HEADRUSH PEDALBOARD
Turn it up to 11
Has Avid made anything like this before?
As it happens, yes, they have. The Eleven Rack was a standalone rack unit for guitar and effects processing that Avid released a few years back. It had a few issues, most notably that a floorboard and expression couldn’t be connected at the same time. These concerns have been taken on board, ahem, for this unit, and the results of their hard work are clear.
Isn’t this the same as the Eleven Rack then?
Well, unlike the Eleven Rack, there’s no bundled Pro Tools; this seems like a clear indication that this unit is primarily aimed at the gigging guitarist. In addition, it’s powered by the Eleven HD engine, which is an improvement on the original from the rack unit. Under the hood, there are some similarities, but this ships with a wide array of amps and effects that are intended to be more than adequate for the end user to create their own patches without the need to dig into third party add-ons.
How easy is it to program?
With the integrated 7" touchscreen, navigating patches, creating your own, assigning footswitches and modifying parameters is easy. There’s a slight black mark in that when paging up or down between your current active editing parameters the transitions can be a bit abrupt, but it’s a minor gripe.
How good are the effects?
The effects on the whole are pretty strong. The distortions in particular deserve a mention as they seem to preserve much of the harmonic complexity of the originals, and particularly when stacked into an alreadydirty amp sound they deliver that rich, thick sustain that characterises a real tube amp breaking up.
Do the amps sound realistic?
A common problem for modelling amps has been the ‘fizz’ associated with trying to model a saturated amplifier sound. This isn’t present even on higher-gain patches and the closer you get to a clean amp sound, the more convincing it is. All your favourites are here, as well as some high-end options like Soldano, but we found ourselves sticking to classic Marshall and Fender sounds for the most part.
Can you use it to record?
Naturally. Using a USB cable, you can record directly into your DAW and send four channels in and out as well as stereo dry and wet, meaning you can cut down on cable clutter when recording at home.