Softubes Vintage Amp Room was released quite some time ago for Powercore and TDM users. It took a while, but it has now found its way to native users as well. In case you didn’t know, it’s more or less an amp simulator that goes the opposite direction that other amp sims have done the last years.

What’s this?

So another amp simulator? What the hell would I need that for? Beside the fact that no developer has made a perfect one yet, the reason to look at Vintage Amp Room is that it is in fact very different from the others. Before I talk about what it is, I think it’s fairly important to tell you what it’s not.

• Vintage Amp Room is not a full-blown package with lots of stomp boxes and built-in effects.
• Vintage Amp Room does not include lots and lots of amp emulations.
• Vintage Amp Room is not nearly as heavy on the CPU as some of the competition.

Perhaps I should develop on point three a bit. By competition I mean Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Eleven and so on. This is not really “competition” though, since these are all the typical “full-blown packages” that I talk about in point one and two, and the comparison is a little off in that case.

What would you need this for then if it’s just a amp simulator on a diet? That leads me to the question of what it in fact is. Besides the very positive thing that it’s much easier on the CPU, it also has a rather unique interface. At first I wasn’t really fond of it, mostly because I found it to sometimes work in the opposite way of how my brain worked (which in itself not always work that well). The interface is basically a room with three amps and microphones. Only one amp is visible at a time and to go to another you click ‘n’ drag at the wall. To me it always felt like I needed to drag the opposite way, but that is a minor complaint as it is just something to get used to. To change the mic position you use the same click ‘n’ drag method. You can move it closer or further away, as well as changing the direction of it (you know, if you want it off axis). Depending on the amp that is on-screen at the moment you have different controls lined up at the top of the plug-in window. This leads me to…

The amps and sounds

So you have three amps to choose from. This might seem a little weak, and to be perfectly fair – it is. Still, Softube have picked three amps that work well for many styles and covers much ground with them. They don’t say which amps they emulate, but by the looks and sounds of them I would go with a Marshall head and cab (called “White”), a Fender (”Brown”) and a Vox (”Green”).

Of course the sounds are supposed to be “vintage sounding”, and they sound pretty decent too, and I have found myself reaching for it most of the time the last few weeks whenever I need a vintage tone and don’t have a real amp at hand. Me being a sucker for blues and old rock of course plays in as well. I kind of miss a reverb on the Fender amp though, it seems like it should be there. Ah yes, the controls. The Fender have a bright switch, vibrato with speed and intensity controls, volume, middle, treble and bass. The Marshall have presence, bass, middle, treble, master and pre-amp. The Vox have in its sweet vibrato channel on-off, speed, switch for vibrato or tremolo, volume, it also has a brilliant knob and a tone knob.

Conclusion

When talking about Vintage Amp Room it is important to remember that it’s not a complete package like for instance Amplitube. You don’t get a lot of effects and tons of amps. Instead you’re stuck with three nice sounding vintage emulations. The mic placement feature works well and the fact that it’s easy on the CPU compared to most other amp sims is a big plus. Vintage Amp Room is obviously not for everyone. It is for people like me who really like the sound of old blues and rock records, or for people just liking the sound of these three amps! After all, they’re in themselves timeless. Now go listen to some sound clips on the Softube website.

Softube