Once again, thank you so much @LievenDV for such a in depth feedback.
It really made me happy to read this sentence immediately. I really feel it is honest and not biased by anything. You are really making all the work and checking every single detail to develop your opinion and feedback. You don’t hold yourself to point the weak points or things that you don’t personally like, but you also give emphasis to the good ones and I don’t feel you get into an unhealthy spiral either into the good or the bad point. You also try to understand the things and clearly understand that the device is not developed only to please your needs and likings, but the ones of a lot of people and a lot of use cases, so you understand that this turns certain things a bit harder than others.
And that’s exactly why it really made me happy to read that sentence and in bold
Into the real feedback…
This is rather easy using CV plugins. But I guess at this point you already know how to do it (let me know if you don’t and if I’m clearly making a wrong assumption!)
This is also really nice to read! Regardless of the tools, the gigs should always go really nice and make us happy. If the Dwarf had a contributing behaviour on that, in the scope of this talk, that’s even better
On gigs, this kind of thing always happens. Better this way than something going wrong with the recording and bugging the Dwarf during your gig.
Maybe it’s worth for us to consider moving it to stable soon Your and others’ feedback about the plugin will help us a lot on that!
That’s a rather nice outcome. It’s always nice when technology can help us in this type of situation! I hope that he improves his condition soon and they can both go enjoy your concerts pretty soon! Maybe I would suggest they start with the acoustic gig and not the metal band just to keep things smooth
Thank you so much for sharing it with the community!
I like it
Were you still able to use the WebGUI at this stage? Wasn’t it just in cache? Most likely when the PC went to sleep, the USB ports also turned off and the device got disconnected. This is somehow a bug/feature of the OS from the computer, more than MOD (If that was the case).
@LievenDV Have you tried running an IR cab loader at the beginning of your guitar signal chain? I’m primarily an electric guitar player, but in my experience, using an acoustic IR can add a lot of life to an otherwise sterile and quacky piezo sound. Provided that you’re able to find a good one, because some of them may sound bad with your specific guitar/pickup, but fortunately, there’s a good free resource out there: IR database - Acoustic IR
If the CPU allows, you can even add a relatively neutral sounding preamp (Alembic should do the trick) right after IR and you’ll get an equivalent of something like Fishman Aura or NUX Optima Air that way, right inside your Dwarf patch.
Ok. So most likely it was some glitch. Anyway, please keep an eye and report if that happens again.
Oh this is super cool! Thank you @Matt for sharing the tip and also a source for nice IRs - for the trick
I have a personal project (for a while now and moving super slowly) where I’m moving a “Frankenstein” hollow body guitar with a big resonance box (something that when I saw it immediately made me think about Jack White’s Seven Nation Army Guitar, but rather a different look) where I want to add a DIY piezo amplification system. Basically trying to kill a fretting issue of the guitar, by putting a set of piezo under the bridge and with this raise it a bit, on top, I get another type of sound for the guitar. The piezos are there and the job of fixing the fretting mostly works. Yet, I still didn’t find the time to take care of the rest of the circuitry.
Anyway, when it’s finally done, this may be really cool to test it out! So thanks for that
Chapter IX: New power supply and plugin exploration for Heavy Metal
Here I am for my next episode.
Although my conclusion has as much ++ as --; the overal sentiment is “still happy with the Dwarf, gettign better at using it and willign to dig deeperto optimize”. Some specific “heavy metal” wishes seem hard to fulfill but I think I am a tad more patient and experimental than the average guitarist and I’m willing to search for answers.
The Members of the Board
I’ve been using the Dwarf on weekly reharsals now.and I achieved a new level of “reduced setup”.
I bought this pedalboard amp to attach to my 2x12 maney cabinet. Now my rig consists of a pedalboard, cab and that’s it! €79 for a power amp that is loud enough for heavy metal rehearsals on a 2x12 is a steal.
My plan to have both vocals and guitar through the Dwarf didn’t work out so well for vocals.
The reason was simple: While my Lehle switcher fixed the ground loop noise on my guitar signal, I couldn’t on the vocal as I only have one Lehle and I want to send guitar to my cab and vocal to the PA.
So I remembered the tip somebody gave me; to by this cheap powersupply from Thomann. It has less power but I’m not powering anything else for now.
I haven’t tested it on my cab yet but the noise I had in my headphones while testing it yesterday was GONE!
Alright, too bad i can’t go rehearsal this Monday and I’m to Austria next week for vacation This sounds promising though.
It’s a cheap fix and I’ll get my vocal through there soon, as I also bought a jack-to-xlr cable to run it to the PA again without having to put a jack to jack cable into the insert of a PA channel.
So, if all goes well, next rehearsal I’ll have Guitar and mic going into the Dwarf, out 1 going to the little solid state amp (working fine already) and out 2 the the input of the PA…without having the Lehle in between them.
Creating the powerful dirt
Yesterday I was having fun tweaking a metal guitar sound. i couldn’t use my own guitar because I would wake my family members but I’ve put a dry DI guitar signal in the file player and I can play guitar on auto-pilot while turning the dials.
Based off my current rig, I started experimenting with amps and some pedals to put in front of it.
You would think the Veja Titan or FatFrog would be my goto but for now, the 2 main competitors are:
1: Brummer MetalTone → Veja Onyx → EQ
2: Brummer MetalTone - > One of the Gx series (I think the bass amp)
(sorry, the Gx series all look the same, one of the reasons I need some plugin art on them
The ToneZone is a beast that takes care of most of the tone I’m after.
I find that the “distortion” control doesn’t give me much nuance but combining it with a halfway gain and halfway clipping Onyx, we’re getting somewhere.
Shaping the dirt
I made button binds for the mid channels on an orange 10 channel EQ (beta, can’t find beta plugins on the site to check its name). These 3 buttons do A LOT of the shaping.
Having some EQ buttons on the timal frequency ranges at your feet when rehearsing is no luxury.
These are the learnings you pick up and make an integral part of your workflow.
RMPRo and limiter
I also experimented with the RMPro mastering plugin and even though I feel what it does, I’m still not sure whether I should purchase it. Most of the time, I won’t be able to use it uses so much processor power. It adds to the end product signal but times used versus the price of the plugin make it hard to justify for me.
I read about somebody throwing out his Calf limiter and going for the RMPro.
A limiter? Why didn’t I experiment with that yet?
Though, I’ve put myself over my superficial dislike of plugins without interface, all tasting like macarel when looking at them
Adding a limiter and tweaking a bit kept my outgoing guitar signal in the green while it became more “present”, For high gain tones, you can push that quite far I guess.
Usability comparison with a DAW plugin
Last week I saw anfor a free ML sound lab guitar plugin, “Amped roots 2.0”
Featuring a “5034” take on an EVH amp.
Our lead guitarist threw it in his daw, I plugged in my Explorer copy and damn; instant greatness with some easy options on board and mathcing cab and mic’ing to go with it. It’s a whole different deal but what a dream it would be to have a EVH/whatnot 5xxx competitor amp in the plugin list
Shop?
I managed to add items to a cart via the Dwarf browser interface.
I never created an acocunt so I have no idea what will happen.
There is no way to access a shop online either. It’s hard to figure out online which plugins you oay fr and which you don’t.
Also; What happens to my voucher code if I don’t use it all its value at once.
in short: the UX of the shop section has some fundamentals to fix/offer
Wrap up
I invested quite some time in these things but it was fun because the hour went late real quick
This was all done on headphones, this time void of the previous noise ocmplaints I had bout it. I hope my 2 out signals will be like this as well when I plug it to my 2x12.
Headphones =/= “loud with air in a room” so next time the laptop might go with my to the reharsal room.
Sentiments of this journal entry
++ simple powersupply looks promising noise wise
++ I keep finding this a fun tool and powerful, Although the zoom in/out still isn’t intuitive, the GUI is a fun tool to set up a rig.
++ file player and recorder once again prove their worth in this testing rig
++ can’t wait to experiment more
++ Discovered what the RmPro but also a simple limiter can do to a high gain sound
°° checking beta plugins on the site would be nice
°°I find it hard to identify amp plugins when I see them, since many of them look quite the same. Don’t throw strings of random letters at me, I’m a visual guys, seeing my paths in front of me
– still a little surprised that the ground loop noise can be an issue when launching, while all the high tech stuff is working so well
– It’s harder than expected to get a good metal sound going. I enjoy the search but the Usual Suspect Veja Titan surely can’t do what a, for example 5150 sound does.
– The RMPro is cool but expensive and takes a lot of your processor power. Times used/purchase price will be inefficient for me
– UX of plugin shop info and funnels need more love
@brummer I’m always willing to do a call on reviewing ToneZone versus FatFrog and what works for me and what doesn’t. I sometimes think an amp based of the toneZone with slightly better/relevant control intervals on the dials and some ‘amp punch’ to counter the shriek of a pedal alone might put you on track of an interesting amp competitor.
See you guys next time for a new step in my journey
Once again thank you a lot for this @LievenDV!
I noted a lot of things from your post as always.
There are a couple that i can directly answer you.
You don’t really need to create an account on any shop. I’m not even sure what is that exactly and a few days ago was the first time that I heard about that (probably Shopify - the platform we use for the plugin purchases - changed something or kind of turned the incentive for everyone to create an account more present…I’m not really sure). You don’t need to create an account, when you access the Plugin Store, you are doing it from the device, so the API knows the serial number of your device and if you buy a plugin it matches it with that serial. That’s exactly why we already reported that the licenses are device-based and we plan to change that because more and more people own multiple MOD devices and we agree that they should only buy the license once.
These vouchers have no deadline and they just expire when you use the full value. You can do it one or multiple times. If you have any problems with this, please feel free to reach me out directly.
Hi @LievenDV
Unfortunately I’m running completely out of time, so currently I can’t do any development at all. I hope that end of the year the situation sattle a bit and I could come back to the development board.
Anyway, nice to hear that you think the MetalTone have some potential.
no pressure from me bro! Just dropping a line to let know know I’m out there if you need a …“soundboard”. (patting myself on the back for that pun)
It’s the most used pedal on my Dwarf right now
While its range of settings don’t do a lot to the sound overall, its base character dominates over the whole chain. The amp behind the metal tone has more the role off adding some bass and polishing the edges. It’s needs some shaping but the fact that it has beaten all the other “before the amp” pedal layouts for my heavy metal sounds means this is where I go from now (until there is a suitable amp for me that comes closer to what I want right OOTB).
I’m still ponderign on the multitrack recorder but I need to carve out some time to think about the concept and what the optimal workflow would be in selecting, arming, recording, re-recording, volumes on other tracks etc why on hardware-only.
Update; I can confirm that testing it on a guitar amp without the Lehle in between for ground loop is now noiseless, thanks to the Thomann NT 1215 power adapter!
Yesterday we had a gig with a dodgy makeshift setup.
The PA was very basic and I had no reverb on vocals from the sound guy.
There were no mics for the amps… there wasn’t a mic stand so I taped my mic to a stand one of the photographers there was using
But there I was with only a tuner, the Mod Dwarf and my Harley Bentron 100W solid state power amp pedal into my Laney 2x12 cab.
guitar blasting through channel 1 (Brummer FatFrog into a MetTone and some EQ)
vocals tunning through channel 2 (with my fav reverb settings)
Minimal setup, little stress and no noise thanks to the Thomann replacement power supply.
I was… Saved by the Dwarf!
(that could be a new song :p)
Point Fifty in action, with me second from right and a Dwarf on my board ^^
Quite interesting gig conditions. I played a few dodgy gigs in my life, but not having a mic stand when I needed one never happen to me. That’s even more curious if we consider that you did have a sound guy loool
I’m glad to know that you have been saved by a single Dwarf (copyright free sentence, you can use it on the lyrics of the “Saved by the Dwarf” if you wish )
Just want to throw in here. I was having noise from the Dwarf when using any routing configuration involving pedals or an amp external to the dwarf. I saw this tip about using another power supply and I thought I’d try it out. I scrounged around and found a 12V 3.0A power supply with no ground (which I believe is the key factor) and all the noise disappeared. Thanks!
Dwarf Journal Chapter X: A recap and looking forward
Alright, I have been using the Dwarf for a while now and it has checked a lot of boxes when it comes to stuff to try. The main goal was making this unit the core of my live and home setup.
I currently use the Dwarf for: - Acoustic guitar + vocals
(Maton guitar and sm58 -->Dwarf–>Udo Rösner Da capo amp)
I also play some electric guitar with a “gentle breakup” sounds in this setting.
- Heavy metal / thrash guitar
(electric guitar ->Dwarf–>harley benton amp pedal → Laney 2x12 cab)
I’m still experimenting with amp setups and their CPU use. I’m also cycling through 3 guitars and each one likes a different setup. As soon as I settle on that, vocals will follow.
- recording
Thanks yo routing options, I get dry and wet signals; I usually put guitar in L and vocal in R on a strereo recorder and split them later; I still need to figure out the CV driven "start all recorders at once setup
- Digital piano
Via Sound Fonts (SF2/SFZ files) I already had a lot of fun, combining my Roland GO piano with the Dwarf.
Expectations versus reality
There were some things on the path of my journey that needed smoothening. The long wait after the IndieGoGo campaign, the noise issue with the power supply, not finding my taste and ways for high gain sounds until I tried some counter-intuitive pedal placements, a CPU that couldn’t handle some plugin combinations, MOD Devices going belly-up, voucher codes not working, difficulties making connection (browser->usb->dwarf)…
While The company is still lacking in many of these fronts, I must say the pro arguments outweight these struggles. The threat is of course that not all customers are as persistent as I am
Because
today I’m considering selling my remaining favourite Strymon units (El Capistan and Bluesky) because of the lush sounds I’ve seen and heard on demos (and on my own boards).
I HATE wiring up pedalboards and bad connections while a “purple cable” in the MOD interface is unlimited, free and never faulty!
This thing goes on my board with my wireless receiver, my Harley Benton power amp pedal and a boost pedal and that’s it; for the first time, I have a universal rig for everything.
The interaction between plugin makers and users brings supply and demand closer together
Some things are impossible or a hassle to achieve with other hardware. (ex: Specific recording setups)
The wonderful and powerful community here, with a lot of people listening, looking and thinking along.
The future?
Expansion
I ordered an M-Vave Chocolate so I can switch snapshots or boards on stage in an easy fashion
I will possibly use is to trigger samples on stage as well.
Considering the purchase of an FRFR speaker so the cab sims become more relevant and exploring sounds doesn’t rely on “loud runs” in the rehearsal room.
Perhaps I’ll get my a Duo X some day for more processor power?
More amp sim experiments
There still is so much to explore, especially what @brummer and the Veja guys like @Jan are setting out!
Become one of the “MOD Metal” or “MOD Singer/Songwriter” ambassadors of MOD
At a certain point, I want to create a “releasable” set of pedalboards with documentation that can be a guide through a customer journey. The streamlined version of this Journal with usuable boards and good primers to start from; combined with the documentation to manage expectations and to act in a pro-active matter.
Synth fun
When I come upon some solid blocks of time, I will explore the world of CV and synthesizing sounds, but at this point the guitarist and singer in me has more practical need for things
Do I still recommend the Dwarf?
YES!
BUT you need to take into account some factors and you must be willing to invest your time
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there is now as well a quad Recorder
Downside: you can’t open this files (currently) within the MOD.
Upside: Nearly any DAW open them as 4 channel Mono files, so you don’t need to split them by yourself.
Ah yes now you mention it, I recently discovered it and 4 channels should cover most of my recordings:
1 dry vocal
1 dry guitar
1 wet vocal
1 wet guitar
Last couple of months I have been experimenting with modeling for the AIDA-X technology. I also try to support and encourage others to do so, sometimes even for means it wasn’t initially meant for.
I love the open mind in this community and I think there are a lot of people reading and thinking “it’s a bridge too far for them to try to do the modeling thing” but it IS a rewarding experiment.
Modeling hardware isn’t a new concept but I was never offered this interesting package before.
Not only real hardware gear but your own, newly created virtual sounds can be poured into a model you can you on both hardware and in your DAW again.
Modeling pedals or even wrapping up a sound with amps, comps, EQ etc in DAW and pouring them into an amp sound.
It’s fascinating to see that you can go from a bunch of plugins and settings in your DAW to a single file. All the complexity of plugins, sims, settings, filters…they all converge into 1 singularity: the target.wav file
That is all the algorithm needs to be able to learn how to get from A to B. Not in the way the computer created it but based on how it sounds. Instead of telling your gear what to do, you ask it to listen…
Sorry for wandering of onto a philosophical path for a minute there.
Anyway, to honor this marvel, I converged my own learnings into an article that I pitched in the Modeling section of the forum
(let me know if you don’t and if I’m clearly making a wrong assumption!)
just to keep things smooth 
This sounds promising though.
