Episode Transcript
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Steve (00:00):
Hey, steve here, thank
you so much for joining me.
Today we're going to be talkingabout the Synergy Modular
Amplifier.
This is what I've been usingfor the last couple of years and
I am absolutely blown away byit.
And I, again, I'm not trying tosell you this, I just want you
to understand how cool it is.
So, for someone like me who haslived in the tube amp, solid
(00:23):
state amp realm my entire life,playing in bands, different
kinds of things like that, andthen you know the, the digital
realm came along, so now we haveaxe effects and kemper and
things like that.
Um, there's all a host ofdifferent things.
While I love the digital stufffor recording in my studio very
(00:45):
quickly and easily, um, you know, maybe playing with a
particular band where I don'treally need a full amplifier,
there's a lot of differentsituations here where you may or
may not.
Do you know, a tube versusdigital or a regular amplifier
versus digital, and there'sactually, um, another podcast
that talks all about that, and Idon't want to focus on that.
(01:06):
What I'm saying is, if you dolive in the tube amp realm, okay
, that's what you like forwhatever.
Maybe it's for live performance, maybe it's for recording,
whatever it is, whatever yourpurposes are, the Synergy
modular amp system.
What it is is basically you buya power amp of Synergies and
(01:26):
then you buy modular, swappablepreamps.
So what's super cool is, let'ssay, I wanted to own, you know,
a Fender-style amplifier, but Idon't have the room for it or I
can't afford it, or a whole hostof you know, I like the sound
of it, but it's just notsomething practical that I would
go out and spend a large amountof money doing.
(01:49):
You know, to get a Fender Twinor you know, a Blackface or
something like that, whatever itmight be.
And then I like a Mesa Boogieand I like a Friedman and I,
like you know, a JCM800 and a DrZ amp.
I mean all these different amps.
First of all, I can't afford tobuy all these amps.
Second of all, I don't haveroom for them all.
And third, what am I going todo?
(02:11):
I mean, if I decided to playout live, I'm not going to bring
five of these things with me.
I would bring one of them withme, right?
Well, what's cool about thisSynergy amp system is you buy
the box which we'll call thepower amp, and then the preamps
are just literal preamps made bythe companies that make these
(02:32):
themselves, be it Bogner orFriedman or Dr Z or PV or
whatever.
These are the actual schematicsof the preamp, are used to
create the preamps and they'reliterally swappable.
There's these two little screwsand you unscrew it and you pop
it out and you put a differentpreamp into that power amp,
(02:55):
which is amazing to me.
So I was first turned on tothis.
To be honest, the history ofthis technology goes back to
Randallall and it may even goback further, but that's what I
know it has.
Uh, back in, this would havebeen gosh, in the 90s or maybe
the 2000s, early 2000s,something like that.
Again, I don't know all thehistory of this.
I just remember our local, uhguitar store was selling this.
(03:18):
You could you could put in upto four modules into one head.
I remember trying it out, but Ithink I didn't really understand
the technology and maybeeverything wasn't quite as
dialed in as it is now.
Of course, back then you knowthe companies weren't all on
board like they are now.
So you know they were more likeemulations of said preamps.
(03:41):
But again, I think I probablyjust wasn't as on board the
train, if you will, of thetechnology when I tried it out.
So you know, I stayed with myusual single amps, that sort of
thing.
Well then, a few years ago, Isaw Steve Vai play live and he
was using this Synergy ampsystem.
He has his own preamp and I waslike, oh my god, this is just
(04:04):
the coolest thing ever.
So I started investigating this, and one of the first modules
that I wound up with was theSteve Vai.
Now, to be completely honestwith you, the Steve Vai module
was not.
It wasn't as compatible with meas I thought it would be, but
it did get me going down thisrabbit hole of Synergy products,
finding out that this wholething, the Synergy amp system,
(04:29):
is made by a company calledBoutique Amp Distribution, which
is basically a bunch of ampmanufacturers like Dave Friedman
own this company or are part ofthis company, and so they're
all working together.
And so you've got this preampor, excuse me, this power amp
and the power.
There's different kinds of poweramps.
You can get like rack mountable, and then you've got like
(04:51):
they've just come out with thenew 20 watt power head, okay,
and this thing has impulseresponses built into it, but it
also has software that you canconnect to it and you can put in
your own impulse responses soyou can run a tube preamp with
the schematics of you know saidpreamp, whatever it is, like a
(05:13):
6505 or something like that, ora B Deluxe by Friedman, or again
a Z-Rec or whatever it might be, whatever, whatever it is you
like that they offer, of course.
So you could run that preampinto the head and now you've got
20 watts of tube power alongwith the, the tube preamp, and
then you can run direct out ofthat head into a PA, all that
(05:36):
kind of stuff.
You don't have to mic it rightand you can actually change the
impulse responses on it as wellto whatever it is that you like
best.
For maybe the situation right,I'm playing in a metal band, so
I'm using the Mesa Boogie preamp, the module, or maybe I'm using
one of the Bogner modules, ormaybe I'm using the 6505, you
(06:00):
know, I mean again, there's allkinds of different ones that I
could, I could be using, but I'min this metal band and so
instead of using the Fendermodule I'm which wouldn't make
any sense I'm using theappropriate module.
So I just swap it out, go tothe gig, play this metal show.
I'm good to go.
The Synergy 20 water also has abuilt-in clean channel.
(06:20):
So even though you're onlyputting one module in there, it
does have a clean channel builtinto it.
So there's a three-channelpedal board that comes with it,
okay, or a foot switch.
So you've got clean and you'vegot the two that would control
the module.
Now this is where it gets.
Really cool too is every moduleusually has two channels.
So you can set up one channelto be a little bit crunchier or
(06:43):
whatever, and then one channelto be your lead channel.
And all of the newer modulesall come with independent you
know, eq and all that stuffwhere the earlier modules, when
they first started coming outwith these, they shared EQs and
all that sort of thing.
So really all you do is maybechange the amount of distortion
on a do is maybe change theamount of distortion on a
channel or maybe just the volumeof that channel.
(07:05):
Well, it isn't like thatanymore.
Now they're two very completeindependent channels.
So you could set one to beclean, which isn't really
necessary because it's builtinto the 20 watt head, but you
could do that or you could setit up to be crunch and then your
other one to be more heavy, oryou could set up your first
(07:26):
channel to be heavy and yourother one to be a little bit
louder, with lead or whatever itis.
However it is, you want to doit, but they're independent
channels.
So you wind up in this little 20watt which, if you're listening
to this, you can't see itanyway, but behind me is this 20
water.
I can have three channels.
So I'll run something that'sfairly versatile.
Versatile like right now.
I've got the be deluxe in there, which has the, the be and the
(07:51):
bb built into it, so there'sfree dave friedman actually
created like two differentamplifiers that are available
within this one module, so it'ssuper cool and it covers a huge
range of tones for me to use.
So I've got my clean channel,which comes with the it's built
into the head itself and thenI've got kind of a rock channel
(08:14):
and then a bit more of a leadchannel, and that's what I run
most of the time.
So it's just very expansive,the things that you could do
with this.
And I don't have't have toagain own all of these big
independent amps.
I could just own the preamp andswap it out for the particular
band that I'm gonna be playingwith and what preamp kind of
(08:34):
best, what module kind of bestfits that situation?
Now again, if you're listeningto this you can't see it, but
right underneath that I have gotthe 50 watt head.
Okay, so on the top I've gotthe new 20-watt-er and on the
bottom I've got the 50-watt-head.
Now the 50-watt-head actuallytakes two modules, which is
super cool.
So the 50-watt-head does nothave a clean channel built into
(08:57):
it, but it does take two modules.
So, for instance, I'll run theFender module for more of my
Jimi Hendrix-y kinds of stuff,so that module will run clean
and it'll run kind of the bluesycrunchy stuff that I want to do
.
And then I've got the secondavailable space for the second
module and again I'll put in theFriedman or the Soldano or the
(09:22):
Uberschall, the BognerUberschall or whatever it is
that I want.
I can put that in there.
And that 50 watt head now hasfour channels two channels for
the first module, two channelsfor the second module, because
again there's two channels builtinto each one of these modules,
so I can get a variety ofsounds.
Now if I'm playing in my metalband and I don't need 50 watts,
(09:42):
I could use the 20 water andonly one module and I'm good to
go.
If I'm playing a little bitbigger show where I need more
versatility in my tone, I canbring the 50 watt and run the
two different modules, twovastly different modules.
Whatever it is that I want todo Now with that 50 watt head,
it also has a DI out that youcan run, but it doesn't have
(10:03):
different impulse responses.
It doesn't have that option,Okay, it just has the tone that
comes out of it.
So you know, like a lot ofguitar players they're most of
the time I'm probably miking myamplifier.
That's what I like to do, youknow, even if I have this DI out
option, but if I'm playing agig where you know maybe it's
(10:23):
it's not as big a gig and Idon't need to mic and we're not
really loud and all that kind ofstuff, I'll run the DI out of
the back and it's perfectly fineand that'll go to the sound guy
and he can do whatever and I'mgood to go on stage Very quick,
no microphone needed.
So both of those heads havethat.
Now, as I said, there's rackmountable options as well.
(10:44):
That then would need someelement of power.
You'd have to run some sort ofpower amp with them, or you can
run them as a desktop settingright, where maybe what you do
is you don't need power, youjust want to run out of that
into your audio interface andthat's how you're going to run
your sounds.
Now, when you start doing that,you're getting a little bit
(11:07):
closer to the realm of digitalproducts, because that's really
what you're doing.
That you're getting a littlebit closer to the realm of
digital products, because that'sreally what you're doing, right
.
You're just running this likethey call it SYN.
Synergy is spelledS-Y-N-E-R-G-Y, so they call it a
SYN1 or a SYN2.
Now, these things are just rackmountable components that don't
have power.
They have preamp, obviously,because that's the module, but
(11:28):
you could run that out directlyinto your audio interface and
you could run it very similar toa Kemper or something like that
.
Okay, now, I don't do a lot ofthat, because what I do is I
just run the head, whether it'sthe 50 watt or the 20 watt and
what I do, not to confuse you,but I'll run that into what's
called a captor X by two notes.
(11:49):
And when I run it into thecaptor X, now I'm in my studio.
Right, I'm not on stage, I'm inmy studio but I'm still running
my stage setup, running mystage pedals, running my stage
(12:12):
volume, everything is exactlythe same.
I just power it down with thecaptor x so it's not loud for me
, and then I can run out of thatcaptor x right into my audio
interface.
So what I love about my setupis even when I'm sitting here in
my studio talking to you, likeI am right now, I'm literally
running my live, but I just haveit powered down so it's not so
(12:33):
frigging loud right Now.
Again, it doesn't have to beloud, you know, you don't have
to turn them up, you can keepthem down.
But what I'm saying is what Ilove about the Synergy is it
keeps me in the tube realm.
It gives me that compression oftubes in the tube realm.
It gives me that compression oftubes.
It gives me the versatility ofall of these different
amplifiers by offering medifferent preamp modules that I
(12:54):
can purchase.
You see, so I don't have topurchase the amp itself and then
haul different amps, likeliterally, I could take a
Friedman and a Fender or aPeavey and a Mesa Boogie or
whatever it is I want, andinstead of bringing two amps, I
just bring those modules, putthem in my 50 watt head and boom
, I take that head to the showand I've got both those sounds
(13:20):
with me available no matterwhere I go.
Okay, it's just, it's soversatile.
So again, it's worth checkingout.
If you're an amplifier personand you really love the
versatility of amps, this isjust really great because you
know it keeps me out of thedigital realm.
I love the digital realm forrecording in my studio, but I
struggle with the digital realmon stage and again, everybody's
(13:41):
different.
I'm not saying it's bad, I'mnot.
I own a Kemper.
I've got one sitting right tothe side of me here, okay, but I
don't ever take it to a showanymore.
I just don't.
The synergy goes with meeverywhere I go.
Now, if I have a fly, I've gotto fly somewhere and play.
That's a completely amplifierkind of person.
I like that sound and this wayI've just got the availability
and the versatility of beingable to swap out those.
(14:13):
So please, please, please.
If this sounds interesting toyou, you'd be, you'd be
surprised at just how much stuffthey have available and the fun
of you know, simply swappingout a preamp to kind of
re-inspire you and motivate you.
You've been using the samesound over and over and over and
you pull out that swap in adifferent preamp and you go oh
(14:34):
my God, this is great, it's soworth checking out.
So, synergy, you're gonna wannalook them up, okay.