Post by reverendtk on Sept 30, 2015 12:54:29 GMT -7
I brought the Z-Lux home last night, got it pugged in and "hooked up". One word WOW!!!!!!
Unfortunately I didn't have more than about 2 hours of playing time last night due to other obligations. But after all, this is just a first impressions post so that's what I'll give you. Let me also say that I am not a regular gigging guitar player. I do play out once in a while (ie: Blues jams, jamming with friends and an occasional summer party in the country) but the majority of my playing is in my basement.
I just know what sounds good to me.
Clean
It didn't take long to find a clean tone I liked. Master and volume at 9:00. I started with treble, bass and mids all at 12:00 and started dialing from there. I ended up with treble at about 4:00, bass at 2:00 and mid at 12:00. Really nice clean. This was using my Reverend Buckshot in the neck and middle position. (If you are not familiar with this guitar, it has a tele style bridge pu and filtertron type neck pickup. The middle position on this guitar is pure Heaven.) Really nice highs and very stable, smooth bass. The neck pickup in this setting was twang with a punch (probably having to do more with reverends higher output of their tele style pickup.)
Dirty
From there I decided to get a little dirty with my Les Paul. Volume at about 3:00, Master at about 8:30. Left the EQ settings the same. One of the most convincing vintage Billy Gibbons tones I have ever been able to find on an amp. This was middle and bridge postions on my guitar.
Reverb
Much more exploring to do here but seems to be quite a bit of background hum when I turned the Reverb on (Maybe a tube problem, maybe a problem with my LP, not sure yet but will be working on it.) Other than the hum, this reverb is more than capable of doing surf duty. I don't think the reverb goes as deep as a Super Reverb but gets pretty damned close.
Tremolo
This is my first amp with tremolo, in fact, I have never even owned a tremolo pedal. The one question I kept asking myself while playing with the Tremolo was "Why oh why have I not owned a tremolo amp or pedal before?" I don't know a lot about using this feature but it definitely started added some adrenaline to my creativity. Beautiful feature.
Boost Switch
Not my favorite feature of this amp. Maybe it will be when I have more time to play with settings but for right now it just adds way too much midrange. I do like the boost in volume though. I will try it with the mids way down and see what happens then.
Pedals
Amazing. I thought my Ghia was a good pedal amp. This is a GREAT pedal amp. I absolutely love my BB Preamp with the Z-Lux in every setting on the pedal that I tried. I know this is kind of sacrilegious to most Z-Players but for those of you that think this amp won't play metal, dime the volume, turn mid all the way down and turn on a Fulltone OCD with Gain about 3/4. It doesn't have all of the low end punch and grind of say a Mesa TR, Genz Benz El Diablo or some of the modern Marshalls but it is enough to satisfy that occasional urge.
More to come as I have more time to paly around.
I have the feeling that my Ghia is gonna get lonely. I will have to remember to give it some love here and there.
More to come.
RTK