I spoke with Mr. Scuffham himself after the release of the last S-Gear and suggested an E.Q. prior to the power section in order to tighten up the sound and whaddya know, HE DID IT! There is now a 5 band EQ (ala mesa boogie) after the preamp before the power amp to tame the wads of overbass that tube emulations and tubes can bring at high gain.

Download the demo if you haven't tried it. Still the best clean/semi clean tones I've ever found.
MAC and WINDOWS.

http://www.scuffhamamps.com/download/s-gear

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Requested a second demo chance and they sent me a code that lets me demo for 7 days. I hated it 3 years ago, curious of the changes now

Any preset/amp etc. advice for cleans?

Start with the preset clean tones and then tweak from there! That's what I do Let us know what you think!

Todd

I feel confident now about it as spent some time tweaking and comparing to the stuff I have.

The good; Mr. Scuffham does have the golden ears unlike many other brands the amps don't sound alike or similar. What I liked most is they are sounding upfront, no nasally fake depth to them and still sounding good/balanced. I liked the mesa, fender (gain down) and park (brings memories) most but others are cool too, probably just not my thing. The park reacted to my tube screamer very real.

That eq you requested not only sounds but feels similar too the real thing when tweaking the simplicity overall is good, has a professional feel when working.

The bad; There is this plasticy overall high-end response thats similar to medicare processors. Bothered me most years ago and its still there (reason I ditched amplitube too). I suspect bad adjusted (probably linearphase) upsampling, checked the forum and its indeed upsampled 8x default and 4x in economy mode.

working 96khz in economy mode+ different ir programs helps a lot. I noticed on the forum there is a big nebula thread, I have that program too and its a life saver in such situations. But normal ir's also work, noticed from that forum ownhammer has freeware irs from his site and when tested they worked well too (though not big sonic options).

Others are more detail, knobs don't react nice to mouse, the fender amps default has huge gain and must be decreased a lot to actually sound like a real fender. The FX are nice but didn't wow me.

When compared to what I have to my surprise the freeware ignite amps stuff was closest (they have that upfront sound I liked) but sure not the same.

Overall I'd buy it if it offered amps independently and more affordable, but having the stuff I already have prevents me to spend that much. Worth though for many others, I will advise it people that would benefit more.

MERTAY: thanks for the detailed review! Our ears are pretty close to agreement on this one I"ve been using the new EQ and I'm really glad they added it. I requested another EQ to be added BEFORE the preamp which I think will really help dialing in the higher gain bits.

All in all, I'm very glad they some cool new bits and kept some of the underlying tone algo tech that keeps this app in my top 5 list of guitar plugins. When I"m searching for a meaty/low or mid gain tone, it's the first plugin I pull up.

I do wish there were more options on cabs and such. I find that sometimes I"ll pull up RECABINET which is a great plugin for adding wads of cabs and being able to mix/match/blend cabs together. IT does hit the CPU a bit when stacking SGEAR and RECABINET on the same track, but not too bad. Also, worth it for the tone

Here is the link so folks can download the demo of RECABINET

http://www.recabi.net/

quick vid to explain


So far the only cab sims that I've really liked out of the box were the built in 11 rack models of the 8x10 bass cab on guitar and a few of the other that mimic vintage 30s and such.