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Seymour Duncan Customer Support
Besides costing over three grand new, that is. (Thank goodness the used market is so soft right now!)
The Fuchs Viper (or Mantis, as it is now called) is a little-known player in the high-gain world because the thing is so weird to dial in. I mean really weird.
Channel one - let's call it the "clean" channel - is basically a bizarro single-channel master volume amp of its own, with its own completely independent preamp circuit and tubes. The gain control, from about 8:00 to 12:00, gives you a very lush, Fender-y clean tone with huuuuge headroom... yielding more sag and hair as you move up toward 12:00 on the dial.
Get past 1:00 though, and the tone does a complete about-face, tightening up the low end and introducing boosted mids that get more and more Marshall-like until you hit 5:00 and it's turned itself into a goddamn JCM 800. Strangest, coolest thing I've ever experienced on a single channel. If I could run that gain control with an expression pedal, it would be the most versatile live sound in the history of live sounds. And even at Max gain, it cleans up wonderfully with the volume knob on my guitar because it doesn't lose treble.
--
Channel two - we'll call it the "drive" channel - is almost more idiosynchratic than channel one. It has the identical controls as channel one: master, gain, high, mid, low, and it shares presence and depth (called "thrust") controls, but nothing reacts the way you would expect it to.
The high and mid controls are basically high and low midrange, and the low control is really more of a sag/saturation knob. Running them all at noon, or at any traditional setting, yields a really bland, scooped, kind of undefined generic metal sound that I wouldn't use for anything. I was actually kind of disappointed at first, but then I realized how much sweep they had, and remembered to dial it in with my ears and not my eyes. And then the magic happened.
The secret is using the thrust and presence controls to create a context for the EQ. The presence knobs isn't really presence at all in the way we expect, which is extreme high end. It's actually a tightness knob. The more you use, the dryer and tighter the amp gets. So I turned that **** up. The thrust control isn't just low-end thump, either. It's super-reactive with the bass control and actually much more effective. The more thrust you use, the less bass knob you need.
So now my settings for channel two are:
gain: 2:00
treble: 10:00
mid: 2:15
bass: 8:30 !?! ... so low!
Presence: 2:30.. just tons
Thrust: 12:00
... and the tone is crushingly huge, very defined, midrangey, and immensely chest crushingly thumpy.. with no mud and no scooped or hollow character whatsoever.
---
So now, I can say with some confidence that the only reason people who demo this amp kn a store might not like it is because it's the weirdest thing ever to dial in, and who has time to experiment that much in a store to get to know how it all works? But man, the toanz are there in spades. You just need to forget everything you know about dialing in amps to find them.
Thanks for reading my gushy review!
The Fuchs Viper (or Mantis, as it is now called) is a little-known player in the high-gain world because the thing is so weird to dial in. I mean really weird.
Channel one - let's call it the "clean" channel - is basically a bizarro single-channel master volume amp of its own, with its own completely independent preamp circuit and tubes. The gain control, from about 8:00 to 12:00, gives you a very lush, Fender-y clean tone with huuuuge headroom... yielding more sag and hair as you move up toward 12:00 on the dial.
Get past 1:00 though, and the tone does a complete about-face, tightening up the low end and introducing boosted mids that get more and more Marshall-like until you hit 5:00 and it's turned itself into a goddamn JCM 800. Strangest, coolest thing I've ever experienced on a single channel. If I could run that gain control with an expression pedal, it would be the most versatile live sound in the history of live sounds. And even at Max gain, it cleans up wonderfully with the volume knob on my guitar because it doesn't lose treble.
--
Channel two - we'll call it the "drive" channel - is almost more idiosynchratic than channel one. It has the identical controls as channel one: master, gain, high, mid, low, and it shares presence and depth (called "thrust") controls, but nothing reacts the way you would expect it to.
The high and mid controls are basically high and low midrange, and the low control is really more of a sag/saturation knob. Running them all at noon, or at any traditional setting, yields a really bland, scooped, kind of undefined generic metal sound that I wouldn't use for anything. I was actually kind of disappointed at first, but then I realized how much sweep they had, and remembered to dial it in with my ears and not my eyes. And then the magic happened.
The secret is using the thrust and presence controls to create a context for the EQ. The presence knobs isn't really presence at all in the way we expect, which is extreme high end. It's actually a tightness knob. The more you use, the dryer and tighter the amp gets. So I turned that **** up. The thrust control isn't just low-end thump, either. It's super-reactive with the bass control and actually much more effective. The more thrust you use, the less bass knob you need.
So now my settings for channel two are:
gain: 2:00
treble: 10:00
mid: 2:15
bass: 8:30 !?! ... so low!
Presence: 2:30.. just tons
Thrust: 12:00
... and the tone is crushingly huge, very defined, midrangey, and immensely chest crushingly thumpy.. with no mud and no scooped or hollow character whatsoever.
---
So now, I can say with some confidence that the only reason people who demo this amp kn a store might not like it is because it's the weirdest thing ever to dial in, and who has time to experiment that much in a store to get to know how it all works? But man, the toanz are there in spades. You just need to forget everything you know about dialing in amps to find them.
Thanks for reading my gushy review!
