Longtermers

A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist’s longterm test reports

The more time I spend with the Atomic Amps AmpliFire, the more it strikes me that it’s only practical considerations that make modelling amps more attractive than the real thing. If you’re thinking of buying a modelling amp, you need to consider what problems it might solve for you. What do you need a modelling amp for, if anything? How easy is the device to use? And what unique qualities does it have that make it the best modeller for the job in hand?

These are the questions I’m asking right now of the AmpliFire, which at £469, sits above the entry-level modelling amps of Blackstar et al, which are mostly aimed at home and rehearsal-room use, but below the hardcore professional offerings of Kemper’s profiling amp and Fractal’s Axe-Fx II. So, first, what do I want with it? Well, I’ve taken on the AmpliFire because I do a fair bit of recording and gigging around Bristol and I hate lugging heavy amps in and out of my loft studio space. I’m worried that one of these days I’m going to drop my 30kg Dr Z as I’m carrying it up the ladder and it’s going to smash through the whole house like a wrecking ball and come to rest on a heap of rubble in the downstairs lounge. As well as avoiding that scenario, I need a modelling device that sounds good enough to feature on pro recordings.

With those points in mind, the AmpliFire’s small form-factor is a win. At 215mm in width and less than 1.3 kg, you can carry it in your gigbag or mount it on a pedalboard. Kudos to the AmpliFire for the robust metal enclosure and for the footswitch-operated format that lets you use it like a stompbox. That gives the unit an edge of gig-ready practicality that gives it extra versatility.

So let’s get stuck into some sounds. I’ve got a Hendrix tribute gig coming up next March at the Bristol Jazz & Blues festival, where I’ll be sharing a stage with Neville Marten of Guitar Techniques and Mick Taylor of That Pedal Show. While I’ll probably go with gnarly old analogue gear for that one, I could use some authentic Jimi sounds to practise with in the meantime. In this role, the AmpliFire can sit on my desktop ready for jamming through nearfield monitors.

Unsurprisingly, I’m going to opt for the AmpliFire’s Studio Devil-designed ‘Plexi’ model for this job. You can select which type of cabinet and effects, from reverb to tape delay, that you want to go with your amp – and here is where things get a little clunky. The AmpliFire has a small, backlit LCD screen: a narrow ‘window’ through which all of the device’s functions must be viewed. You depress the Preset knob to begin editing. Click it once and you are into amp models, press it again and you’re into cabs, then boost effects, modulation and so on.You use the arrow keys underneath the screen to browse through the various tweakable bits of each amp, cab, and effect, and you twist the Preset knob to alter pertinent values, such as effect level, delay time and what have you.

It’s not so much that this system is bad, as it’s perfectly usable, but it feels a bit fiddly and ‘1990s’ compared to, say, the Helix’s intuitive, BMW iDrive-inspired navigation or Marshall’s simple Gateway app that lets you edit the CODE amps from your phone. Changes take a couple of seconds to save, too. Atomic Amps isn’t as big as those companies, of course, so, to an extent, you want to let it off the hook for not having the same R&D power to develop ultra-slick interfaces. All the same, it’s a passmark but no distinction for the AmpliFire in this particular area. On the plus side, the sounds I’m getting are chunky and detailed. Jamming through Jimi’s Manic Depression, the AmpliFire captures the sizzle of Hendrix’s cranked fuzz-and-Marshall tone.

As a slightly David-and-Goliath comparison, I then get out a Line 6 Helix, a unit that costs £742 more than the AmpliFire, to perform a quick A/B test. Interesting: the Plexi-and-Fuzz sounds I set up on the Helix have more texture and nuance, but there’s not an absolutely yawning gulf in quality between them and the AmpliFire, which is considerably cheaper and smaller than the Helix. More testing is clearly in order, so next time I’m going to look at updating the AmpliFire with the latest model upgrades released by Atomic and also using it in a role for which it is uniquely suited – with cabinet and power-amp modelling disabled running into a real amp to serve as a colourising preamp and effects unit. So far, though, it’s proved a potent little partner.

“What do you need a modelling amp for, if anything? How easy is the device to use?”