AMT SS20 vs. Mercuriall Audio SS11X - Metal Demo

This is a quick demo these 2 wonderful hardware and plugin guitar preamps. I have the AMT SS20 since years now, and it’s the core every setup I use. I always wondered how the AMT SS11A/B does sound and differs from the SS20, but I was never able to find a good, consistent comparison online, nore to find a unit to test it out myself.

So I was really happy to learn about the Mercuriall SS11X and downloaded the demo version to try out, and took the chance to compare it to the SS20.

For the sake of simplicity I set the EQ flat on both preamps, tweaked only the gain and switched between crunch and lead channels (who cares about the cleans in a metal demo… and btw the clean is a stellar Fender stile sounding channel!).

For a fair comparison I routed the SS11X to go thru the SS20 loop return and then thru its Cabinet Emu OUT, so that I had myself a good reference point (I didn’t use the cabinet IR inside the SS11X, nore noise gate, reverbs or the overdrives). On a EHX 720 I’ve recorded 4 audio clips to test the preamps using the very same tracks.

My 2 cents: tough I’m an hardware guy, I was really well impressed by how good the SS11X sounds! I’ve found it to be very close to the SS20 (the latter having a bit more gain and a more aggressive sound). It’s really cool to have the options to select between the A or B version (A being actually very close to the SS20 sound palette, which I like better, since it’s not so cutting and edgy as B, but that’s my personal taste) and the triodes used (12AX7 or 6N2P, in the demo I mostly used the 12AX7 since there’s one inside the SS20).

Also the noise levels are quite in the same range as the hardware unit (the SS20 is a bit noisier, but it’s a high-gain distortion pedal).

Feel free to share and drop a comment below!

Recording Chains:
AMT SS20
EHX 720 (clip loops) - SS20 (cabinet emu out) - Mackie Mixer - Zoom H4n

Mercuriall SS11X
EHX 720 (clip loops) - soundcard IN - SS11X (preamp only, no cabinet IR) - soundcard out - SS20 loop return (cabinet emu out) - Mackie Mixer - Zoom H4n

No post EQs added, I only applied a normalization on the wav. files.

Guitar: Nude Guitars 013 Baritone (aluminum neck, tuned B-b, Bareknucle Nailbomb bridge pickup)

AMT: https://amtelectronics.com
Mercuriall: https://mercuriall.com

Nude Guitars:   / nnuuddee.guitars