Description
Today’s guitarist is luckier than ever, with more choice than ever before. Valve, solid state, digital… single channel, multichannel… Everything is a valid approach to the needs of the guitarist, and lets face it, every guitarist has a different need. For some it’s a vintage single channel, low wattage amp. For others it’s the flexibility of digital modelling. But for many guitarists, the choice of amp is often a compromise. It’s often a choice between great valve tone or flexibility… a choice between a one trick pony (but hey, it’s a great trick), or a soul-less assembly line ‘toy’ with lots of bells and whistles, but filled with quality, design and component compromises.
At MI Audio, they wanted to bridge that gap. In doing so, they aspired to give guitarists more than they ever thought possible from a valve amp, and at the same time more than they ever thought possible from a boutique company. We firmly believe that valve amp designs can in fact challenge the flexibility of digital modelling amps, while retaining tonal integrity. Similarly, we believe that ’boutique’ can be a lot more than a glorified clone.
The gruelling design process for the Revelation (which took place over a 4 year period) involved dividing the guitar amplifier up into its constituent parts, and optimising the features and functionality of each section. Each section of the amp had to be world class. Finally, the various sections had to form a cohesive, organic whole. There’s no point having a great preamp and a great power amp if the two don’t work well together!
Preamp:
- Four completely independent channels, featuring Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble and Volume.
- 3 Gain levels per channel (low, mid and high), so any channel can run as clean, crunch or high gain.
- Each channel is independently voiced with unique design architecture, with no repeated channel voicings, giving you 12 distinct guitar tones.
- Each channel’s unique voice means is that when you change channels it feels like you are changing amps, not simply adding more or less gain to the same basic sound. This has to be experienced to be believed!
Power Amp:
- Dual master volumes to give you the options of setting up 2 stage levels.
- Presence and Depth controls, as well as selectable power amp feedback to control the frequency response and feel of the power amplifier.
- 3 selectable power levels, 100%, 60% and 30%. Variations in output power are achieved by varying the internal high voltages of the amplifiers.
- Triode/Pentode mode for further variations of power amp feel and headroom.
FX Loops:
- A world-first, 4 FX loops, which can be assigned to any channel.
- Ultra low-noise buffered circuitry per loop, creating the most transparent loops in the world.
- Each loop cab be individually set to guitar or line level for perfect matching to any effect type.
- Send Level for adjusting the volume of each loop individually. This allows the guitarists to add an automatic cut or boost when a loop is engaged.
- Mix control, allowing the full range of 0 to 100% wet/dry mix. This means each loop can operate as series (mix set to 100%) or parallel (mix set <100%)
- Each channel ‘remembers’ which loops are assigned to it, and automatically activates these loops when the master FX switch is toggled.
Two Operating Modes:
- Standard Mode – Uses the optional 6 button foot controller where you can switch to any channel and toggle between master volumes. Finally intelligent FX loop switching means that you can assign any number of FX loops to a channel. ($289 rrp)
- Midi Mode- In midi mode you can store up to 128 programs. For each channel you can set the channel, gain mode, master volume, FX 1 to FX 4 on/off and global FX on/off
