The Transformer 112 and 212 are not "digital modeling amps" per se. They are real Peavey TransTube amps (analog preamp and poweramp) with a DSP modeling section that handles the 3-band EQ (which works just like the amp selection), the cabinet emulation, and the built-in effects and tuner. The "tricky" parts of the tone are distortion, compression, and other dynamically controlled mojo that are difficult to model digitally. The Transformer sounds and feels like a real amp - because it is one.
Disclaimer: Duh! It says unofficial in the title! For the official skinny, you can go here.
Credits: I was the digital design engineer/programmer. Ken Chappell did the mechanical engineering, and James Brown did the analog engineering. It was a lot of work, but it was sure fun. And the result makes it worth the effort. (We love this amp!)
This page is a place for tips, tricks, info, patches, etc. I will add things as time goes by and issues come up.
News:
- There is a
Transformer 212 (and its bass amp cousin, the BAM)
being used by the Fox NFL show band. The 90-minute show airs Saturday
nights on Fox Sports Net
- The August '01 issue of Guitar World (Slipknot on the cover) has an article on "Smart Amps" called "Digital Monsters." I'm quoted in the section about the Transformer - pages 90/98. I talked to the author for about an hour on the phone when he was researching the amps, and he decided to use some of the conversation. (I never thought I'd see my name in a guitar mag - that was cool!) The only part I didn't like is that he called me a MIDI/Keyboard engineer. I had mentioned that I worked on keyboards for a few years before switching to guitar gear (so the title would've fit a few years ago), but I'm a guitar player and a guitar processing engineer now. It looked kind of weird that Peavey would ask a keyboard engineer to design a guitar amp.
- A discussion group member I know hipped me to the Transformer 112's review in Guitarist Mag. They touched on some cool details of the amp. And they really dug our interface. Some highlights:
"It's an exceptionally well executed interface - consequently, setting up a sound is simple."
"The amp sounds great and looks classy too, while that LED-illuminated control panel is just about the best interface we've seen so far on this type of amp."
"Peavey is on to a real winner with this one."
- Read the marketing info on the Fender CyberTwin for a good description of what the Transformer does. They claim to not be a "modeling" amp because they use analog preamp circuitry in addition to digital, and replicate the actual tone circuits of the amps. Hmm, sounds familiar. To be fair, they do have a couple of new tricks, like 1) mixing and matching preamp and EQ sections, and 2) placing the EQ before the preamp. The former is cool, but is it overkill? With cab swapping, the Transformer offers 84 models (12 amp models, 7 cab models - do the math). The latter means D/A conversion before the preamp, which is asking for noise. I don't think you can even turn their noise gate off. With ours, you can, and it's not too bad - because you're guitar is directly connected to the TransTube preamp. And while EQ before the preamp can get you into Boogie land, it's real easy to get a BAD tone. Anyone who has played a Boogie Mark whatever combo knows this (Rectifiers and such put the EQ after the preamp). It's cool IF you know what you're doing. Kind of like the stick shift of amps. The Transformer controls the pre-distortion EQ via component switching in the analog preamp - controlled by the amp model selection.
- More credit where credit is due department: the Transformer addresses the poweramp coloration issue by using a real TransTube poweramp with 10-100% power level control. Vox is getting credit with their Valvetronix for being the first modeling amp to address the importance of poweramp coloration. They do it differently than we do, but we addressed it two years earlier. I'm not going to say we were the first, either, since some of our own predecessors may have addressed it in their own ways.
Here is the
answer
to the most popular of questions: "What 12 amps were modeled?"
The answer is not as specific as you'd expect. We usually modeled one
amp as a starting point, then listened to some others and tweaked by
ear to
get the best mixture. Why do it this way? We decided early on that the
most
important thing was that the models sounded killer - and were usable.
Saying that they were identical to a particular box was not of utmost
importance. Let's just say that the amps and cabs in this table are
what we thought
it sounded closest to when we were done.
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| Peavey Classic Clean | Classic 50/30 clean | 1x12 open back |
| Peavey Classic Crunch | Classic 50/30 lead | 1x12 open back |
| Peavey High Gain | Bandit lead/5150 lead tone controls | 4x12 5150 straight |
| Peavey Ultra | Ultra Plus ultra channel | 4x12 5150 straight |
| American Clean | 60s Blackface Fender Twin | 2x12 |
| American High Gain | 70s Canefront Boogie | 1x12 w/JBL "chrome dome" |
| American Tweed | 50s Fender Bassman | 4x10 |
| American Modern | 80s Mark IV Boogie w/ active EQ | 1x12 open back |
| British Crunch | 70s Master Volume Marshall | 4x12 slant |
| British Vintage | 60s Bluesbreaker combo | 2x12 Celestions, open back |
| British High Gain | 80s modified Marshall | 4x12 slant |
| British Clean | Vox AC30 Top Boost | 2x12 Celestions, open back |
These will surely be in the next manual, which will cover both the 1x12 and 2x12, but the first runs of the 1x12 didn't get this info. Sorry about that!
Preset toggling with the PFC4 footswitch:
After changing presets within a bank, pressing the switch for the active preset will switch to the previous preset. E.g. if you're on A1 and switch to A3, pressing A3 again will toggle back to A1, etc. This allows you to keep your foot over a single switch and toggle between two sounds within a bank - similar to a channel footswitch on a dual-channel amp. Exception: if you edit the current patch (twirl a knob, do a tap tempo, etc.) pressing the switch of the current preset will re-load the original preset, not load the previous preset number.
Boost / FX settings copying:
The boost function allows you to have
two complete settings (per preset) for the pre gain, post gain, and
3-band EQ. When creating a preset, you will typically build your
non-boost sound (boost LED off on the PFC4), then want to modify it for
the boost. Well, the settings will usually be way different, and
synchronizing them manually is a bit of a pain. So, you can press the
USER button for 1 second (and continue to hold, which puts the amp into
Patch Tweak mode, see below), and hit the boost footswitch. This will
copy the 5 parameters from the non-boost to the boost slots. (If you
were boosted in the first place, the copy would go the other way - it
goes from where you were to where you're switching.)
This also works with the effect knobs, but since they're just one or
two each, it's not much of a problem to tweak the two settings manually.
Top 10 reasons to buy a Peavey Transformer (IMHO that is; here's all the reasons):
- Real amp tone and feel - because it IS real (TransTube preamp and poweramp).
- Cabinet swapping lets you mix and match amp and cab models (tons of tones - 84 combinations).
- WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) user interface - via LED's around knobs - always shows you the current settings. [Most modeling amps' knobs will lie! Go up to a Line 6 anything (including Pod Pro), Rocktron Replifex, Crate DX - or even the lower priced Yamaha DG and Johnson JM/JT (and the J-Station) - and change presets. The knobs will say one thing, the tone will say another.]
- PFC4 footswitch included - does preset switching (and it's fast!), boost, tap tempo, EFX switching, tuner.
- Totally flexible boost (can mod pre/post AND 3-band EQ!) and effect switching within preset (not just on and off - toggle between any pair of knob settings).
- Three simultaneous effects: modulation (choice of 5 - chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, rotary), delay, reverb.
- Tail preservation on delay and reverb - when switching FX settings with footswitch, changing presets, or tapping a new delay time with the PFC4 (front panel Tap will chop the old echoes - that's for editing!).
- Strobe-style tuner with display on amp and footswitch. Standard 12:00 meter on amp, too. Simultaneously.
- Power (aka T-) Dynamics lets you reduce the power (down to 10%) for push-back at lower volumes.
- Flexibility - it is very user configurable, check it out:
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(hold USER for 1 sec.) |
(hold STORE for 1 sec.) |
(Press STORE and USER) |
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Here are some feature comparisons
between the Transformer and some of its competitors, including Line 6
(Flextone
and POD), Johnson, Yamaha (DG combos, preamp and DG Stomp), and Fender
(Cybertwin). There are other features not listed in the table - mainly
because I don't know off hand what they are in the other brands. I'll
do some research later on and add stuff. These include number of
effects, number of patches, footswitch function, and whether the
footswitch is included in the amp price. Oh yeah, and amp price!
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Foot Switch |
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Transformer 1x12/2x12 |
$799/$1049 |
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PFC4 included! |
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Flextone II |
$899/$1199 |
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not included |
| Rocktron Replitone |
$899/$999 | Digital | No/No | No | No / 60 per side | No | No | not included |
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$2099 |
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not included |
| Johnson JM60 Marquis | $1099 | Tube | No/No | No | No / 60 | No | No | not included |
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DG100-212 |
$1499 |
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not included |
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Cybertwin |
$1699 |
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simple 4-button included |
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Valvetronix |
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These are single patch sysex dumps. They can be sent to your Transformer without overwriting your sounds. When you send one of these, it will go into the "Edit Buffer" and you will immediately see and hear it. If you like it, it's up to you to store it on the amp.
If you don't know how to send these, you can use the PC Editor below (or download MIDIOX) for sending, and get a MIDIMan adapter cable for your soundcard's 15-pin game port (from a music store or catalog). MIDIOX has a Send Sysex command on its toolbar, so it's easy to do once you select the correct MIDI port (via Options | MIDI Devices). Save any of the patches below to your local drive so you can cue them up with MIDIOX. The PC Editor has a ReadMe that should explain it.
My current patches utilize some
amp-model sysex tweaks that you can only change via MIDI. You can make
similar changes with the PC editor, and a Peavey
PC1600x can be setup to edit these things, too. If you edit the amp
model, then switch it back, the mods are lost (until you recall the
patch again - after NOT storing).
My bread and butter patches. These 4 all use the Tweed cabinet so I can change gain without a drastic tonal shift (I also have the same 4 in Bank B with the Classic Clean cab model - basically no cab model). They also have reverb and delay settings stored as initially off (i.e. "on deck"), as well as modulation settings (choices listed below). The patch levels are balanced to work with my Les Paul Deluxe (mini humbuckers) into the high gain input. If you have a high output axe, you may need to reduce the pregain settings on the clean and grit patches so the balance works out (or raise them for a low output axe).
Clean -
Peavey Clean (mods: bright off, more presence), chorus on deck
Grit - American
Tweed (mods: bright on), tremolo on deck
Crunch -
Peavey
Crunch (mods: more lows in preamp), rotary on deck
Lead - Peavey Hi
Gain (mods: more lows in preamp), phaser on deck
These next two have tremolo and delay set so that you can play in the "holes" of the trem to get a swell sound, and the delay will add notes in between your played ones, making it sound like a tempo doubler. It's an old volume knob trick that you'll recognize the sound of, but you can go faster with the trem doing the swell. Plus, they're not exactly in sync, so if you play at the delay rate perfectly, the amount of attack will slowly sweep around like a slow phase shifter. Kinda cool once in a blue moon.
Loop 1 -
Slow
tempo, more in sync
Loop 2 - Faster
tempo, less in sync
Here are some others I've done while developing the PC Editor:
Carlos - Guess
who this is supposed to sound like! Boogie model with tame treble
settings (careful with that audio taper!).
CR_Vox - Peavey
Classic Crunch into Vox 212 cab.
Cupid - Just
twirling knobs and it sounded like "Cupid's Dead" off Extreme III. Hail
Nuno!
FreezeFlange
and FreezePhase - These sweep slowly
when mod
is enabled via footswitch, then freeze when not. Find a sweet spot.
HiMid - Funky
sounding on its own, but could work in a mix. (Uh, highs and mids.)
TweedTwin -
Bassman into a Twin 212.
UL_Brit - Ultra
hi gain into Marshall 412
UL_Tweed -
Ultra hi gain into Bassman 410.
Wicked Game -
Tried to mimic the Chris Isaak tune. So-so results. Just picture the
video....ahhhh! I wanna go down under and Mount
Helena!
This is a Windows editor / librarian that allows you to store all the patches you want, in addition to the ability to tweak all parameters, including some that are not available on the front panel. Two screen shots are below.
After installing (there is a ReadMe in the zip), you can associate .syx files with the program so you can click on the patch links above (or in Windows Explorer) to audition a patch immediately.
Peavey.com is now
hosting the program here:
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Q. Why is the 212's direct out affected by the master volume?
A. The Transformer's
power amp is rewired when the amp model changes (presence ane
resonance), so in order for that tonal (and dynamic) difference to make
it into the direct outputs,
the circuit - including speaker simulator - must be after the power amp.
Q. Why doesn't the 112 have a direct out?
A. First off, it would have driven the
price up higher than we wanted. Plus, the direct out circuit was
designed after the 112 was released to production. And if we had put a
direct out on there, it would have been mono, since the 112 has only
one power amp, and the power amp has to drive the direct out in order
to hear that contribution to the modeling.
Q. What are the differences between the 112 and 212?
A. The 112 is 50 watts, the 212 is 50 watts x 2, so it is quite a bit louder - and stereo. It also has a little bit more oomph in the low end because it has a bigger cabinet. It has a direct recording out with speaker simulation, and that also goes to the headphone jack, so the headphone tone will be more accurate on the 212. Oh yeah (duh!), more weight and money. (40 pounds, $799 vs. 60 pounds, $1049.)
Q. Can I use an external cabinet?
A. Not in addition to the internal speakers. That would drop the impedance too low and you could damage the amp. You can substitute a 4-ohm load (or higher, albeit with less power) for each speaker. For example, disconnect the internal speaker on the 112 and drive a 4-ohm cab at 50 watts. You can get an open-frame 1/4" jack to hook the clips up to, then connect to the cab with a standard speaker cable. Note: the cab modeling won't be accurate with an external cab, but you can disable cab modeling by choosing Classic Clean as the cabinet.
Q. Why is my .syx association in Windows not bringing the file into the PC Editor correctly?
A. The Editor wants the command line to be the program on its own (e.g. C:\Tforn\TFormer.exe). Some versions of Windows like to put a %1 at the end of the line, with the whole thing in quotes. Go to Explorer, View, Folder Options, then go to the File Types tab to make the tweak. Lose the quotes and the %1 and try it again.
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