Ibanez VA3 Virtual Amp

This thing sounds great right out of the box. HOWEVER, a product like this has a very limited appeal. Editing patches is the typical Ibanez multi-stomp routine. It actually uses 3 knobs so it's a little more intuitive than other products that only use buttons. This thing sounds great but only if you're playing through a hi-fi system or recording. If you stick this thing through ANY kind of guitar amp-it will stink. Not that it sounds bad- it just feels wrong.

The Noise reduction is great- it makes the unit quiet. Quiter than ZOOM's ZNR. Ibanez VA-3 doesn't buzz in front of CRTs like alot of other products- important if you use a computer for recording. The AMP SIMULATIONS are pretty darn close-VOX AC-30, Twin Reverb, JCM900, Laney Metal and others. Since I can't afford to buy all the real amps- this is a real maney saver plus it'll fool almost everyone. As a bonus, there are chorus,flange, reverb, effects that all sound great.

This thing shouldn't be used at a gig and piped through a guitar amp. For studio recording, this thing is great. It's plastic so don't beat it to death.

I've tried every single "AMP SIMULATOR" I could possibly get my hands on in the under $500 category and this one beats them all without question. For recording, you can't do any better. Again, this is a very limited scope for this product. Most guitarists already have an amp and would not need this if they like their sound. I've tried teh ZOOM 3030, 1010, 505, Digitech RP-10 RP-5, ART SGE ECC, Morely JD-10, All the cheap Sans Amp products. The IBANEZ wins hands down- no contest. DO NOT BUY THIS UNLESS YOU ARE RECORDING. This unit saves the pain of miking an amp and sounds great ONLY for that putpose and nothing else. If you want a great live unit, this is the wrong place to look.

Very easy to use...didnt have manual but didnt need it. Editing patches is very simple.

Ah...sound quality...well the reviewer before me was very enthusiastic about it, and I too bought it because it was highly recommeded, but I differ in my opinion of it. In my opinion, its great for direct recording if you dig Tube screamer and light overdrive type sounds, but I personally thought it close to useless for getting massive death metal type sounds. I just couldnt seem to get a good massive palm- muted chugging sound out of it. My SansAmp GT-2 to me sounds much warmer sounding, gives better, glassier, blues tones and gives excellent heavy/death metal tones direct to tape. The Ibanez though does have some very nifty features like its digital doubler, chorus, flanger, delay and very nice reverb which all sound very nice. The digital doubler is very handy when you want stereo guitar tracks but don't want to record to different guitar tracks manually (where your riffs have to be played exactly the same each time). It also has very nice noise reduction which cuts noise off very smoothly. But like I said, as guitar tone is highly subjective I highly recommend you listen to this thing before you buy it. I messed with eq and distortion/amp settings for days (and I'm still messing with it) and while I've gotten some nice direct to tape sounds I cant get massive cranial crushing, super rich sucked mid death metal tones that I'm after. One trick hower that you can do is to run your favorite distortion pedal into it and then adjust your cab sim/eq settings until you get a cool direct sound. Oh...also the VA-3 doesnt sound too hot going into an amp unless you really mess around with its eq/cab sim settings along with your amp's eq settings. Also, contrary to what the previous reviewer said, SansAmp does make a programable rackmount version of their amp sim. Anyways...yeah for the price I paid for it used I can't complain too much. Good for getting Tube screamer sounds on tape but thats about it in my opinion. I like the direct clean sounds on my Zoom 3030 and on my Digitech RP-1 much better.

So far no problems. Might want to take a backup as it is cased in plastic.

Havent dealt with them.

I might buy it again just to use it for extra tone variety for direct recording and for its reverbs,delays,doubler,ect... but for getting real heavy hardcore death metal distortion or real warm glassy SRV tones on tape, I would recommend the SansAmp GT-2 as a better option. The Hughes & Kettner Red Box is also an excellent cab sim as well. I often run the GT-2 into the Red Box to warm up the direct sound even further. They work very well together.

First I have to say I am exptremely surprised noone have even heard of this unit in all the musicstores I have visited. I read about it in a review in a music magazine and was so impressed that I ordered one without having heard it with my own ears. This is a very well sounding ampsimulator to an affordable price.
It is built into a compact floorunit with 4 pedals and you also get a few effects all have stereo capabilities. It also has a three band graphic eq, noise suppressor and a tuner which tracks fairly good. The power supply is external. No external loop jacks are included. This is more or less a plug and play unit since there are not many parameters to modify and the included presets covers most of the sounds possible to produce from this unit. I have tried to tweak the parameters to find new even better sounds but Ibanex have done a very good job when they designed the presets.
However if you want to tweak it is very easy. Each effect has 3 parameters and there are 3 knobs to tweak with. Like most other Ibanez units there are no extreme features in this box. Not even the parameters have extreme levels so how much you ever twist the knobs you will never find any really bad sounds.
There is no real compare function instead there a LED blink when you reach the stored value of a parameter you are tweaking. There is also no LCD display, only 2 LED digits which handles all communication with the user. This means you cannot store any patchnames. This and the fact there are only 24 user patches (which are the same as the preset patches) makes it very difficult to remember what sound I am erasing when I want to store a new sound I have created to a patch.
When you are playing the pedals could be used in patch or manual mode. In patch mode you have 1 pedal do BANK UP and 3 pedals to select patch in the bank. You cannot do BANK DOWN. In manual mode you can switch the effect on/off. There is one pedal for each effecttype. The types are AMP, TONE, STEREO IMAGE and AMBIENCE. AMP includes 12 difference amptypes. TONE is the 3 band grafic eq. STEREO IMAGE includes flanger , chorus, tremolo (which actually is a triangularwave chorus) and doubling. AMBIENCE includes reverb and delay. The switch of patches and effects is completely silent.
The manual is very thin since there are very few things you have to set but what I miss is some kind of guidence how to use the parameters to get the best out of the unit. However the only thing I had to use the manual to was to see what was included in the presets and how to switch the noise supressor off.
The reason I give it an 8 and not 10 is the lack of a descent compare function and the trouble knowing where to store new patches.

For this price I think the sound is unbeatable. I havent heard the Sansamp and it might be as good as the VA3 but the Sansamp has on the other hand no effects at all and no programmability.
For me the Amp simulations sounds really great. I am using it with a Fender Strat Lone Star direct into the mixer and compared to the Boss GT-5/GX-700 (including COSM technology) the VA3 gives almost as good sound. Maybe better in some cases. With the Boss I really tried to get this hardrock sound of the 70'ies but I couldn't get it`. In the VA3 it was just there in a preset. For some reason I just couldn't resist strumming the first chords of "Smoke on the water" and believe me or not. It really reminded me of the intro on Deep Purple's "Made in Japan" version of that song. This thing really made me want to play old tunes by Deep Purple, AC/DC, Van Halen or Steve Ray Vaughn Lynard Skynard and Hank Williams. It even made me play some speed metal which never even tried before but the patch was there so I had to try and it sounded great. What I miss is Hank Marvin.
I don't really know if it sounds like the real thing but the review in the musicmagazine said, I quote "This thing doesn't sound like a Vox AC30 or Fender Twin. It IS a Vox AC30 and a Fender Twin ".
Compared to the Boss GT-5/GX-700, the Boss of course gives lots of more effects and much more modification possibilities. If you want a real personal sound the VA3 is not for you.
The Amps thats supposed to be simulated are Fender Twin, Marshall JMP900, different Marshall stacks, Vox AC30, and some other I don't remember. All have a different sound ranging from Blues, country hardrock, grunge to speed and deathmetal. It is though a little bit difficult to get good clean sounds since the eq is a little weak. With only 3 bands and only +-7dB it doesn't change the sound very much.
Another thing I found amazing was that the distorion was very clear even compared to the GT-5. I can do sixstring distorted chords and it doesn't sound bad. It is also very easy to play. Maybe this is b ecause I prefer to play with very little noisesuppression with the VA3. It does produce noise, even with the clean sounds but the noise doesn't increase so much when you increase the gain on the dist as it does on the GT-5. If you don't like noise at all you will find the VA3 noisy but I like the noise from this unit. If you ever have tried a Zoom 9030 the VA3 is rather similar when it comes to noise.
About the effect there isn't much to say. They sound fairly good and do their job. The flanger is a little unclear, the tremolo is actually a chorus with a triangular LFO but sound exciting in small amounts, the chorus is okay, the delay sounds very soft but you can't set the number of repeats, the reverb also lacks the possiblility to tweak the length and character. You can only select one of 6 reverbtypes and the mix with the direct sound. There is no compressor included but the ampsetting includes a certain amount of compression. The noisesupressor can make the VA3 very quiet without making it hard to play but there is a noisetail when you sustain very long tones which doesn't sound very well.
I haven't tried the VA3 through a guitar amp but with a real amp present why would you need an ampsimulator? Even Ibanez states in the manual that to obtain the best sound it should be connected directly into the mixer. However it should be possible to use with a guitar amp since there is a parameter affecting all patches where you can select the output filtering to be matched to line or a combo or a stack.
All the credits for the 10 below is the ampsimulation.

I only use it for homestudio purposes so I can't tell if it will last on a worldtour. The casing is the same as other Ibanez multieffects and I guess the electronics also are similar (if this thing isn't a fake and there really is a microtubeamp inside :-) ) so I suggest you have a look under the other Ibanez products in the effets database. However my experience with other Ibanez equip- ment is that they are very reliable.

Never had any trouble with Ibanez stuff and never been in touch with the company.

I would definitely buy it again. Actually I have bought it twice. I first ordered it from a mailorder company but they had a backorder for it so long that I rushed away and bought a Boss GT-5 instead. After a couple of weeks a came to my senses and changed the $750 GT-5 to a VA3. Not because the GT-5 sounded bad but because the VA3 suitet my purpose better. The price is much lower, the size makes it fit into your gigbag, the weight can't be more than 2 pounds than the GT-5 and the VA3 sounds almost as good and sometimes even better. With the GT-5 I always ended up tweaking parameters forever when what I actually want to do is play and this thing also makes me a feel as a better guitarplayer. For homestudio recording the VA3 is perfect.
Before buying it I tried lots of other units. The Digitech RP-6, Zoom 3030, Boss ME-8 and Korg AX30G is in the same pricerange, are all floorunit but has lots of more effects but the ampsound where not at all as good as in the VA3 with the Korg as a clear second. The Digi- tech Valve State has tons of more effects, is double the price and has real nice dynamics when you're playing but I felt the sound had more life in the VA3. The Boss GX700/GT5 is very similar in the sound which is no wonder since they are supposed to emulate almost the same type of amplifiers. The price is double or triple the price of a VA3 and they are also much larger and heavier but has also a much, much better eq-section. You also get tons of stereoeffects which I prefer to have in a separete unit in the effectloop on the mixer. Other units I would have liked to try is the Sansamp and a Hughes & Kettner unit I forgot the name of including a Red Box. They are supposed to give a real good sound lined and are cheaper and smaller like stompboxes. I have also heard that the manuals for these are really good giving advise for parametersettings. These 2 units are however not programmable and have no effects at all included.
If I shall suggest any improvement on the VA3 I would replace the modulation and ambience effects with a better eq, an analog autowah and an outlet for expressionpedal for volume and wah. A small chorus or phaser before the ampsection wouldn't be bad either but as it is right now, for this price I couldn't find anything better for use at home.