Palmer PGA-04 Speaker Simulator

I got this used with no manual. You don't need it, it's soooo easy to use. But I am curious to see it. If you got an electronic copy or photocopy of the manual, please e-mail me. Maybe we can make a deal.

I can finally get the sound I hear in my rehearsal space inside my apartment without being kicked out! Perfect for home recording if you don't want to bother anyone. Bye bye POD!

Can't rate this yet, I haven't had it long enough. After taking it out of the box, it felt pretty solid and it looks and feels like the parts are of top quality.

N/A

Goto the website link, this unit does exactly what they describe it as. Can't remember the last time I was so blown away with a piece of gear and felt I got every penny's worth.

Simple to use - a few knobs and buttons. LED load meter is helpful. the manual is straightforward and brief. No surprises.

Stunning sound! Setup is Carvin Bolt (twin blade HS pickups) into Morley Bad Horsie Wah into Marshall JMP-1 input. JMP Left Master output into MESA 50/50 ch A Input (ch B nulled/not used). MESA ch A 8-ohm speaker output into Palmer speaker input. Palmer Unbalanced line output into TC Electronic G-Force Left (mono) Input. G-Force L/R digital output into Roland VS-880EX digital input. VS aux bus feeds Carvin HT150 power amp and Yamaha wedge monitors. Yamaha QY100 L/R output also feeds VS. Recorded tracks are mixed on a pair of Roland DS-90's. After some minor experimentation with the voicing knobs it only took about an hour of playing time and tweaking of the Palmer so that it reproduced faithfully the sound i was hearing from my Carvin Legacy 2x12 cab. Funny. Now i don't think i need the Legacy cab anymore. Why would i mic one when i can just press record and capture the signal i'm hearing in the monitors. Not only that, i now have an infinite number of Palmer voicings at my disposal with absolutely no fussing over microphone placement. And because power tubes are still part of the sound equation the playing feel is the same! I can't say enough about how cool this Palmer device is. It's a cool and satisfying achievement when one finds a decent playable and great tone. It's truly a step above all else to have that tone any day of the week on a consistent, repeatable basis - without the finicky, magical, or mysterious practice of microphone selection and placement, speaker cabinets, room acoustics, etc. Why i fuss with this shit i don't know? The Palmer is fantastic - it produces THE ideal mic'd up cab sound (condensor and dynamic mics included) plus many variations of same.

It's only been two days, but i'm not leaving the basement anytime soon. For a rackmount, it seems as durable as Boss pedals are. I don't forsee any problems.

I haven't needed any and wouldn't expect to need any because the unit is very simple to operate. I'd like to say that the people at TechStar were very curteous, polite and helpful to me over the phone when i placed my order. It arrived safe and sound on the day the said it would. Top notch service!

I thought about getting a Palmer a year ago, but they were out of stock so i was shit out of luck. Since then, they updated the PDI-03 and came out with the PGA-04. In essence, i'm glad i 'waited' because there are more sonic possibilities with the PGA-04 because you can now choose to mix in some unfiltered signal along with the filtered. I think this unit has changed my attitude forever about the legitamcy of speaker simulators. I'm a believer now! Take everyone's advice and buy one while you can because they're in short supply.

Plug the amp's "speaker out" into the Palmer PGA-04. You may then opt to run a cable from the Palmer to your speakers but you don't need to. The PGA-04 can act as a load. The MANUAL is very clearly written and the device has only a few knobs. The PGA-04 is easy to use. It sounds fantastic!

I have a slew of guitars but my #1 is a Sadowsky vintage style strat alder body/maple board with Kinman Avn Blues pickups->Soldano X99 preamp and Soldano SLO-100->Daedelus 2x10 cab with EV Force 10 or/and Soldano 4x12 cab with Soldano (Eminence) Power speakers. I take the Palmer XLR balanced line out straight to RME ADI-8 Pro AD/DA converters and into a Mac with ProTools.

The PGA-04 sounds fantastic. I don't know why anybody would fuss with mics when they can get this incredibly sounding unit which is not fragile. All the tones I dreamed of are here. I'm a big Mike Landau/Hendrix fan but I also play blues, metal, and funk. Styles range from Hendrix/SRV to Metallica/Megadeth to you name it. Just about everything except classical and straight jazz. Nobody would ever guess that my recordings were done without a mic or mics.

The various filter and tone shaping knobs on the unit are simple to use. I will say that high gain settings on the Soldano sound more high gain with the Palmer if no cabinet is hooked up to it. Eg: I back the gain down by about 3 when using the Palmer alone as a dummy load: if I had the gain at 11 I move it to 8, at 7 down to 4 or 5, you get the idea. But the clean sounds are clean and wonderful. It is a wonderful unit: intead of playing with mic angles, distance, amount of axis, phases, combinations, I just plug into the Palmer and take the XLR out into RME AD/DA converts right to hard disk. Not only does it sound killer but I can disconnect my cabinet and record at 3am and not bother anybody.

No problems to date. And it doesn't have any AC or batteries. Just plug your amp into it and your set.

I e-mailed and they got back to me with a couple of days.

I bought it on ebay because I couldn't find any in stock.

In a nutshell: if you want to record great tones or get you amp's tone to the mixer, don't hesitate. Buy it. With my guitar and Soldano preamp and amp I can get country clean, funk clean, SRV, Hendrix, Van Halen, Metallica, Santana, '70s Clapton, etcetera. Note that Satriani used no mics but only the Palmer into Neve mic preamps and a Sansamp to get all the tones on the "Engines of Creation" CD. This is one of those pieces of gear that I am keeping for life. It allows me to focus on playing, composing, and having fun! Good enough for Van Halen, Satriani, Rush, Stones, then it's good enough for me. This is really one of those pieces of gear that I am incredibly happy with and it changed my life. I don't need to run around mic cables, bump into them, worry about ribbon mics being damaged, mic being bumpedout of position, etcetera. The Palmer PGA-04 as good as gold.

If it were stole or broken I would replace it the next nanosecond and call all over the planet to have one Fed Ex'd to me.

In response to Eric and his comment's regarding the PGA-04 ADIG. The PGA-04 replaced the PDI-03 some years ago. The PGA-04 is far superior to the PDI-03 and is infinitly more variable. The circuitry changed very little as a matter of fact we have had no real complaints to date. Eric we will be glad to sell your 04's for you.. If you had called us or returned our phone calls we would have gladly helped. Sounds to me like there was a gain strutcture problem or possibly operator error. We invite all to view our user comments at Palmerdirect.com

Best Regards,

David Wilkerson

I give it a nine as nothing sounds exactly like a speaker...Now does it?

We have had two failures of Palmer products since becoming the North American Distributor.

This one needs to be done by a customer

This has got to be the easiest piece of gear I have ever used. The controls are straightforward and you can't make it sound bad.

I use an Egnater TOL100 amp's speaker output going to the Palmer and then straight into the recording console. Sounds like I'm running the head into an old Marshall 4X12. I can also get a pretty realistic open back cab sound.

I've had it over a year and haven't had any problems yet, and don't expect to. It doesn't require any power to run so I guess that makes it even more reliable- no power surges.

I had to call the company, one time, to ask a technical question and they were cool about answering it. And I didn't have to listen to an "on hold" recording for 20 minutes.

I play rock, country, and a little jazz (I get a great jazz sound with it plugging a guitar directly in) and it works great with all three styles. I hate having to mic cabinets to record tracks and now I really don't have to. This Palmer just sounds too damn good.

just a basic speaker simulater but with excellent eq features a must for all recording studios and guitarists with complex rigs

the set up is my 5150 going into the palmer giong into a console its a Van Halen must it gives ability to crank the amp to to perfect tone without fear of feedback

i would use this for any gig as for a back-up ill never go withhout a backup because i have not had it that long to know

havent needed to call upon them

this is a must for Van Halen fans i have an identical rig to eddies 1995 rig an this is probably not important to many unless you get one and hear the difference.THese ARE very hard to find and get it took me a year to get and the importer only gets a handfull at a timeanybody interested who has the money should get one while they can