New old software.

Where is 1.54 available for free? I'm probably missing the obvious.

Cheers, JK, great write up!

I'm kinda terrified of .exe files, I'm assuming this has been tried and no Greek invaders have swarmed from their horse and taken over the city of Troy aka your computer?

Friends,
 
Slaving away at the pit, but will send out the requests for the Head Case head jpegs late today.
 
Not at the computer now, but a couple points. Note that installation creates two icons for utilities in addition to the vst and standalone. Head Installer and Head Builder. The installer is the utility that loads the jpeg files and installs the new head. Select the jpeg or drag and drop onto the GUI of the installer.
 
Head Builder gets you into the creation mode, selecting an assortment of transistors, tubes, preamp, poweramp parameters. Set bias, eq, resonances, controls and their ranges etc etc.
 
Once the amp is built, you have to give it a design. I used Photoshop, Fractal Xtreme, Xara 3D and some knob graphics from the internet.
 
You then save the file as a jpeg image after the image parts are assembled in the builder. The image carries all the design data from the circuit build. Next person takes your jpeg image and installs the image thru the installer utility. There are some really fine creations and I’d be glad to try out anything you can come up with. Bit of a learning curve, but worth the effort.
 
Zip file in the mail later.
 
John

You're welcome, Bit.
 
Found the stash of heads, but I have about 150, short of the over 200 I thought were there, but some great stuff.
 
Sending out the zip per requests. Please PM if they don't get through. Anyone else wanting these, PM with an email that can take attachments. I'll send you the collection.
 
John

About the heads…
 
Will upload the zip file of around 150 or so heads to a link and send you guys a download link. Anyone else who wants these, please PM and I’ll get the link to you.
 
Not trying to be a jerk about this, but don’t want to get dev Ken or anyone else in trouble. Still some bad vibes resonating in the ethers that were never resolved in peace.
 
History stuff, in the glory days of Head Case, a guy got involved and set up a website for distribution of the heads. Lot of work categorizing and updating. Great website. Was called virtual amp stash. Real diamonds poured in from everywhere in the world. Some amazing creations.
 
The heads were a real joy and challenge to create. Ken set up the system so that guys like me who know nothing about coding could get close to the creative experience. Not easy, because you have to build the head transistor by capacitor. Your virtual work bench was covered by a hundred parts that you had to assemble and tweak and route. If you were not a graphics artist as well as a sound designer, you were toasted. You created the world’s greatest amp sim and nobody can see it until you give it graphic life by assembling and aligning all the GUI components from individual graphics. Tough job.
 
There was a fallout with the website guy and he threatened to shut it down, which he did. Fine, okay. Many of us flipped the bird and stated on the public forum that anyone can use our heads ad infinitum. The **** got legal stuff involved to question the ownership and domain of the created heads. Does Ken or the creator own them. Can of worms and threat of lawsuits if the heads were distributed. This not under control of the lay creators who just wanted to share their masterpieces with other musicians.
 
Perfect common example of law not for the protection and benefit of humanity, but law distorted to cause harm and restriction.
 
Some fine amp sims are lost. I’ve got about a third of them that I’d like to pass down because this was the wish of every individual who created a new monster.
 
If you get into these sims, there may be more available from the amp modeling website. This is an interesting forum, sort of a collection of vst guitar software users. AcmeBarGig is in there. Look thru the posts and there are individuals who have posted their heads for download. Some of the history of the struggle as well.
 
http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/
 
Success rate was miserable on sending out the 150 heads I have left by email attachment. Will upload the zip and send a link to all who have requested.
 
John
 
(edit) Hmm... auto censure took out my epithet for the gentleman who crashed the head distribution process. Reference was to the distal orifice or sphincter to the large intestine.

Friends,
 
Thanks for the interest in these oldies. I think the download link is working fine, and appreciate the feedback.
 
Some confusion about how this all integrates. Here's how I'd approach it if starting with the program and wanting to experiment.
 
Head Case installs from the link above with some default heads. Standard vst.
 
Start menu addition has a link to the Head Installer. Vst's are installed as well without start menu entries. Windows 10 doesn't install a desktop icon for the Head Builder as far as I can see, but the builder is installed as a vst opened by Sonar. You will have to access the Head Builder like a normal vst.
 
The heads from the zip file are installed into the vst by opening the Head Installer function from the start menu.
 
Extract the heads from the zip file to somewhere (jpeg images). Using the Head Installer, click on "install head image". Direct the installer to the location and done, new head is merged into the program.
 
Advice for rolling your own head if you are wanting to experiment. Once the new head (made by someone else) is installed, Head Builder will pick this up as an option. You can then dig into the creation and see what the designer was working on. Means the circuitry as well as the graphic images used to piece the thing together.
 
You can tweak anything, change anything, then publish your own. Would go through the collection and find something that sounds really good. Open up the file in the Builder and go from there with modifications and adjustments.
 
Best to all of you.
 
John

Grem,
 
Thanks for the reality check on this. Things were off to a great start, then everything crashed for many reasons. Yeah, Ken was doing some amazing things with eqs and filters. Literally things no one had done before.
 
Ken used to be a heavy presence on the Reaper forum. Each day he would crank out a bizarre plugin or two or three. A rare few were quite terrible in all honesty, but some were brilliant. Some were throw to the collective in a half baked alpha state. Guys like me begging for some of the things to be fixed. Still lose sleep over Cyan Ghetto Bass. Bugged alpha that was the finest Byrds 12 string engine in existence.
 
I’ve got everything Ken worked on, regardless of the state he left them in. Can freely give out the heads, since this is what the artists intended. Can’t do the same for his vst’s though without his permission. May follow through on this though. There are some software things that don’t deserve to just drop off the map.
 
Meantime, the AcmeBarGig site on the amp modeling forum may well have some links to crazy vst’s that definitely cannot be had anywhere for any price. Like a treasure hunt for the curious.
 
Grem, should ask you if it is okay to distribute your heads on the private link with mine and the others’.  If I remember right, you came up with some killer stuff that needs to be heard. Thinking about it, will PM you the link to the zip file. Has about 150 heads, but there were many more. I wasn’t as strict at saving the totality of the heads as I was with retaining all Ken’s weird and wonderful plugins.
 
If you have others not in the collection, could we get them merged together into a more complete file.
 
Best,
John

This is wonderful, Grem.