The first of these gives you the kind of ‘hot–rodded’ Fender sound developed by the likes of Mesa Engineering, with a typically smooth, mid–focused lead sound, while the latter adds still more gain, for a sound that Scuffham describe as ‘modern’ and I describe as ‘not my cup of tea, but very effective’. There’s enough gain on tap to produce grit when you dig in, but if you want to up the ante, you can switch in one of two lead channels. In this case, the jumping–off point is a clean sound which, depending on the setting of a Bright switch, recalls ‘blackface’ Fender Deluxe or Twin circuits, and benefits from a convincingly sweet tremolo.

Introduced in version 2.2, the Wayfarer follows the lead of the existing Stealer, Duke and Jackal in emulating a fairly broad family of related amplifier designs within a single model. Chief among these are not one but two new amp models. These practical improvements are very worthwhile, but of course it’s the new features that will turn heads. Most notable in the former category are support for the AAX 32– and 64–bit plug–in protocols, allowing S–Gear to be used within Pro Tools, and a more flexible preset structure where each preset can store two amp setups. A full list is available on the Scuffham site under ‘Release History’, and as ever, some are utilitarian while others extend the feature set. Though the latest release still isn’t an ‘integer’ update, the sum of additions in version 2.4 more than merits a second examination in these pages.

Since that review was published, Michael has continued to work tirelessly on S–Gear, and many of his updates have been free to existing users. Drawing on his experience as an amp designer at Marshall, developer Michael Scuffham took great pains to model the ways in which the various stages of an amplifier circuit interact with each other, and when I reviewed the version 2.0 in August 2012 ( I felt it came closer than most amp simulators do to capturing the elusive ‘feel’ of a valve amplifier. Although it offered only three amp models and two effects processors, these were cleverly designed to cover a very broad range of tones, from clinical, studio-clean sounds, through blues growls and country twangs, to full–on balls–out rock. Scuffham Amps’ S–Gear appeared on the scene in 2012, and quickly established itself as offering a lot of amp simulator for a modest price. Two contrasting new virtual amplifiers and a reverb add to the appeal of Scuffham Amps’ virtual amp simulator.

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