What's up everyone? And welcome to my short little demo
of the new Josh Middleton plugin from STL.
Josh Middleton is the guitar player for the bands Sylosis and also Architects.
And he's an insane riff god.
If you wanna hear riffs for days,
just go check out Sylosis, man, holy shit.
So many good standard E riffs right there.
He's a riff god.
He finally has his own plugin from STL.
Josh sent me a message on Instagram asking me to demo this plugin.
And here I am, hello.
So, heading straight into it.
I think that brands have finally kind of decided
what a good user interface is for an amplifier plugin.
Because they all look like this now.
Basically, this is what Neural DSP has been doing for a long time.
You see the amplifier head,
simple layout, not like, you know, Amplitube.
You have like so many parameters and different small little icons and shit.
Just keep it simple.
This layout right here is being kept very simple.
We have the amplifier head with the knobs and all that.
That's nice, that's a nice touch.
You have the different sections down here that you can click.
Tuner, stompboxes.
There's a cabinet section, effects, midi
so you can control midi, if you wanna do that.
If you ever wanna use this live, for instance, someday.
Maybe in the future, not too many people are doing it now.
But in the future, guys.
But I noticed you also have something here
called the 'Input Level Listener'.
One, select your pickup type... OK.
Two, set your guitar volume potentiometer at max.
Yes.
Three, adjust your soundcard input level to peak around -6 dB.
Play a few chords.
The software will automatically adjust the input level for best performance, OK.
So, here you go, it basically optimizes your input.
See?
So, I know I have a medium output pickup for instance, so...
Medium output pickup, -2.9 dB for me.
It might be my awesome hard-picking hand too.
You have to lower the gain a little bit, oh Ola.
Chill with the downpicking now, won't ya?
No.
So, basically it adjusts the input sensitivity
based on your playing and pickups, which is cool.
Alright, so the big question is
how many amplifiers does this plugin have?
It has three of them, it has the 5150 Block Letter amplifier,
a Peavey Triple XXX, that's cool.
And also a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Multi-Watt, OK.
So we have a Peavey Triple XXX in there.
That's cool.
I really like this amplifier.
It's a really underrated amplifier, so that's cool to see it in here.
Alright, let's check out the different presets.
We have Amp 1 Rhythm, and a lot of Rhythms.
And then you have a couple of cleans and leads, so...
Let's just go from the beginning.
The Block Letter 5150.
OK.
I'm sorry, I'm always playing the open D chord.
Let me play the D minor.
OK.
There's also mono to stereo.
OK.
I think the difference between these are basically the cabinets.
That's what I hear, at least.
That the impulse responses are shifting
while we're using the same amplifier.
So basically ten different rhythm tones of the first amplifier.
That sounds good, man.
OK, amplifier 2.
Very cool, sounds good, man.
A little flubbier-sounding, the Dual Rectifier.
I mean, that makes sense.
OK.
Clean, OK.
OK.
Clean 2.
Why is it mono routing?
There it is.
OK, so in between every preset it's just switching it to mono routing, so...
OK, that works.
See? It changes to mono, OK.
A little bug, maybe.
I think the routing section should be non-dependent on the preset.
But as I'm changing the preset, it switches to mono again.
So, a little bug, hello?
High Octave Lead.
Oh no, it's mono again.
There it is, listen to that.
Oh, sour notes everyday, man.
Something I hear when I'm playing through these presets
is that when Josh set it all up and made these presets,
they sound like they're incredibly mix-ready.
You know, they don't really stick out anywhere.
Like, even the highs or the lows.
They're really, like, very well-balanced.
The whole plugin feels balanced, in a way.
And I think that's the point.
He wants to have something where he can just, you know,
throw this plugin on a right and left guitar,
get a kickass room going, you know, accompanied by a bass
and you know, just get a--
It's been set up for the home mixing guy, basically.
Just giving you, you know, mixed tones.
Between the three amplifiers, I think I like the 5150 the most.
And all these presets are basically really good starting points
for a mixed tone, in my opinion.
Alright, let's check out the cabinet section.
This is where the magic happens, OK?
Cabinets are basically 80% of the tone, in my opinion.
So you have two different impulse responses here.
Two different speakers and microphones that you can blend.
Listen to that.
A bunch of different things like this.
OK, angle, that's cool, look.
It's angling.
Distance.
How about this one? Hello.
Oh, it's linked, maybe.
Yes, so you can later link them or just go like this.
Very cool.
I guess you can also use your own impulse response.
So, let's load in my own impulse response.
OK.
Let's adjust the settings a little bit.
Oh, shit.
And it instantly sounds like Ola.
Oh.
Oh, so these three knobs
also affect the impulse response.
I kinda don't want that.
You know?
OK, let's put them like this.
That should be it, right?
I think this should be it.
OK, let me just for the sake of it, I wanna try this.
OK, let's see if this works.
If I load in another one of my presets.
Let's try this one, for instance.
And then you can blend between your own--
So you can load in two impulse responses and blend between them.
That's cool.
Effects, reverb.
Reverb and delay, it's quite standard.
Pitch.
Oh, so an octave plus and octave minus, so you can...
So it's an added pitch, if you want.
And then you have a compressor for cleans and leads, I guess.
So there you go, my short little demo.
Was it short? Maybe not.
In conclusion, the rhythm guitar tones in this plugin
are really really great.
As I said before, you can hear that they were being made in a way
that they would, like, just fit your mix immediately.
So, very mix-ready preset tones here from Josh.
I would imagine that you would get this for the amplifiers alone,
The 5150 sounds great, the Triple XXX sounds great.
The Dual Rectifier, it's not perfect.
But then again, I already have like a million Rectifier plugins already, so...
But the 5150 and the Triple XXX are really cool.
I think when they designed this,
they made it to be a rhythm guitar plugin and nothing else.
So the rest are basically just bonuses in this.
And I think it sounds really good for what it does.
There you go, my short little demo of the Josh Middleton plugin.
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Thank you so much for watching, see you next time.