Wanting to put my new gear (a Mesa Mini-Recto and Jet City attenuator) to work immediately in my studio I decided to experiment with some recording solutions.
These are more or less speaker sims combined with a DI box. They can plug into pedals or the preamp output without a load, or in series with the speakers/attenuator.
I tried three places for the simulators - on the output of the preamp, on the line output of the attenuator, and in between the amp and the attenuator. By far the best of these was in between the amp and the attenuator. They all sounded ok, but the preamp out just didn't have the balls provided by the power tubes. The output of the attenuator sounded a little dark.
Firstly I got a cheap and cheerful Behringer GI100. It comes in a pretty red colour and seems well made. Actually it did a great job, considering it cost £20 secondhand. The speaker sim is active, requiring phantom power. That was no problem what so ever. The sound of the sim was good, but I found the mid range sounded a little "plastic". I needed to apply some parametric EQ on the desk, to scoop the mids just a smidgen at around 900Hz.
Seeing the Palmer PDI-03 Joe Bonamassa had more alot controls to adjust the sound, and judging by the Palmer reputation I decided to immediately upgrade. I got a bit of a deal and paid £100 for the Palmer. It is a passive unit requiring no phantom power. I would say it sounds twice as good as the Behringer, rather than five times as good. There is a deep switch for controlling the bass. The effect is quite subtle and works on the very low end. In fact all the positions sounded good, I marginally preferred the deepest setting. There is also a control for brightness with three settings. The bright setting is surely bright, too much for me really, the mellow setting lost too much high end, it might be good for jazzy cleans possibly, but the only useful setting in my opinion was the normal mode. Finally there is a "JB" switch, which is a mid boost. The middle option for this provides a big kick in the upper mids, it does sound good, but its a little too much for me. The highest option is only a little more of a mid boost and is scarcely worth having. I would make the middle option the highest, and add an intermediate setting. After much testing in the end I decided to leave the JB switch in the off position.
I see Palmer also sells a PDI-09 which only has the brightness switch for about £60. Considering my testing of the Joe Bonamassa unit, it looks like a decent option. The deep switch is a nice thing to have, but I could live without it for the extra £40 since its a more subtle control.
Perhaps the extra controls will be useful in a live situation, I only wish the JB switch was less powerful.
