What's up? And welcome to Ola Testing S***.
Today I'm trying out the new John Petrucci plugin from Neural DSP
To be completely honest, I was fairly surprised when I heard
That John Petrucci had been working with Neural DSP for a plugin, but...
It makes total sense, I mean...
John Petrucci is a tone God
Why wouldn't he have a plugin?
It looks like this, and immediately you can see
There's no Mesa to be found
This is probably just, you know, based off his amplifiers
Whatever, and then... you know, they couldn't really use the name 'Mesa'
It comes with 4 different amplifiers, you have this acoustic one
That is perfect for piezo guitars
This guitar right here, my Ernie Ball Music Man has piezo in it
So it's perfect
Then it has a clean channel amplifier, a rhythm tone amplifier
And a lead amplifier
The cabinet section consists of John's personal cabinets
So they modeled his own cabinets with 6 different microphones
And never-seen-before...
At least I haven't seen it in a Neural DSP plugin
But they also added room microphones
So you can add a little bit of room to the tone, which I think is great
Because sometimes...
You know, hearing an impulse response just straight in, it's...
It's... well...
Basically it's like having your ear towards a cabinet and speaker
Which is not necessarily the most enjoyable sound in the world
Having a room tone, that helps a little bit
At least if you're just sitting and playing by yourself
Maybe not in a mix, but when you're sitting just to get a little bit extra excitement
You have a wah pedal, a compressor, you have a bunch of different...
...pre-pedals, an overdrive, phaser, chorus, flanger
Flanger
You have a post-EQ section
You also have a volume pedal
And last but not least, you also have chorus, delay and reverb in post
And just going through the different sections here
Watching everything that's included
You can feel that this is a very complete package of shit
That you get in this plugin, so that's cool
So we're gonna head straight into it, right now I'm on the rhythm amplifier and...
This is a preset I made called 'Pulled Me Over'
So as you can hear right now, there's something happening
Why isn't the guitar tone in the center?
Well, you have a doubler right here, so check this out
So this is the tone without this doubler happening
Just like any other plugin, you listen to a guitar track, it's usually in the center
Nothing special, it's not stereo
But since you have a doubler, you can basically...
...pull it apart a little bit, make it a little bit more exciting
Not necessarily anything I would use in a mix
But just for sitting and practicing guitar, you know?
Then you have the typical Neural DSP gate right here
And also something that's new to a Neural DSP plugin
is the 'Transpose' section right here, check this out
Basically a pitch-shifter, how cool is that?
So, this guitar is tuned to standard E
And I can transpose it down to standard D if I want to
I mean, there's a shit-ton of gain in this thing, check this out
I have something called 'Bite' engaged
So, without it it's...
A little flubbier
You press 'Bite'
Gives you more bite basically
Then you have something called 'Tight'
So, at zero 'Tight'
Not very tight
Pretty f***ing tight, and then we bite
A little too much maybe, we can back off on the Tight and the Gain a little bit
Reminds me a little bit of the tightness of a Mark II C+ amplifier
Uh... it sounds great, man
But even though if you think this is not enough gain
You still have an overdrive here you can...
...f***ing go balls out
You don't need that
In the cabinet section you have 6 different microphones to choose from
And just like the traditional Neural DSP
Move it around a little bit
But they have added this room microphone right here, so...
Can I shut off the...
So if I turn down the mic level, the direct mic level
We should only have room tone, OK
OK
So you can mix that in with your microphone signal, so...
OK, let's transpose that and see if that works
Works really good, man, I mean, I can feel the latency from Logic and all, but...
I mean, the 'Transpose' doesn't really affect that much
Alright, let's check out the acoustic amplifier, we have this...
There it is, man
Sounds good
Then we have the clean channel right here
Which I've added a fair bit of delay and reverb to, check this out
Baby...
This is a baby-making sound right here
Alright, let's try out the pre-effects here, we have a phaser
Beautiful
OK, let's try the chorus
That's nice, man, I like that shimmer
There's a couple of different things on the reverb and the delay where you can...
You know, make it even spacier, so...
Check out this 'Crystal' here
Space babies
I made a lead tone
That has a phaser engaged
So, the phaser works in front of the amplifier
For the same lead preset here, I managed to...
...assign my MIDI pedals, so I can control the wah
So I'm using a MIDI pedal on the floor right here
Alright, I need to try something lower-tuned than this
How does it fare on a 7-string?
That's what we wonder today
OK, let's check it out
OK, f*** me in my ass
OK, that's good, man
OK, shit
Alright, I'm gonna do one last thing, I'm gonna load in my own impulse response
Let's go with The One right here, OK?
F***
Do you hear that?
Ooh shit
There you go, that's the Neural DSP John Petrucci plugin for you right there
Holy f***
I think so far this is probably the most complete Archetype plugin from Neural DSP
It's just fully-packed with everything you would need in a plugin, really
And I mean, if you're into John Petrucci and Dream Theater, I think it sounds very similar
The amplifiers sound really nice
But I think my favorite part about this plugin is the doubler, actually
Because it makes it a lot more exciting for just sitting and playing other than this
You know, if I make a demo of this
It sounds great, but this...
Gives it a little bit more depth, and I don't know
It just doesn't sound as in your face
And it's a lot more fun to just sit around and play with
Hope you enjoyed this video
If you liked it, maybe consider subscribing to my channel
And I'll see you guys next time, thank you for watching