube has 2 seperate effects banks so you can have some limited mixing. This has more of them, but theyre all on one dial and I dont see how you can use more than one at a time.
H: Its got an OK bluesy-rocky breakup (if you can find it!)
On the whole, its addresses what I wanted if for pretty well, which is a metal sound that can deliver some heavy, clear rhythm and not be fizzy on leads. The cube can do that to a degree too, on its 'metal' setting, but the rythm sound on that is pretty dull.
There are rather a lot of sounds in it, and there may well be too many aimed at gain levels above 'JCM800'. It does do the br00talz well, but I'd have liked a setting that has the guts and thickness of 'damaged' but the clarity of 'modern'. I may find it, I havent had long to play with it.....but then, the cube doesnt have that either (after a couple of years with the cube, you can take that to the bank)
Compared to the tonelab; metal sounds fall out of it much more easily, but its far, far, far less versatile than the TL. The truth is in the recording on this one. I'll report back if and when I try that.
Overall the cube and VTXL are pretty similar in voicing, but the metal sounds of the XL are better, it can be used in band practice settting and at home, but at the cost of versatility and cleans (its versatile within the genre of metal, which may float your boat if you want lots of tones, but if youre like me and just use maybe 3 certain kinds 99% of the time, its not so great).
Hope this helped.
