Walrus Audio ACS 1 Amp+Cab Simulator

I joined my first (garage / basement) rock band in 1965, when cars in America didn't have seatbelts, amps weren't well grounded, and singing guitarists like me were accustomed to electric shocks. My first amp was a 1964 Deluxe Reverb. Flash forward a few decades, and I was playing through a Marshall "Bluesbreaker" reissue. Flash forward to the 2020s, and I've started playing pubs in an era where the "drummer" is often just sitting and beating on a box and everything runs through the P.A. system. Initially I thought it would be impossible for me to adjust. But with ACS1 (plus Canvas, Fender Tre-Verb, Carbon Copy, and Greer Lightspeed) I can feed the P.A. system with rhythm, lead, and steel guitar sounds that express my thoughts and desires -- without a real amp. Walrus chose two of my favorite "own" amps to simulate and threw in a Vox for good measure. I'd still rather play through amps, but this is (to an old-timer at least) a mind-bending option to have.

I got the acs1 because of how unsatisfied I was with the dirty tones of the simplifier dlx.

As soon as I tried it, I fell in love. The clean tones are incredible. I spent hours just playing with me headphones before even trying the acs1 with my pedalboard.

When I tried it with pedals, it kept giving. It pairs really well with klon style pedals and makes the nordland odr-1 really shine (the simplifier did very poorly here).

The user interface is also very good, to the point I did not need to ever look up the manual after a quick skim when I first tried it.

Highly recommended.

I got this and a UAFX Dream '65. Long story short, I kept the UAFX one, and sent this back, but not because I think it's worse.

Ok, I live in a flat, and even a 1W tube amp will make your neighbours hate you. So I started searching for alternatives. I got small amps, big amps with attenuation, gutiar amp headphones, you name it. ALL the amps are too loud in a flat, and headphones just are not the same. The only good ones I had were the Boss Wazar Air ones, but you HAVE to use the app, and it worked maybe 10% of the time. With a good app, those would be incredible for practice and doodling around the house.

Enter Strymon with the Iridium, it got good reviews, everyone wanted one, so I started looking for a preamp, cab simulator, amp-in-a-box style pedal to get rid of my amps.

I didn't want a simplifier because I hate knobs and I was reluctant to use a UAFX pedal because they only modeled one specific amp each.

So I had two main options, Strymon Iridium or Walrus Audio ACS1. Of these two there are more similarities than differences, but the differences... well, made a difference.

I wanted stereo, which both have, but no need to use a Y adapter with the ACS1, I'd like to have more than one option for an amp, and both have basically the same, with different flavours, it's up to personal taste.

What made me choose the Walrus one, was the ability to have two amps in two different channels for a wet/dry rig. That was it. All being equal (to me) I would be dumb to not choose this one because it had all the other would offer me, plus one feature.

Other than that, the way you update and load IRs is MUCH better in the Walrus. No app needed, no need to install a program, just connect to it, open a website and you're set.

The one thing the ACS1 has (and the Iridium) that really makes a difference is the room knob. It's not a reverb, and it's not virtualization. I can't really describe it, but it gives you a fell of space, like if the speaker was moving nearer and farther away as you turn the knob. It sets you in a space, rather than "throwing" sound at you. It's especially useful you plan to use headphones, as I do.

On the bad side, if you want gain, this ain't it chief. The modeled the three amps to the point of break up, and the gain stops there. As a pedal platform, it works great, but you won't get gain beyond something out of the early 60's Yardbirds/Rolling Stones/Bluesbreakers overdrive.

My first setup for silent home practice, was connecting my pedalboard to a small mixer with instrument level inputs. It was clear something was missing in the sound, so I started looking for a pedal doing amp and cab sim. In the end, the choice was between this pedal and a strymon iridium. To my ears the strymon pedals always seem to sound somewhat too clean, and so I chose this pedal. Apart from the slightly better sound, the ease of selecting amp and cab in the pedal without having option-overload (the built-in IRs are great) was the second feature to convince me. The room knob makes the sound great.
My setup normally consists of a fender deluxe reverb, and a single coil rickenbacker 660/6, and while the sound using the pedal may not be 100% exactly the same, it is way good enough for me to get that amp+cab feeling when playing through headphones.