Review by Ryan Miglierina
Email: ryan@soniccontrol.com

Overall Rating: (4.5/5)
Sound Quality: (5/5)
Usability: (4/5)
Programming & disc layout: (4.5/5)
Value: (4/5)

Amps and Pickups 2 was the first library that I was able to crack open from SONiVOX since their wonderful Sonic Implants Symphonic Strings library, so I had been eagerly awaiting a chance to try out what the SONiVOX could deliver with their new guitar and bass library. A follow up to Amps and Pickups that was released a year or so ago, Amps and Pickups 2 features samples from two guitars (Fender Telecaster and Rickenbacker 330) and two basses (Fender Precision Bass and Rickenbacker 4003). SONiVOX seems to have again paid attention to detail when sampling both instruments, especially when it comes to the way the instruments were recorded. As SONiVOX mentions, the classic Rickenbacker 330 guitar was recorded to carefully capture its distinct characteristics through a Vox AC-30 modded to vintage specs (one velocity of mutes and two velocities of single tones). The Rickenbacker pick bass was sampled using its stereo jack to send the bridge and neck pickups through an Ampeg bass cab and a Joe Meek tube compressor to provide a thick and meaty tone in the low register while retaining a characteristic punch on top.

Fender Telecaster and Rickenbacker 330 guitars

The versatile Fender Telecaster and Rickenbacker 330 have been included on Amps and Pickups 2 and both guitars have strummed chord samples, in essentially every possible chord and chord combination imaginable (or at least that a non-guitarist like me could use before having to bring in a guitarist). Both up and down strums have been sampled and mapped an octave apart so you can easily alternate between up/down strums as you would while playing a real guitar - this is easily done with one hand (your thumb playing the down stroke on the keyboard and your pinky playing the up stroke). This leaves your left hand open for keyswitches at the bottom of the keyboard so change on-the-fly between major/minor/etc chords. The Telecaster chords also have mutes which are mapped an octave up from the strums themselves, added as SONiVOX says to give you that special ?chukka-chukka' realism to your sampled strumming. The mutes can also be loaded independent from the strums and vice versa. The Rickenbacker 330 chords also feature Dom7, 7Sus4, Add9 in addition to major and minor. Although you aren't given the option to choose between slow, medium or fast strums which is slightly limiting on both of the guitars, various types of mutes and non-muted strums can be accessed through the variety of programs and ways for accessing these mutes differ from program to program as well. For example, the mod wheel can allow you to crossfade between mutes or add tremolo and so on.

Realistic playing of strums can also be enhanced by employing the use of a sustain pedal if you have one - holding it down simply helps to "blend" the up and down strokes together so that they do not sound like completely separate entities.

The single tones on both the Telecaster and Rickenbacker also sound great. They're sampled chromatically over the range of the instrument; The Telecaster has 7 different velocities - 2 mutes, 3 pick, and 2 finger snap velocities per note. There are also separate programs with double stop samples at ,multiple velocities and The Rickenbacker has 3 velocities, 1 mute and two pick allowing you to get a very nice sound out of the single tones. Again a variety of control options spread out over a number of different programs allow you to control filter variations, tremolo and mutes. Additional programs with the Rickenbacker also allow you to utilize the mutes vs. non-mute tones via velocity switching (pressing the key hard will trigger the sustained tones; pressing the keys lightly will trigger mutes). The single tones here are not looped and the natural decay of each note has been recorded (an ample amount that lets the other tones ?ring out' when needed). Again, use of the sustain pedal here works well for realistic sounding phrasing of solo lines, so you'll want to use it at your discretion.

Fender Precision and Rickenbacker 4003 basses

The basses on Amps and Pickups 2 are also quite lovely. On the Fender, you're able to choose between fingered, slap and picked articulations while on the Rickenbacker 4003 you can choose between picked and fingered techniques. The Fender and Rickenbacker both also have a number of slides that you can choose from (perfect for transitions) although I found most of them to be quite short - it would be nice to have some longer slides, or perhaps just a greater number of simple up/down slides in different lengths categorized by short, medium or long duration. Not a big deal by any means, just a matter of personal preference. Like the single tones on the guitars, the basses have been sampled with two velocities. There are also some interesting "pad" programs that are programs with a slower attack and release allowing for some synth-style bass pads. Other programs have a high pass filter which can be controlled through the mod-wheel on both the picked and fingered bass articulations.

In fact, consistent with most other SONiVOX releases is the sheer number of available programs that have been included that allow you to choose how you want to control the basses and guitars. Hats off to SONiVOX for including all of this, as it certainly extends the capabilities of the library for the end user as opposed to simply having one or two programs with very little in the way of options when it comes to controlling the sound and performance. The implementation of the mod wheel for instance to control high-pass filters or switch between alternate pick samples is marvelous. Key switch positions on the keyboard for each instrument aren't exactly the same from program to program. For example, different types of strum programs have different keyswitch key locations (for obvious reasons pertaining to the inclusion/exclusion of mutes etc., depending on the program). This means you can't directly swap different strum programs in and out without a little bit of keyswitch tweaking in your sequence so that all of your major/minor/etc chords will switch properly.

On average, each patch is between 80 and 140 megabytes and all of the instruments have sample mp3 files so you can hear them in action - a great quick reference point for calibrating yourself to the sound of the samples before you start to sequence with them. The included documentation is also more than adequate, presented in PDF format on the CD. It details effectively everything included in the library, including all chords/strums and articulations as well as what each control parameter does in each preset for each instrument.

As expected from a SONiVOX release, the quality of the recorded samples here is first rate. Everything is captured with warmth, distinction and clarity; the chords are crisp and the tones across the basses and guitars are warm and avoid sounding synthetic. Perhaps the only drawback being the lack of sampled velocities for the basic single tones, but disregarding this (which by the way makes it memory friendlier to those who aren't running hard disc streaming capable samplers), it is possible to achieve some very realistic results with the strums and tones alone. The price differs between the Giga/Kontakt versions and the Soundfont versions ($229.95usd and $199usd respectively), although both Giga/Kontakt and Soundfont sets seem identical. As I do not consider myself a guitar or bass player, would I use this library exclusively and not bother hiring a real guitarist or bassist? Probably not, I've always found basses and more specifically guitars hard to pull off with samples. However, for mock-up purposes or situations where you need just a dose of quality guitar sounds that'll sound good enough to squeak by everyone but the most discerning guitarist, Amps and Pickups 2 is a library worth looking into.

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