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Posted by: bleez Apr 1 2016, 11:56 AM

the 11 rack is fine to use without pro tools, you can just connect it to the PC and use it with reaper just like a pod HD?
is there anything you should look out for if buying a used one?

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Apr 1 2016, 02:27 PM

This is a question for my friend Todd Simpson...

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 2 2016, 12:58 AM

Todd here You can use the 11 Rack as a Stand Alone Interface. It has an XLR input and full on mic preamp on the front so you can record vocals through it too. You can also just do a pass through and turn all the bits off and use your fave plugin instead and just record raw guitars. Or you can record 11 rack fx on one channel in your daw and clean channel on another channel in your daw and and plugins later which is very handy and just added on the most recent AXE FX.

more on the expansion pack
http://www.avid.com/en/plugins/eleven-rack-expansion-pack

Also price. Try to get one wholesale so that there is meat on the bone if you want to sell. $200 to $300 would be a good price if possible. If not, somewhere near there.


It's one of the few fx bits of kit that I've kept and not sold on. It's just a great sounding unit for an amazing price that works as a sound interface and live rack unit. Hard to beat I recently bought a POD HD and I gotta say the 11 rack just sounds better all around. The amps are more articulate and resonant. But the stock presets kinda suck. Good news is its' easy to program and I have a thread to share presets here on GMC

here is the link

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=52502&hl=rack

for the money, it just can't be beat IMHO.

Todd




What to look out for? make sure someone spent the money to put the upgrade pack on so you dont' have to spend the extra $100 or what not. It has some very cool extra amps/fx that didn't come on the base unit. Most used units I've seen in the wild have this installed now.

Posted by: bleez Apr 2 2016, 07:39 AM

Im very close to getting one The guys around here who I know use 11r always have such crisp sounding tones.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday reading horror stories of people trying to install used ones, that would be my one concern now. Granted some of the posts were a few years old but still, there were some absolute ball-ache posts about the hassles of a 2nd hand unit.
I dont want to use pro tools with it but I 'think' now there is an editor which you dont need pro tools to access.

Posted by: Rammikin Apr 2 2016, 08:31 AM

It's not necessary to use protools with the Eleven, although there is a great feature where the preset is stored in your audio recording if you do use it with protools. Yes, there is an editor and you can use that without protools.

I hope Todd doesn't mind me pointing out that, as great as the Eleven is, it is an abandoned product. The entire development staff was laid off a couple of years ago. I mention this because ongoing development with periodic delivery of new features in updates is something you find with most modelers these days. And, it's starting to show it's age. For example, in the past couple of years it's become expected that modelers can load 3rd party IR's, but no can do on an Eleven.

Posted by: bleez Apr 2 2016, 09:13 AM

thanks for the info guys.
I didnt know about the development team. I guess that would make it essentially end of line now. That's quite surprising.

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 2 2016, 09:47 AM

Mine is a second hand unit wih the expansion pack and worked great out of the box. I suspect user error for folks having trouble with the unit second hand as it's pretty simple. INstall the driver, plug in the 11r, bam done. You don't have to use pro tools thank goodness as some folks find that tough. You can use reaper if you like or run it just by itself with the stand alone app. Or just use it with heaphones or direct to your amp.

You don't neeed pro tools anymore at all

That's a fair point RAMMIKIN makes, it's an "abandoned' product which means no more development. Thats actually why I bought one as it went from over a grand to about $250 for the same unit. It does what it does and does it well. For the money, you can't beat it for tone IMHO. For the cost of a nice pedal you get a full recording interface with xlr input, multi track recording, live use, etc. But yeah, it's not going to be getting wads of updates Once good thing is they updated the driver to work with the latest version of the MACINTOSH OS which is handy if you use mac

For a couple/few hundred bux, just can't beat it IMHO. Sounds better than anything else in it's price range by far. It won't load IRs but of course you can load your own IR's in your daw. Live you can run to a cab. But honestly, I found a couple cabs that work well if you grab a good eq block before it. This unit and the GNX4 are the only units I've kept out of all the units I"ve owned. I can't think of any other unit for the price that sounds even close.

Todd

Posted by: bleez Apr 2 2016, 11:04 AM

BY THE GODS! I went and bought one it was a few hundred which is quite good for over here. Ive seen only a few pop up and they are usually a little more expensive. All being well I will sell my podhd which will bring the cost down even more - he says still trying to justify the purchase -

So this is a heads up ..... I WILL no doubt be posting many topics with the title 'Help, I cant get my 11r to ......... '

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 4 2016, 05:54 AM

Super Congrats!! Be sure to download my 11r patches from my preset vault and try them out!! Also, DON"T FORGET!! You can use ANY preamp you like in the fx loop section on your 11r! I have an all Tube hand made preamp from Mother Russia (myasnikov) that can be turned on just by enabling the FX loop block in the software editor. Here is the preamp in action. It's meant to sound like the lead channel on the legendary Soldano X88r

BTW I bought a POD HD bean to see how it compares to the 11r and it excels at clean tones and crazy fx. But for high gain, it's just mud city compared to the 11r IMHO. But it is midi so I may run both


The third channel on the soldano x88r is the shiz. That's why they go for 3 to 5 thousand dollars in good condition. There is a soldano emulation on the 11r, but I did compare it to the tube version and I did like the tube version a pinch better. Adding real tubes in to the 11r really makes the entire thing come to life.

https://artisanguitars.com/pre-owned-soldano-x88r-preamp-id-6999

Posted by: bleez Apr 4 2016, 07:16 AM

AH yes, I remember that russian bad boy! that thing has some screaming leads in it That's a good idea on the pre amp I might look for a PreSonus TubePre or something like that.
I will probably be going for more classic rock type tones rather than high gain stuff. How do you think the 11 will be for that?

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 4 2016, 08:10 AM

Perfect It does well on low and mid gain tones without getting fuzzy/fizzy etc. The fender twin is a great emulation and pairs well with a tube screamer and bingo! There are wads of presets available for free as well. You can even download all of them at once here!

http://www.elevenrackpresets.com/

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Apr 4 2016, 09:55 AM

Cool - looking forward to hear what you think about it. It does seem like incredible value for money.

Posted by: bleez Apr 4 2016, 12:32 PM

supposing you were to put a PreSonus TubePre in the FX loop of the 11r, would that have the same effect as an overdrive / distortion pedal?

I was reading about the PreSonus and it mentioned about it running from 'warm to total fuzz' would that be like having something like a real tube screamer pedal before the 11r?

but then again the PreSonus TubePre would be in fx loop and if you were using a TS9 ( for example ) that wouldnt be in the loop so its probably totally different

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 4 2016, 07:59 PM

I've never used one of those presonus units so I have zero experience with it. If you already have one, give it a try If not, I'd say try an overdrive pedal you already own or anything you already have and see if you can get some tones you like. My preamp is a purpose built guitar preamp with very high gain, but it can clean up a bit with the drive down The preamp you are talking about seems like more of a Mic preamp that can also be used as a direct box. If you max out the knobs it will probably start to break up, but it's not voiced for guitar distortion so you'd have to experiment.

Posted by: Rammikin Apr 4 2016, 08:40 PM

Yeah, you don't want to use a preamp for that purpose. You could get sound out of it, but it probably wouldn't be too satisfying. If your goal is to get a tube into the signal path somehow, I'd suggest something like an AMT SS-20 or a Butler Tube drive between your guitar and your Eleven.

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 5 2016, 12:09 AM

If you have one of the presonus unit on hand, may as well experiment but yeah I'm with RAM I would not buy one just for this use. You can put a tube based pedal/preamp in front of the 11 r on the input or do what I did and put it in the fx loop so you can turn it on and off with a midi footswitch. That's what I do and its very handy

The 11r is one of the few units that seems to work well with an overdrive/preamp in the FX Loop, per my vid. Most of the other multi fx units I"ve tried sound pretty bad with any drive based fx in the fx loop. Somehow the 11r does it with style

Todd

Posted by: bleez Apr 5 2016, 07:28 AM

thanks for the info and suggestions guys, that makes total sense to me now.
Cant wait for this to arrive

Posted by: Phil66 Apr 5 2016, 07:03 PM

I have a PreSonus tube preamp amp. I don't use it now I have the Focusrite, can anyone see any reason to keep it for any future projects that I may not have thought about yet?
Cheers folks

Posted by: Todd Simpson Apr 6 2016, 12:05 PM

After a microphone, and before the audio interface, a tube preamp can "warm" the sound a bit

Posted by: Rammikin Apr 6 2016, 03:15 PM

Hang on to it. Like Todd says, it's intended for use with a mic. It can add some dirty compression which can brighten the sound in a pleasing way in some cases. So you may find it useful when recording vocals or an acoustic guitar.

Posted by: Phil66 Apr 6 2016, 10:19 PM

Thanks but then I have preamp going into preamp which might be noisy.
Cheers

Posted by: Rammikin Apr 6 2016, 10:48 PM

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you should use both at the same time .