After all the hype here I decided to pay to play.  I bought the SONAR X2 pre-sale promotional deal and sprung for TH2 full version.  At first, I really thought you guys have lost your minds...this thing SUCKS!  But, I have respect for the opinions of a lot of folks on this forum so I kept plugin away at it and soon discovered some very useable tones.  I don't see it replacing my real tube amps but it may have a place on some of the songs ... maybe just another color on the palette. 

lol... If that's the case I think Focusrite and FXpansion owe me some cash. ;-)

If you take all the Dimi presets and just back em off a little Your there.  He must use a cold pickup or a stock strat .

I finally got the time to do some testing, some a/b comparison of TH2 full version and S-Gear2 by Scuffham Amps.  A few of you have been asking how TH2 compares to S-Gear2.  To be honest, my evaluation is probably biased as I have found S-Gear2 to be my ideal amp sim for my playing.  Yet the comparison I did may not be fair in another aspect because TH2 has a boatload of amps, cabs and effects, and hundreds of presets; whereas Scuffham's S-Gear2 has only 3 amps.  

My verdict.  If you need an huge arsenal of diverse amps to fit almost any variety of settings, then TH2 may well be very good for you.  If you only need one amp sim to do every style, then the versatility of the TH2 may be good for you.  Without question it is worth the $99 upgrade from the TH2 Producer.

However, if you are looking for that boutique "hand wired" clean and overdriven tube tone, S-Gear2 still sets the standard, at least for me.  To my ears S-Gear2 still outshines TH2 when it comes to the boutique clean, overdriven fusion, satuated blues tones.  And to be fair, I focused and dove down deeper by comparing S-Gear2 to the Brunnetti Mercury boutique amp in TH2 and to the Randall Lynchbox (clean, topboost and blackface amps); Brunettit and Lynchbox were good; S-Gear2 is absolutely GREAT/fantastic.  The S-gear2 had more warmth, yet clear tone that was still complex and responded to the pickups and volume adjustments of my guitar and to picking and finger articulations.  I honestly had to fight to get the TH2 to produce the clean tone that was full and bold, yet S-Gear2 provided this warmth and transparency almost instantly.  After a couple of hours of testing, I had come to the realization and had made the difficult decision not to go forward with my purchase of the TH2 Full version upgrade (at least not at this time).  S-Gear2 to me still remains the ideal amp for clean, overdriven clean and saturated blues/fusion tones.  It is wonderfully dynamic and is like having a hand-wired boutique amp in a vst plugin.
I honestly had thought at first that I would get TH2 Full Version upgrade for $99 because of the Lynchbox and the Brunetti Amps.  When I played with it last week and this weekend it was okay and good at places.  But when I finally had time to put it through its paces and then openned S-Gear2 and did the A/B comparisions, I quickly realized that all I still need is S-Gear for what I do, for clean, overdriven tones.  To my aging ears, nothing still comes close to the tone and transparency of S-Gear2.  BTW, I was using a 335 with classic 57 neck and Seth lover in bridge, an ES175, and an American Standard strat, which will tell you that I am not a shredder or metal player.  In fact, my ES-175 did not sound too good through the TH2, but TH2 is not for jazz, at least not in my opinion.

This is not intended to be a shot against TH2, but rather my personal take on it.  It just does not fit my needs.  If, however, I were interested in a metal amp, or hard rock amp, TH2 might well find use, but the one-trick pony overdriven clean amp for me is still my S-Gear2.  Certainly TH2 full version is worth the $99 upgrade for the breath and variety of its arsenal, but if you need just one great amp for a wonderful overdriven clean tone, S-Gear2 is still the gold standard in my little home studio.  

Oh, for the record, I have GR4 (and GR5 demo), Amplitube 3.7x (with almost all its custom shop amps and cabs), demo of Waves GTR3, and a Vox and Pod Farm amp sim.  

So Carl, if you are reading this, S-Gear still reigns king for me.

cecelius2


I finally got the time to do some testing, some a/b comparison of TH2 full version and S-Gear2 by Scuffham Amps.  A few of you have been asking how TH2 compares to S-Gear2.  To be honest, my evaluation is probably biased as I have found S-Gear2 to be my ideal amp sim for my playing.  Yet the comparison I did may not be fair in another aspect because TH2 has a boatload of amps, cabs and effects, and hundreds of presets; whereas Scuffham's S-Gear2 has only 3 amps.  

My verdict.  If you need an huge arsenal of diverse amps to fit almost any variety of settings, then TH2 may well be very good for you.  If you only need one amp sim to do every style, then the versatility of the TH2 may be good for you.  Without question it is worth the $99 upgrade from the TH2 Producer.

However, if you are looking for that boutique "hand wired" clean and overdriven tube tone, S-Gear2 still sets the standard, at least for me.  To my ears S-Gear2 still outshines TH2 when it comes to the boutique clean, overdriven fusion, satuated blues tones.  And to be fair, I focused and dove down deeper by comparing S-Gear2 to the Brunnetti Mercury boutique amp in TH2 and to the Randall Lynchbox (clean, topboost and blackface amps); Brunettit and Lynchbox were good; S-Gear2 is absolutely GREAT/fantastic.  The S-gear2 had more warmth, yet clear tone that was still complex and responded to the pickups and volume adjustments of my guitar and to picking and finger articulations.  I honestly had to fight to get the TH2 to produce the clean tone that was full and bold, yet S-Gear2 provided this warmth and transparency almost instantly.  After a couple of hours of testing, I had come to the realization and had made the difficult decision not to go forward with my purchase of the TH2 Full version upgrade (at least not at this time).  S-Gear2 to me still remains the ideal amp for clean, overdriven clean and saturated blues/fusion tones.  It is wonderfully dynamic and is like having a hand-wired boutique amp in a vst plugin.
I honestly had thought at first that I would get TH2 Full Version upgrade for $99 because of the Lynchbox and the Brunetti Amps.  When I played with it last week and this weekend it was okay and good at places.  But when I finally had time to put it through its paces and then openned S-Gear2 and did the A/B comparisions, I quickly realized that all I still need is S-Gear for what I do, for clean, overdriven tones.  To my aging ears, nothing still comes close to the tone and transparency of S-Gear2.  BTW, I was using a 335 with classic 57 neck and Seth lover in bridge, an ES175, and an American Standard strat, which will tell you that I am not a shredder or metal player.  In fact, my ES-175 did not sound too good through the TH2, but TH2 is not for jazz, at least not in my opinion.

This is not intended to be a shot against TH2, but rather my personal take on it.  It just does not fit my needs.  If, however, I were interested in a metal amp, or hard rock amp, TH2 might well find use, but the one-trick pony overdriven clean amp for me is still my S-Gear2.  Certainly TH2 full version is worth the $99 upgrade for the breath and variety of its arsenal, but if you need just one great amp for a wonderful overdriven clean tone, S-Gear2 is still the gold standard in my little home studio.  

Oh, for the record, I have GR4 (and GR5 demo), Amplitube 3.7x (with almost all its custom shop amps and cabs), demo of Waves GTR3, and a Vox and Pod Farm amp sim.  

So Carl, if you are reading this, S-Gear still reigns king for me.

Thanks very much for the note & review.
I tried the TH2 demo once  it crashed when entering a preset number ( like Slate's stuff does in X1)

P.S. There's a new S-Gear 'Room Thing' reverb in the works. An update to S-Gear, free to existing customers & free until May next year.

Very Nice tones there and the guy is amazing ....

clintmartin

A helpful review...How would you compare TH2 to GR5, Amplitube and Pod farm? I tried the S-gear demo for a day once. I could never get the latency low enough for it to be useable. I'm getting 7.3ms roundtrip now at 128 samples, so it may do bettter (I got a better interface since I tried it).

I won't go into much detail, but my subjective impression is the TH2 is closer to GR5 than to Amplitube or Pod farm in terms of the clean or overdriven clean and fusion type tones that I prefer.  For me GR5 works fine in heavy mixes and cuts thru fine; TH2 seems to have that same edge to it and I suspect it would do well in busy mixes.  What I do not like about either GR5 or TH2 is the lack of the full, warm round tone, which is not a problem in the large mixes with 30-100 instruments, but if it is a three piece or a jazz, I like the guitar to have some fuller tone.  S-Gear sounds like running a real amp, with all of the bottom.  Even with TH2 "respire" on, it still lacks the bottom for me.  Amplitube and Pod Farm (again just my take on it) are better for clean, warm, round tones.  If I am being honest, I think Amplitube is actually better for Jazz than Scuffham's S-Gear.  I think Ampltitube has pretty much nailed the Fender tones (but then they are licensed by Fender; so you would expect this).


The reality I think most of us realize is that each of these five or six different Amp sims find there use in the same studio, depending of the player, the type of guitar used, the style of music, and yes the instruments surrounding it in a mix.  If I were younger and had a "for hire" project studio, I personally would want to have all of them (which I do) but would probably first go to TH2 for hard rock and metal, Ampltitube for Fender and Jazz, and S-Gear for Blues and Overdriven tones.  


I should add, that someone early in this thread or the other TH2 thread was bemoaning the lack of a "santana" like tone in TH2.  I agree that it just does not jump out at you.  Whereas, that "santana" tone is a piece of cake in S-Gear.


Sorry to run this thread in a different direction.


TH2 is well worth it's price and I suspect that the majority of persons in these forums will find use for it right away.  Cakewalk has done us a great service for getting it in our toolboxes and making it affordable if we want to upgrade.  And for that I am thankful.