DrScythe Reviews III - Kuassa Cerberus

Intro

You could ask yourself: why even bother with bass amp modeling? Often enough the bass is recorded and mixed as a DI track. Even live some bass player don’t use an amp. So why spend time on creating a versatile piece of software for basses? Then on the other hand there are still a lot of bass amps out there so there are also a lot of people who’d like an amplified bass sound. Like me. And I am so happy that the team of Kuassa decided to create this. I know that giving away the final verdict at the beginning is kind of pointless but I would like to make something clear at the beginning: I bought this and I am just so satisfied with it that I wanted the world to know about it. So here we go…

I decided to do this review with the help of the screenshot so can easily see what I am writing about.

Functionalities

1. I’d call this the ‘management panel’. Input, Input level, Presets, Gate, Quality-Switch – you can see them so I won’t list everything in detail here. I love the option to compare presets and the master CAB-switch. While it works I’d say that the preset window is somewhat clumsy in terms of handling but I don’t know any better examples (or at least none with other flaws) so I’ll let it pass. Personally I tried the Dry-Wet-option once but to be honest: it only makes sense if you really change the sound via Cerberus.

2. Now it’s time for what you could control on the real thing (if it were the pictured rack device). VALVE gives you an extremely rich and fat tone and if you crank up gain it will slowly begin to become something on the border between heavy saturation and overdrive. It will keep an extremely low punch if you don’t cut out the bass via EQ or Cabs what is really great. FET behaves a lot more, well, behaved. It’s clean to hell and back. It can feel a little sterile at times but you have to force that. It’s a lot more flexible if you’re willing to use all the other controls (including those on your bass). DRIVE is self-explanatory. It features a slightly generic sound but it’s usable. Personally I would put TSE B.O.D. in front of VALVE or FET and call it a day. COMPRESS does is job subtlety but effective. You can use it as a nice support up to noon and from there it acts more and more like a ‘drunk bassist’s best friend’. I don’t use CONTOUR myself a lot. It feels like a scoop at the mids which cleans up a little but I prefer shaping my tone with the EQs.

3. What more of an EQ-section do you need? LO effectively controls the bass its working point was chosen very well. The Boost really adds a lot of punch. I wouldn’t use it unless your bass sounds really thin or you want to have fun. But for recording tasks it just blows up the whole bass too much. Maybe if you’re using a pick and a pickup close to the bridge. LO MID and HI MID will help you massively adjusting Cerberus to your liking or manipulating the sound to quite extreme settings, especially when using the FET mode. HI and its boost option can be used for slightly dull basses and I really like to use those when playing with my Epiphone T-Bird Pro. Especially while recording because I can remove too bright sounds quite easily but not recover them from a rendered but dull signal. Excellent work here!

4. To answer the introductory question of No 3: A graphic EQ! I am not particularly fond of those but after I tried a Mesa Mark V I know that they can be really helpful. In this case I have to say: I don’t need it. It works fine but I am happy with what the regular EQ does and so I never switch it on but for reviewing purposes. If you want to know something specific about it you might want to check it out yourself as you can download Cerberus from kuassa.com

5. CAB and MIC selection and a MIX bar. I like most of the included cabs and mics although I mainly use the 8x10 one (which most probably is a SVT-cab-simulation). This section is quite unspectacular but functional so…that’s it. Better to hear some stuff later on.

6. The mics can be positioned freely although one can hear the changes quite intensely. So I think it would’ve been better to just offer 3 or 4 distances and the two angles. Maybe a choice between cone and cap but that’s all you need. But it feels and looks nice. So no complaints here ;)

7. If you don’t like the included cabs you can load yours here. There’s also a Limiter and a Master Output Level. They all work perfectly fine. There’s not much to say about here because I don’t know which IRs you would want to use and I only checked the function once.

Sound

So now over to some samples. I used my father’s 1974 Framus S-380 (Jazz Bass) and my own C-tuned Epiphone T-Bird Pro. Settings were as shown.

First the pure DIs

Preset01



Preset02

Preset03

Preset04

Preset05

Preset06

Preset07

Preset08

Link: http://www.kuassa.com/products/cerberus-bass-amplifikation/

Conclusion

I love it. Do I need to say more? It’s really fantastic. VALVE, slight compression, Contour off, EQ adjusted to T-Bird or Framus, 8x10, done. Pure fat and warm growl.

Overview

Pro	Neutral	Con
Sounds (!!!)	Preset management	Nothing
Ease of use	Drive a little boring
Lots of options Looks Available as Standalone Price and value

PS: I used it on every DrScythe-song since 'Destiny':

DrScythe Recording Blog - Part III: Plans and projectmanagement

As the planned release of my latest song was heavily delayed I wanted to write something about plans. And as a “Bachelor of Science E-Government” I even can add some professional stuff about project management.

Songs, albums etc. as projects

When people refer to something as a project they often want to emphasize that it’s a one-time event or not as important as the main-thing (like a ‘side-project’ of a band member or refurbishing their garden shed). There are several definitions for what a project is and it depends on what you are doing which one applies. Check out Wikipedia on this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project

Temporary, permanent, reoccurring – if you want to you can call anything a project and treat it like one. But the more objects, people and tasks are involved the easier it will be to actually finish something if you plan it properly. No matter what and how you’re going to do it: listing all the said things will already improve your workflow as you’ll try to organize everything a little bit automatically. After you’ve done that you can just go on with your regular procedure but not forget something this time. Or you can sort the tasks chronologically and use a waterfall model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model for this project. It also helps to connect the required resources with the tasks to make sure that the equipment or person is available.

For more modern approaches you could learn everything about SCRUM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29) and apply it to whatever you’re doing…

Back to recording: in contrast to many business projects the waterfall model is still usable for your (home) studio. You record track after track, instrument after instrument, then mix, then master, done. Even the “checkup loops” can be planned on fixed points. The most critical point is to plan backwards and with a lot of “headroom”. So from your deadline to the starting point and add about 30% of the time needed. For critical elements add 50-60% or if there is enough time double it.

For most bands the drums would be the most critical element as the other members need those for their recording sessions. So the finished task ‘drum recordings’ is a requirement for the other recording sessions etc.

Adjustments

One flaw of this method is its lack of flexibility. If you need to insert a task or change the duration of one then the entire plan has to be changed. So if the drummer can’t do the recordings for whatever reasons and there is no one to replace him – bad luck.

Or if you’re a one-man-project doing everything yourself but your grandpa dies and you got a lot of other stuff to do you find yourself jettisoning the entire plan. I initially planned to release two songs this month and now I am happy that I can finish one. And I am way more flexible than a regular band. For example I do not depend on a drum recording – I can record all the instruments using a really dull basic drum track. But that didn’t help this time. I invested several hours of work in both tracks but due to the lack of time I had to drop one song for now and finish the other one within the short period of time. So I had to redo the plan to maximize the time and it is just on spot. If I had to visit more family members on Easter I wouldn’t have been able to finish everything.

So the next time I try something more ambitious I am going to plan it with even more headroom. There are only few reoccurring tasks in recording and mixing so there’s no help to find in the modern tools of project management – except for the knowledge of projects being doomed if not planned and executed with the most possible carefulness.

This is this month’s result:

So long

DrScythe

PS: tables are great for planning, especially if you use automatic coloring.

0, red, not even begun

1, dark orange, rough idea, not ready to record

2, yellow, ready to record

3, green, recorded

4, grey, bounced with FX

5, blue, do not touch again