Mooer Preamp Live Digital Preamp Review

[Music] [Applause] [Music] other guys tonk while here welcome back to the Dawson's YouTube channel I hope you're all doing very well as ever today I'm checking out this very cool device here this is the mower preamp live and this is a compact floor based preamp unit using digital modeling that features 12 different preamp types and a ton of different features you've got cabinets emulation mic simulation built in the ability to use IRS you've got full MIDI integration you've got USB on there for doing firmware updates you've got a full app for editing everything on your phone or your iPad for instance any tablets Android or iOS devices any computer Mac soft pcs you've got great intuitive controls and effects loop on there it's absolutely fantastic and it's very affordable considering some of the other options on the market can be up to four times the price if not more so let's have a look at it the first thing that I noticed when I unboxed the the preamp live was just how good the packaging is this is a premium experience for not a huge amount of money now don't get me wrong this is not a cheap product you know it's a good few hundred pounds but it's for what you're getting you're getting a really nice premium kind of experience font and packaging it so everything is beautifully wrapped very nicely folded all the packaging inside it's kind of in this cellophane wrapper you unbox it and then you pull it out and it's really well built it got some heft to it it feels heavy it's got very nice contours and curves to it there's a really nice kind of curve around here but it feels very solid there's no kind of cheapness to the construction at all there's no sharp edges and it's all metal construction so it feels extremely solid and well built now that's a good thing because this kind of unit is designed to be either thrown in a gig bag to live on a kind of smaller pedal board for live use or for fly dates where it might get shoved in your hand luggage or in your check-in luggage and you really want it to be well built now the whole unit with this metal construction and these really solid sturdy kind of dials on here that are all gripped and feel very very good indeed very strong we've got great quality non latching switches all of the controls feel very good quality and the screen printing on the graphics is very good as well we've got nice very solid feeling switches on there so everything about this unit feels premium without having a really really expensive price tag even down to like the brightness of the leds and the way everything feels is your editing feels very good down to the way that you know the the actual jack sockets feel very strong as well so that's a really really good start now in terms of what you actually get inside the unit as I say it kind of works on a digital kind of preamps style basis so these are not analog circuits there's not twelve different analog circuits it's all digital modeling but that gives you a lot of flexibility so we've got loads of clean preamps all the way up to really high gain kind of brown sound s kind of modded Marshall kind of sounds dual rectifier s kind of sounds and it's very easy to use there's two ways you can operate you can operate using the unit itself or you can connect via bluetooth and use the app now I will demonstrate a little bit with the app later I'll throw some b-roll up so you can see the actual app in process I've got it down here now the cool thing is the tool linked via bluetooth so anything I do on the unit will update on the app and anything I do on the app will update on the unit so if I take you guys watch the volume control as I'm actually changing on the app here you can see it's updating on the unit which is great that's really cool it kind of negates the need to have any rotating dials on here so that saves a little bit of money so we've got a volume bass mid treble gain and boost now obviously the main controls are self-explanatory it works just like an amplifier it does exactly what you'd expect and the tone stacks that you get four different preamps obviously work the way you expect for that particular amplifier then we've got a boost control now this switch what are this knob will actually press in and out as well so this allows you to select between a pre boost and a post boost the pre boost is pre the gain stage so you can add a lot more drive if you want to to an existing preamp and the post boost is a very clean transparent post boost after the gain stage which allows you should have a solo boost for instance and then that can be switched in and out of currently we're on preset one embanked a I'll talk about the banks and presets in a minute we switch the boost on by pressing the foot switch again I had to press it twice there cuz Isaac actually the preset see it goes red the boost goes red and we're in boost mode if I wanted to print a post boost I go to the post setting press it in and we've got post boost okay very easy to operate I can do the same thing from the app as well now there's 12 preamps in here and again we've got fender eskalene's we've got Vox kind of things we've got you know all the usual suspects they're arranged initially in three banks of four presets so you've got four foot switches on here so we've got preset one preset two preset three preset four in Bank a then to select Bank B you can see there's two foots which is either side of this B so we press them together we go into Bank B they'll start to flash and then we can select preset one in Bank B you can also see the LEDs changed color to show us where in Bank B here okay and also well we've got the boost on there so you can see that this remains green but these LEDs change to show us but we're in a different Bank then we could select Bank C and now we've got yellow LEDs and we can select any of the presets and all of the functionality of the unit is stored per preset so the cabs the mic that you're using of course you can switch all of that off if you using a proper cab you don't have to have it on those two switches here that allow you to switch on and off the camp simulation for the XLR out and the standard jack output I'm using the XLR to go straight to my audio interface if you're running a cab you would use the standard line outs and go straight to a power amp of some description but you can actually store any of the preamps to any of the preset so you don't have to just use the existing 12 presets that are in there super easy to change a preset just select the preamp that you want you can't do that on the unit you have to do that via the app because there's bluetooth involved it's very easy to do that on the fly if you want to change your settings and then just hold the foot switch down it flashes and then you've saved the preset super super simple now within the app you have the ability also and I'll throw some b-roll up for this select all of the different preamps and there is a ton of stuff in here an absolute load of stuff you get ships with 12 presets but there's more more preamps than that there's a ton of different things in there we've got things like two rocks in here we've got some Randle style things we've got such kind of amplifier so that's probably a PV they've called it PT California that's obviously meza boogies you've got a kind of u.s. style amplifiers you've got Brown sound style things too like modern Marshalls you've got diesel diesels in here all sorts of stuff obviously lots of fenders and kind of UK style vox amplifiers as well so you can obviously change to all the different preamps then if you go to the cab section you can select between multiple different cabinets only one at a time now I should add you've got 1 by 12 1 by 8 1 by 10 1 by 15s you've got two by twelves four by tens four by twelves multiple different versions and then if you really into there's even Bass Pro cabs on here as well if you really into using your own ads if you like Celestion Zoar the own hammers those kind of things I use the Celestion ones or red wires you can you can load those in here as well using the USB connections so very very cool indeed select those then you've got multiple different mics you've got dynamic mics condenser mics couple of ribbon mics as well then you can change the position of those mics on the actual cone and you can change the distance so if you want to get some proximity effect the closer the actual mic is to the the actual speaker you get more low-end thump so on and so forth then there's even power amp simulation which is useful because obviously this is just a preamp so you can have parent simulation with multiple different tube types you've got a la Torre l8er 34 6 or 6 and 6 v 6s and then you can change the bias of bias of those tubes as well and then you can switch that cabinet simulation and power amp simulation on / output which is super cool then you can store any of your presets in the app as well and effectively you can think of it like a 4 channel amplifier so you could set it up to be a 4 channel amplifier or four completely different presets it's entirely up to you other controls just really quickly there's a lot to talk through guys so I apologize we'll get some playing in a minute we've got a master volume and a presence okay those are hard-wired they're not / presets then we've got an effects level for the effects loop I've got a one player ethereal pedal in there you can hear fantastic sounding reverb and delay pedal really really nice and that can be in series oops it can be in series or you can have what's called the B mode series is AE mode the B mode allows you to plug this into the effects group of your existing amplifier your tube amp for instance and use the the the preamp of your amplifier for certain settings and then switch in the preamp of the from the Muar any of the the multiple preamps in from the Muar into your amplifier as well so you can use it for different sounds which is super super cool with the effects loop of course which is nice you could also just plug into the parent return of your existing amplifier now really quickly in terms of ins and outs we've got standard input we've got your effects loop there's a standard Jack output XLR output MIDI in and out so if you're using other devices that have a MIDI capability this will switch those for you or you can switch this using other MIDI devices we've got a headphone output dedicated for obviously practice purposes USB and then the DC it comes with its own power brick which is 12 volts and then the final PS the resistance is this will also do a thing called tone capture which allows you to take your existing amplifier plug it into the unit and basically do a very sophisticated match EQ doesn't work the same way as things like the Kemper profiling amplifier it's not quite that sophisticated for this money but what it will do it will take an existing preamp model within the unit that's similar to your existing amplifier and it will match EQ which is a process where it listens to the sound of the amplifiers signal and it takes an EQ curve and it applies that to the your existing amplifier sound sorry to the existing sound in the preamp to match your amplifier sound very clever indeed is pretty easy to operate using the foot switches and that's all in the manual you don't need any microphones or anything to do it which is cool as well so very very fully featured unit what I thought we'd do is listen to some of the preamps so we'll go through all 12 I'll switch in the effects loop in and out that's because some of you guys I know like to hear these things about any effects on so we'll start with the clean so this is I'll go back to already save the preset you heard the clean in the intro let's go to number 2 which is it says said oh let's go back to bang carry to start with so this is a German four by twelve cab with gas station Distortion [Music] sounds great very easy to play and again we can tweak all the controls till our heart's desire is contempt take out some presents [Applause] [Music] sounds awesome very tweakable again i could save that preset just to show you really quickly if I go in and I change the cab let's go for UK citrus four by twelve [Applause] obviously you've got flexibility in that regard as well so you can go in there let's change the amplifier we won't do this with every single preset obviously that's a rode nc1 let's take it off cut off access [Music] so let's move to the next preamp so this is called UK gold clean [Music] switch on the ethereal if I increase the reverb level a little bit we can do some really cool ambient stuff [Music] reacts really nicely let's go to pre-op number four which is the UK gold but with distortion this time so this is channel 2 or channel 3 of [Music] so on this one let's engage the pre boost so we'll bring the boost up we'll engage it now we've got this [Music] very cool indeed now let's turn the blue stuff go to channel or sorry bank to be very easy to operate by the way if you want to bypass the unit you can press 1 and 3 at the same time if you want to get rid of the effects loop you press 2 & 4 at the same time and the time capture function is 1 4 at the same time so in this case we've got Blaire no Aug 30 [Music] ten boost outs [Music] saralyn [Music] supercool number two is the same is a u.s. classic overdrive I was going to say the same thing it's not [Music] and number three in that Bank us gold 100 Distortion [Music] [Music] next one we've got brown sounds Channel three wow that was a lot of reverb sorry about that guys but it's so much fun to play next Bank we've got four more that I'll show you there's a ton more in here though so this is Kali mark 3 deep clean [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] okay continuing we've got Kelly mark three rhythm [Music] [Applause] [Music] and then two more two stone coral clean and this is beautiful this one [Music] now without the effects this is the same thing that this is the overdrive channel of a to rock style amplifier stay the reverb down and add in the effects [Music] [Music] so as you can hear it's a great sounding unit not a huge amount of money for what it does the flexibility if you're somebody who's looking for a very portable rig combine this with some kind of portable power amp again mujer do one there's quite a few on the market now or just use it direct into the PA if you're doing kind of very small decks where you can't use an amplifier or even larger dates where you can't use an amp and you want to go straight into the front of house the power amp simulation sounds great the clean channel sound great the drive channels are very flexible there's a lot more on there as well in terms of preamps that are available - and you can load your own IR in so the best of all worlds really it's very very good indeed you can even kind of do that tone capture thing to try and take your amplifier on the flyer with use not quite the Kemper but it's kind of a nice compromise for the money so absolutely fantastic guys hope you enjoyed the demo we are actually because we love you we're gonna give one of these away as well so if you're watching this around sort of February mid-february to the end of February time in 2019 keep an eye out on the channel for a link to the competition because we're going to give this exact units away I promise I will wipe all my dirty fingerprints off it so hope you enjoyed that guys if you did make sure you hit the like and subscribe buttons below as ever and hit the bell notification icon to ensure you never miss any more of our videos ever again let us know your thoughts in the comments below guys we think it's a fantastic unit but we'd love to know what you think my name is Tom Quayle and I will see you all in the next video bye-bye you

Channel: Music

Views: 38,646

Keywords: dawsons, music, tom, quayle, mooer, preamp, live, review, demo, competition, twelve, preamps, clean, dirty, distortion, emulated, digital, cabinet, simulation, power, amp, mic, selection, modeller, value, midi, usb, interface, firmware, tone, match, capture, gig, ready, friendly, andertons, gak, pmt

Id: Ii9SUCORS6k

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 20 2019