Recording - August 2014 - 63

Reload while playing back the previouslyrecorded signal, and turn the Replay
knob until the Match lights tell you your
levels are lined up. This obviously works
best with the exact guitar used to record
the original track, but Two Notes provides
hints on using a similar guitar with Match
to help optimize your results if you don't
have the original guitar handy.
Putting all these features together and combining the Reload with a good audio interface, an amp with detachable speakers, and
a mic or two, means you can basically do
anything you want to capture guitar sound.
A "fully wired" setup passes signal from your
guitar into the DI input, the pre-recorded dry
signal into the Replay input, the Replay output into your amp, your amp's speaker output into the Reload's Speaker In, and the
Loadbox Out back to your interface... and
the Speaker Outs to your cabinets for more
miking options that can be tracked separately. Is your head spinning yet?

Wall Of Sound III
Naturally, once you get your tracks
recorded into your DAW from the Loadbox
output, you could then use a speaker and
microphone simulator to restore the parts
of the audio chain that you had to do without... and Two Notes can only assure the
best possible results if they give you that
part of the solution as well, right?
That's where Wall Of Sound III comes in.
It's a plug-in for Windows and Mac OS X
that provides miked-cabinet simulation with a
choice of 8 power amp stages with different
tubes, and 8 mics with names that hint at
famous choices like the Royer R-121,
Neumann U87, and Shure SM57 or Beta
52 (for bass miking). And of course there's a
huge choice of cabinets-the demo version
comes with two, registering your Reload's
serial number boosts that number to 24, and
even more are available from an online
store. You can even add third-party Impulse
Responses or sample your own cabs using a
related program called BlendIR, although we
didn't get to test that feature.
The plug-in puts a finishing touch on your
sound with effects such as a lowcut filter for
the mic, 5-band EQ, exciter, and compressor

with gain reduction metering. A graphic representation of the amp and mic in the room
lets you move the mic around and position it
to taste. The plug-in launches with a set of
two parallel audio chains, so you can run
your sound through two amps and cabinets,
mike them two different ways, and pan and
mix the results... and if you want more than
two such chains, you can add more, up to
100 in all (assuming your DAW can handle
the load).
Hands on, cranked up
My sessions with the Torpedo Reload and
Wall Of Sound III in my studio confirmed that
all the features I've discussed work as advertised. That's part of the story, but guitarists
and engineers really want to know how the
Reload sounds when used by a serious player. I'm not a fantastic guitarist, so I wanted the
opinion of someone with great chops and a
great ear for tone, and I was lucky enough to
borrow Darwin Grosse for an afternoon.

After some quick tests with the Reload's DI
in/out, we added an amp to the equation.
Darwin has a well-used Fender Fat Strat and
a sweet-sounding little Laney solid-state amp
with a single 12" speaker; we ran the
Laney's power amp output into the Reload
and then sent the Loadbox Out to Darwin's
RME Babyface audio interface, monitoring
the playback over JBL LSR305 monitors.
Darwin is used to using the Babyface's
Hi-Z input for guitar recording, and we
were able to compare the Reload's DI and
Loadbox sounds to that reference. The
Reload's DI compared favorably to the
RME interface's sound and is in the ballpark with solid state DI systems from companies like Radial Engineering; it does its
job well, but on its own it's not why you
would want to buy the Reload.
Then we switched over to the Loadbox signal... and took a minute to pick up our jaws
from the floor. The difference was unbelievable! If it's possible for a box to justify its existence in less than ten seconds, the Reload
did just that. Everything we hoped for from
an interaction with the amp was there: fine
articulation and detail, that amazing
"bounce" and string pop in every note. By

comparison, the Reload's DI signal lacked
life and articulation and the RME's DI signal
sounded like the guitar had dead strings.
Darwin even joked that the Babyface's lack
of responsiveness made it feel like he was
playing the guitar with mittens on!
Things got even better when we added
Wall Of Sound III to the mix. Darwin felt that
the pure loadbox signal was almost too articulate, that it lacked the "wooliness" one gets
from a power amp and cabinet, and the software let us put that interaction back in-"getting back the amp," as Darwin put it.
The modeled cabinets let us pick and
choose the sound we wanted, but we feel
that the mic emulations deserve a particular
shout out. In most cases, based on what we
know about the polar pattern and tone of the
mics on offer, we felt that the emulations
were exceptional. Our only headscratcher
was the beyerdynamic M160 model, which
didn't seem to give the proximity effect we're
used to from this hypercardioid ribbon. But
aside from that we were very impressed-
the R-121 model exhibited the strong directionality or "beaminess" of the original when
up close; the SM57 model gave that familiar
midrange "hoot" when moved in tight; and
the Electro-Voice RE20 had its habit of picking up speaker rattle while exhibiting virtually no proximity effect. Amazing stuff!
We spent a lot of time just playing
around, enjoying everything from sweet
Strat split-coil tones to a heavy Tony Iommitype tone from the Brit VinC cabinet and
the U87 mic model in Wall Of Sound III.
It was a sad moment when we had to shut
off the Reload and unplug it from the rig.
Conclusions
On a strictly clinical level, the Torpedo
Reload is a very practical box to have in
any studio where recording guitar amps is
a common occurrence. It handles DI chores,
power attenuation, and reamplification with
an eye toward transparency of amp tone,
preservation of guitar sound, and electrical
safety for the amp itself. It replaces a handful of other devices and in most cases will
outdo what you already had laying around
in terms of sound quality.
But that cool-headed summation completely misses out on the magic of those first few
notes we heard coming back out of our monitors. A box can do all the things it says on
the label and yet leave you cold when it
comes to the end result, but in the case of the
Reload we were floored by just how beautiful our guitar tracks ended up sounding. If
you're discouraged by guitar studio "solutions" that don't really solve the problem of
capturing a truly great amplified sound, the
Torpedo Reload and Wall Of Sound III may
well have you seeing the light.
Price: $995 ($849 MAP)
More from: Two Notes Audio
Engineering, www.two-notes.com/en
RECORDING August 2014

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Recording - August 2014

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