Logic 9 Review – PedalBoard/Amp Designer

By Paul Dakeyne

August 19, 2009 | Posted in Music Technology

Bringing the current run in this Logic 9 review mini-series to a close, it’s time for some fun! Enter two new guitar related effects plug-ins: PedalBoard and Amp Designer. Snapping firmly at the heels of such classics like Native Instruments Guitar Rig, these new plugs are funky, fun, easy to use and sonically satisfying. Of course they’re based on well known and popular stomp boxes, amp heads and cabinets, but the usage is most definitely not restricted to just processing guitars- no Sir’ee!

PedalBoard looks and sounds great.. You can pick from a virtual crate of stomp boxes, and with mouse hover explanations of their attributes, it’s an instant help flag to choose your pedal of choice. By just dragging them into the signal path area, it’s easy to create a daisy chained sequence in a customised ‘board’, especially as these can be routed to two different ‘line-in’s on the virtual level/pan mixer, so further adding to the stereo effect imagery. Pedals can be added, removed, re-routed and re-ordered to make a visual, colourful and sonically rewarding result.

Amp Designer carries on the guitar based theme but this time concentrating on Logic’s selection of ‘Pure’ amps and ‘Hybrid’ models. Once selected, a preset can be made more bespoke with 3 interchangeable options: ‘Model’, ‘Amp’ and ‘Cabinet’ – ultimately leading to a pretty huge amount of mix ‘n match combinations.

I ran the drum track from the Logic 9 demo dvd of Lily Allen’s ‘The Fear’ track through a splendid little mixture of models and combi’s and turned this pop/electro kinda loop.. fear drums-normal – PLAY

into this dangerous sounding, industrial vibe.. fear drums-crunched – PLAY

For those who are Guitar savvy and have a heritage of expertise with the amps, cabs and pedals modeled here, I’m sure there will be some serious ‘classic’ axe recreations goin’ down here, and I daren’t even hazard a guess at how useful these two new Logic plug ins will be for them.

For those of us not in that lucky position but willing to experiment with the sounds at this side of the fence, I’d say just dive in, wack anything through them, play away and have some fun!

image source: www.tripfoto.com

About Paul Dakeyne

Paul Dakeyne has written 589 post in this blog.

Paul Dakeyne is a DJ/Producer who has dedicated the past two decades of his life to dance music production and DJ'ing. For six years, he toured globally for the world famous Ministry of Sound and has played DJ sets for the likes of U2 and for the legendary, Kraftwerk, Although remixing around 250 records in his career, as an artist in his own right, Paul landed one of dance music's seminal crossover moments with his "18 Strings' monster hit by Tinman - scoring a UK top ten in 1994. He also co-wrote and produced the music for BBC's Watchdog and Crimewatch when they were both revamped in 2001 and '06 respectively. His other career highlights have included an A&R stint for Mercury Records, lecturing in 'DJ culture and music technology' and creating mash-up mixes for Radio 1's, Chris Moyles. Paul joined the DV group in 2003 leading to his role as blog and feature author here at the DV Mag.

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Tags: Amp Designer, guitar amp, Logic 9, Pedal, PedalBoard, stomp box

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