Palmer PGA-04 Speaker Simulator

You need some tweaking.

Sounds good, but lacks on Low-Mid. No compare to PDI 03, the 03 still blows it away.

Great product, but there are some other Speaker Simulator sounding really better.

How much easier could it get really? The controls are simple and the unit is easy to use in general. Basically you just run your speaker output to the input of the Palmer and then take an output to the board or wherever you are going with it. You can even use a thru jack to get your signal to a cabinet as well as taking it direct.

The sound is great! I had a Palmer PGA05 before that I was using with some rack equipment and a tube preamp and it sounded great. I got away from the rack scene and went back to using my Mesa Boogie Mark IV head but the PGA05 couldn't handle it very well. The PGA04 is made for this application though. Now I can get a huge sound from my Mesa through this Palmer unit and go direct to the board with it. This keeps the stage volume to 0, which is good since we are all using in ear monitors and running direct to the board. I tried using a digital floor modeler for a while but it was just not the same. There is nothing like a tube amp cranked up to get a a great tone. The Palmer PGA04 lets you do this with ease!!!

Palmer gear is metal and built like a tank. They use very nice knobs and keep everything simple. I would never think about needing a backup.

I have never had to deal with them but I hear they are nice people.

We are covering all types of music so I am hitting this thing with 85 watts of clean and dirty tube power and it reacts well to both. I have been playing semi-pro for about 19 years and have gone through a huge amount of equipment. I prefer tube amplifiers and anyone else that does will love the Palmer. At the moment all I use is my head and the Palmer, it don't get much better than that. I would replace it with another one if something ever happened. If you are in to good tone, get in to one of these!!!

Very easy to use. This is an analog unit, with no midi control. Front panel: level controls for filter and full range (unfiltered) volume, low (cabinet) and high (speaker) tone controls, filter color switch, full range high-cut switch, input level meter. Rear panel: speaker input, speaker thru, dual unbalanced line outputs, balanced XLR output, ground lift switches. I?ve determined that to replicate the PDI-03: 1) turn off the full range, 2) set low to 0 for flat, 5 for normal, and 10 for deep, 3) set high to 0 for mellow, 5 for normal, and 10 for bright.

For reference here?s my setup:
Guitars: Fender USA Strat (EMG SA, SA, 89)
Gibson Explorer (EMG 81, 60)
Pedalboard: Dunlop Crybaby Wah
Ibanez TS-9 Tubescreamer
Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
Tech 21 Midi Mouse
Rack: Furman PL-8 Power Conditioner
DBX 166XL Compressor
ADA MP-1 Preamp (still kicks ass!)
Palmer PGA-04 Speaker Simulator
Furman PQ-3B Parametric Equalizer
T.C. Electronic G-Major Effects Processor
Amp: 71? Fender Super Reverb

First off, I?m not a pro but have been playing guitar for about 30 years now. I like all styles of music, anything with great guitar playing, but especially hard rock and metal. In the last 10 years I?ve done a lot of research on equipment to build my ultimate rig.

My first thought about buying this was that it was an expensive, indulgent, and possibly unnecessary piece of equipment. Wrong! The PGA-04 has proven to be a very useful addition. Having the dynamics of your tube amp coming through your headphones is an awesome capability (using a good pair, with wide dynamic range like Sony MDR-7506?s). In my opinion, and many others, using preamp or pedal distortion alone pales in comparison to powertube distortion. The Palmer gets you that very nicely. You can?t beat a tube amp pushed by a pedal for smooth overdrive. I often use a patch I created on the G-Major to add an ambient reverb effect to my signal that very closely emulates the sound of a double miked amp.

Unlike the user below, I don?t have problems getting good cleans sounds. Maybe it?s the difference in amps we use. My SR (45 watts) retains its clean tone even though the PGA-04 puts an 8 ohm load on its transformer, instead of the normal 2 ohms. I was a little concerned about that before buying, and some other speaker simulators I considered put an even higher load on the amp. I generally use the normal channel with treble and bass on 5, and volume no higher than 5. I don?t think you?ll get good results ?dimeing? your amp when using the built-in load. Also, I?ve found that you?ve got to be careful about gain-staging between your system components to avoid unwanted clipping.

I usually use these settings:

Filter Volume ? 8
Full Range Volume ? 2
Low ? 5
High ? 5
Color ? Brown
Hi-cut ? On

I can achieve a wide range of tones with this setup, from classic SRV, AC/DC, and Metallica, to nu-metal sounds like Shadows Fall, Arch Enemy, and Nevermore. This type of setup should please even the most discriminating tone freaks.

Well, I?ve only had the unit for about a month now and no problems so far. I don?t really expect any due to its fairly simple design and quality construction. I wonder if the Tungsten bulbs it uses for the load will ever need to be replaced, they can get hot. I recommend leaving an empty space above it in your rack and possibly using a cooling fan, especially if you?re running a cranked 100 watt amp. Considering the number of older, functioning PDI-03 models I?ve seen for sale on EBay, reliability appears good.

I?ve never contacted them personally. I did receive the unit, in perfect condition, within a week of ordering it online from JAMS Audio. The manual does have a few mistakes regarding use, but I figured it out anyway.

This unit is a must have for silent recording or practice at home. I could see it being useful for sending your amp signal to the mixing board as well, if you gig. Yeah, it?s not exactly the same as the tone coming from a cranked amp but its close enough for me, and with no miking hassles. By the way, if you?re debating whether to buy a PGA-04 or the re-issue PDI-03, there?s an interesting interview with Palmer?s founder Martin Schmitz regarding the PDI-03 vs. the PGA-04 on JAMS Audio website (www.palmergear.com). They will both sell for the same price. What does that tell you? Stop paying $1,200 for a used PDI-03 on EBay maybe? Lastly, no I don?t work for the company but maybe I should! Hello, Palmer are you out there? :)

I just wanted to let anyone interested in knowing that you can order the PGA-04 from JAMS Audio in Nashville, the new US distributor for Palmer. Website www.palmergear.com. Also, apparently due to popular demand Palmer is re-issuing the original PDI-03 model at the end of May (5/2005). I just ordered my PGA-04, and will post a review after I have checked it out!

Very easy to use, just plug the speaker cable form your amp into the imput, then run a cable from the speaker trough output to your speaker.
You can either connect your line output from form the Palmer to an FX processor for further processing or directly into your mixing board.
Buttoms are for tweaking and changing you sound or mixing direct and processed signals.
The Manual is pretty straight forward.

My setup is the following:
Marshall 6100 Head --> Palmer Speaker Simulator
2 OUTPUTS FROM PALMER UNIT:
palmer speaker thru: Marshall stereo cab left side
palmer output: Rocktron Xpression Fx Unit --> Samson Servo Power Amplifier --> Marshall stereo cab right side

With this setup you have a direct signal from the Marshall head and with the Samson Power Amp you can mix you processed signal form the Fx Processor with your original sound. There is nothing better than processing an output signal form a tube power amp, it is much fuller that a line signal. The Palmer unit allows you to do this and you get to play with your tube amp's output sound. This setup just sounds amazing. No floor pedals are needed here.

Very nicely built!!

Mr. Wilkerson from Palmer is very concerned and serviceful.

10 out of 10. A must for the sound quality pursuer.
Been playing for 22 years. Not much experience playing live.
Play mostly 80's heavy stuff like Rhoads.
I wish this unit would allow crisp clean sounds when not connected to a speaker cab, just with the 8 ohm load. I can not seen to get non distorded sounds when playing the clean channel of my Marshall 6100 trough it without a speaker thru connection.

You plug your speaker cable from your head/amp into the input.

You can run either 1/4 cable or XLR out to a mixing board/computer/recording device.

It has a couple of knobs and a couple of buttons,...no power cord, so how easy is that.

It has little lights that show how much amperage you are running into it. This has all been covered before, it's a plug and play box.

Why someone would need a set of instructions is beyond me.

It has a built in load, which means you can play your 100 watt head into it, not speakers, and monitor via headphones an 2:00 a.m. in the morning.

It has a pass through jack, but that disables the ohm load. If you were playing "live" you can thus use the box to steal the signal from the cable and jack it over to a mixing board to go to a PA but still run your cabinet.

That's what you come here for right?

I already have experience with an H&K Red box and a Behringer DI Box (both of which are not bad).

The Palmer is expensive compared to other DI Boxes, so I expected (demanded?) that it sound better, or what's the point.

I've had it for about 90 days.

The first couple of times I used it, I didn't think it was much better than the other DI boxes I have tried. But I decided to work with it, try different settings, etc, before writing a review.

I had even thought about sending it back because it wasn't one of those "amazing" differences you expect out of an expensive piece of gear.

However, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. This is a DI box for recording right? So, after playing with it for several months, and tweaking around on the knobs and buttons and trying several different guitars, amps, etc, after listening (truly listening) to clips I recorded with the other DI boxes and comparing it to this one, the quality is truly there and makes it worth the investment.

It sounds so lifelike and close to a cab (I have a Marshall with V30's) I have actually moved the Marshall out of my guitar room and use only the Palmer to a mixer and listen to my playing via a set of monitors or headphones.

You will obviously loose the "punch" of moving a lot of air with a big cab if you skip a cab, but the tone is there.

When I first tried playing without a cab, I didn't like it, but after about five minutes, I realized what is missing is the "punch" of the cab (sort of like listening to a guitar solo on a radio, versus standing in front of a stack)

I spent 6 months trying to get a good recorded sound through a variety of mics, pre-amps, mixers, etc. I would have saved myself a lot of hassle and headache if I had bought this in the first place.

Some people complain that it is expensive.....really? Think about it.

How much is a good cab?

How much is a good mic, stand, and cable.

(you are going to need both of those, to get what this unit gets you)

Can you play and record at 2:00 a.m. with your cab and mic while your wife sleeps in the other room?

I can fit a pre-amp, power amp, some effects, and the Palmer in a 8 rack bay, and go jack into a club PA and make one trip. I don't have to drag a cab around.

Is it exactly the same sound as a miced cab? NO. But having tried for months to mic a cab, this thing is better than a mic to me with no hassles and I don't feel like I am compromising my sound by using this thing.

Other direct boxes without a lot of adjustments sound fizzy or trebly. You can dial it out on this baby.

I can tell you this. I sent my brother a clip I recorded with the Palmer, after months of trying to record stuff with a mic. I didn't tell him I had used the Palmer. He noticed a significant improvement in my capture.

I bet I could send you a clip of my exact set up micing a cab in one instance and using the Palmer on another. They don't sound EXACTLY the same, but I bet you wouldn't be able to tell which was which.

I have noticed that different amps require different settings to sound close to the cab. In other words, you can't set it and forget it. If you switch between amps, you will probably have to play around with the knobs a bit.

There are a couple of tone shaping knobs and a couple of filter switches and then you can feed some unprocessed signal back in for some bite. These truly work.

The one thing you have to be carefull about is that if you feed in too much raw signal it will get fizzy, but a teenie bit helps.

There's a "brown" setting that I really like for most stuff, but for rythym sounds, I switch that off.

Just as when your record your "live" sound, you have to fiddle with your amp settings, gain level, mic placement, etc to get the best sound, you have to fiddle and adjust the Palmer to get the best out of it.

As far as being able to sound like an "open back" versus a closed b

Seems very heavy duty.

No power cord.

Totally passive.

Dealer in Nashville will talk to you on phone.

You should check one out if you are into recording.

The Palmer is an 8-Ohm speaker load silent recording box with cabinet simulating EQ. Filter volume is the ?speaker sound?. High and Low EQ as well as a button for Brown vs. Lite speaker sounds. Full Range volume is the ?direct sound? which also has a high frequency cut button. I was under the impression that the unit also had a speaker output variable attenuator, but the speaker output is full on (no volume reduction for playing a cranked amp through a speaker quietly- bummer). That?s the good thing about the THD hot plate. I just read that Palmer is about to release a new box that is a variable load and a speaker simulator in one. Good news for you all out there.

Supposedly you can get open back and closed back cabinet sounds from this box. I?m not sure because I don?t actually own any open backed speaker cabinets to compare against. I have been able to get ?my sound? however. I play through a Music Man HD-130 with a closed back 2-12 cabinet and was able to duplicate what I hear during practice. I?ve also been able to get a great sound with a friend?s Mesa Boogie Mark ?? speaker out through the Palmer. The best part is that you can use the amp features that you?re already familiar with. Example: how the reverb reacts to the tremolo and how the tubes start to break up when you hit the strings a little harder. You don?t get those interactions in most modeling amps.

I live in a high humidity area and the mild steel bolts used to hold the rack unit together are starting to rust. The same thing happens to my guitar case hinges too. The pots and the connection jacks look sturdy enough to last a while.

Mr. Wilkerson answers the phone when you call. Very nice! He walked me through the controls to get my first sounds. He suggested setting the filter section up first and then adding the full range volume in to liven-up the attack.

I record in my apartment and needed something QUIET. I spent several months gathering info on silent recording. I didn?t particularly like the guitar presets in my Roland VS-890. I tried a POD at a local guitar center and was not impressed (But I have really fallen in love with the Bass POD). Then came the THD hot plate plus a speaker emulator idea (Voodoo Labs cab-tone or H&K?s redbox). Finally I read an interview about Joe Satriani using the palmer on a recent record he made in his apartment studio. That was enough for me to want to try the box out for myself. The Palmer looked like the most efficient use of hardware to record a guitar through my favorite amp. It?s a little pricey, but it?s really the most flexible silent recording device around; provided you have access to good guitar amps with speaker outs.

(It's a speaker sim. as well as a load box.)Well, the manual I got for it was in German. Luckily, I took German in high school, so I could fumble around with the manual a little, but come on Techstar! Anyways, the controls are easy enough to understand. I wish I could help you out more here, but I'm not fluent in German (shame on me..). But the setup is quite straight forward, so you shouldn't have much of a problem, especially if you can read the manual they send you. lol

My setup is: several guitars: (Carvin DC200, Jay Turser JT 140 w/ Seymour Duncan SH-55's, Yamaha APX-10, >> Teese RMC1 Wah(good as gold)>> Carl Martin compressor (to lessen the high end of the wah!) >> Audio Logic EQ >> Tech 21 Psa-1 preamp >> VHT 50/2/50 >> Palmer >> T.C. Electronics G-Force >> BBE 482 Sonic Maximizer >> mixer (or Channel B of VHT into 4x12 Celestion Greenbacks((sometimes))
With this setup, I can treat all of my effects as send effects on a mixer. This has huge advantages for me.
I was worried how the VHT would sound, not going into an actual speaker. WOW! I was pleasantly surprised by this unit. It still kept of the the character of the amp. The VHT and the PGA-04 are a perfect match, in my opinion. Now I don't have to mic it anymore. I don't have to worry about mic placement and axis. YEAH!

This thing has only quit on me a couple of times because I pushed the amp, and the Palmer will quit if it gets to hot. Be careful not to push the amp more than the Palmer can handle. (100- 150 watts) Built very well.

The gave me the manual in German,it was a rough translation. That'll knock off a point or two. Other than that, I haven't dealt with them. Maybe I should call em.....
(Their based out of the country Germany. You have to go through Techstar.)

I play all styles. This compliments all of them. I would suggest this product to almost anyone! It not only replaced my mics, but actually improved my sound also. The best money I ever spent on a guitar product.

Very easy to use; just input/voicing/mix. Manual is brief but clear and helpful. It can't store/recall settings (you have to do that part yourself) but at least there are numbered markers silkscreened around the detentless knobs. The six front panel LEDs are sufficient to show input gain. Max input is 120 watts rms. Isn't meant for use with preamps, only amps. Two transformer-isolated outputs; one balanced at
-10 (to mic pre @ 600 ohms) and an unbalanced at 0 dBu (10k ohms), and floating ground. This is the recent ADIG-LB version (bought mine 9/02).

My guitar recordings are much punchier and "realistic" with the Palmer than with my Mesa Triaxis' "compensated" recording outputs, which sounded a little "flat" by comparison. I had considered buying a Marshall Plexi head for a particular sound, but now I come close with the Palmer (with the voicing on "lite" & bright). I use a Mesa Triaxis into a Mesa Simul 2:90 amp or a Rocket 44 tube amp>Palmer>Demeter tube mic pre>Nuendo 8 i/o A/D>ProTools. It has a very good SNR, and produces a wide variety of sounds which are otherwise difficult to acheive. I even use it for bass, though it doesn't get quite deep enough. I haven't A/B'd the Palmer with a real mic/cab, but they aren't the same because you don't get the room or other details of the particular mic or cabinet involved. Still, it's very good. The new Mesa recording pre has a very good cab simulator, too, but it's fixed and not versatile at all, so I decided to go with the Triaxis and the Palmer for direct recording.

The structure, knobs, pots are all very solid. I've had it only a month, but it seems like very road-worthy, pro gear.

The employees at Techstar in Nashville seemed like right nice folk when I placed my order.

I play original rock, as derived from the 1960's and 70's when I was coming up. I use some very good equipment to get as good a sound as possible, and this fits. I wish it could better emulate a bass cab. And I really wish they had a model designed to work with both preamps AND amps, combining the features of the PDA-04 & 05. I've used other emulators and devices with emulators (POD, Rocktron VooDu Valve, Roland VG-8, Cabtone, etc.) and I think this sounds better and is tremendously more versatile. I'll still mic a 4x12 when I need to, but now a lot of times I won't have to.

Speaker simulator with passive load, good up to 100 watts.
Very easy to use, a couple of knobs and switches that actually work.
The manual is fine and describes exactly ehat the controls do.
No patches, all manual.

Various electric guitars->Focusrite ISA430->Rocktron Pirhana preamp->VHT 2/90/2 left channel->PALMER PGA04->TC Electronic G-Force->(VHT 2/90/2 right channel->various speaker cabinets) or (mixer) or (MOTU 896 for Cubase processing).

When using acoustic guitars, I do not use the Pirhana and keep the VHT left channel at low volume, no distorsion but tube liveliness.

No noise from the PALMER.
It can approximate most cabinets. I tested this against real 4X12, 2X12, 1X15 and 4X10 miked from all angles. The Palmer could get so close that it doesn't make any sense to use a mike and a real cabinet.

This setup allows me to set my time bases effects after the amplifier. The way it should always be done, just like in the studio. I mostly use reverb, flanger, chorus, pitch shift and delay. Sound totally different and a lot cleaner when set after the saturated tube power amp.

Never broke in the 2 years I've owned it.

Never had to call them.

I play Hendrix, Vai, Chet Atkins, Boston, Led Zeppelin, Joe Pass and anything else I like. Electric, acoustic or classical. Been playing for 35 years.
The PALMER fits perfectly. It actually helps a lot in getting the "TONE" at any level. This is the best device of the kind, nothing comes close.
The only thing I would like added is a MIDI enabled patch system.