Roger Linn Design AdrenaLinn III

I upgraded from an Adrenna Linn 2 first version to the Adrenna Linn 3 as soon as I had performed the upgrade surgery and plugged my guitar in I knew that this is the real deal. A totally balanced tone across all the frequency range from warm tight base to clarion treble, not shrill, but smooth and rounded, with such a transparent reverb that you are not even aware of it until you turn it off just as reverb should be, the beat synced filters tremolos and delays to mention a few are never inappropriate or gimmicky but always maintain a musical integrity that is truly inspiring. This unit is crammed full of musical suggestions that if you have ears to hear can take you to places you have never dreamed of. Editing of patches is easy and intuitive and the drum parts are authentic too bad however that they are only two bars in length so that they can only be used as a sophiticated metronome. The tuher is easy to access and clear

I use a 1970 Musicman Stingray Mark 1 and a Boss RC 50 Loop Station into a pair of powered Yamaha speakers (15inch and horn)as stereo is one of the most important contibutors to a three dimensional sound face. Roger Linn says on his web site that guitar amps are just very loud mid range woofers and do not have the neutrality of a good p.a. to handle the complexity of the AD effects and once you put a guitar signal through one of these its not really a guitar signal anymore. I have a pair of Fender Twins Reverbs but do not use them as they blow out the midrange and make the whole thing sound nasally.

Of course I would use this on a gig as it so unique that nothing can replace it, and so far so good Ive only had the Adrenna Linn 2 for a couple of months and actually I bought it to replace an Eventide Timefactor which was so fiddly to use trying to get the two delays to sync up that I stumbled over this in a second hand shop and was immediately fascinated by it. The Eventide in fact was a complete disaster when I took it out of the box I noticed that it had a modfactor face on a Timfactor body.I took it back to the shop the guy said he would have to send it to Sydney to get it looked at it was gone for a month and was eventually replaced with Tim Factor. After two weeks the bypass pedal broke down it was gone for another month, two weeks later the effect pedal broke down it was gone for another month and I got rid of it

This is the best thing about the Adrenna Linn. Before I bought the upgrade I emailed the company a few times and every time they replied not your usual curt brushoff but I actually had the feeling that these guys were actually interested in my questions and made an effort to answer as completely as they could and I actually got to deal with Roger Linn himself.Can you ever get to talk to the designer of a Boss pedal I wonder if they are even musicians judging by the sound quality I doubt it.

I don't play any style of music I just make it up as I go along and have been doing that for about 45 years I don't think Ive ever played the same piece of music twice and I can't see the point in repeating oneself endlessly. This pedal is perfect for what I do because I just hit a preset at random and go where ever it leads on a journey of mutual discovery

Easy to use, yes.

Important first hand impression below:

I wanted to get this in now while my ears are fresh to this thing. I just spent several hours with the unit. Make no mistake here, I want to like this thing, and I do... but.... when I first plugged the device in, I was literally shocked at how bad the first patch sounded. So I moved on to the next several and they all sounded bad. Did I have everything plugged in right? yes. I had read in advance about the need to make sure the unit is in "amp" mode when you are plugged into an amp. That was all in place. Still the sound was crap.

After a long time with the unit, plugging it into my Hot Rod Deluxe, as well as into my studio monitors, I have come to the conclusion that the treble on pretty much ALL of the presets is set too high. Now, what is too high? It's not the number that is too high, however. Bass, Mid, and treble at 60, and it sounds shrill. Turn the treble down to under 10, literally, if not all the way off, and now you're in business. However, I'm shell shocked right now. I need to give this thing more time. What I did was set up the unit in such a way that I could A/B the sound of unit against the sound of my amp direct (basically I just toggled between the unit processing with one of its amp simulations, and bypassing that and letting the dry signal of my guitar get through to my amp. This requires a press of a button on the unit.) I WAS able to make my amp sound good through many if not most of the amp simulations after tweaking the treble. You know, make sure everything is at the same volume level and a/b everything. Sounds like it's workable. I'd have to a/b it with my old line6 AX2, which still sounds great on many patches.

Anyway, what's interesting about this unit is the fact that a lot of the presets use a kind of wah or envelope following effect, and it is here where the treble setting doesn't matter, since these effects rarely get up into those upper frequencies. You can turn the treble all the way down and hear no difference whatsoever in your sound when you are using many of these sort of filter effects.

I makes me wonder if the manufacturer somehow overlooked the whole treble range in the amp models because they were too focused on the special effects. silly, i know.

Honestly, my impression went from thinking this thing was absolute dog crap, to now thinking it is probably workable... but I think I will have to go through every preset and turn the treble down and save it.

or maybe I have a defective unit. I don't know. read the review below.

I should say that the effects are cool, beat synchronized. it's neat to have that stuff all dialed in already to the proper tempo and have a drum machine at my feet. I feel more creative. I could just get a lot of joy out of the drum machine and the effects and bypass all the amp simulation and that would be good. But I was hoping the amp simulations were going to be killer, and, well, right now I can't be objective about it. I will probably start fresh with it tomorrow, kill all the treble right away, and then love the thing.

so, note to manufacturer: check your hearing! (now watch it just be a faulty device... doh!)

The interface is reasonably OK, not good, not terrible. I haven't tried out any advanced functions like programming drumbeats or sequences. (I wouldn't want to try it without the software editor).

Sound appears OK, but I haven't run the proper A/B listening tests, so I can't really comment. It appears to lack a true bypass which is mildly disappointing.

I've only had the unit for two days, so I don't know. Build quality is a little bit chintzy. One of the plastic knobs fell off almost immediately.

Don't know.

Not a full review, just wanted to comment on a few features.

TIME-BASED DELAY: This is really why I bought the pedal. There are
a number of stompboxes which can sync a delay to MIDI, but they are
almost all $400 and up... so for $399 I figured I could have my
delay plus some amp models plus weird time-based effects. The delay works fine, although I don't know how it would compare to an Eventide TimeFactor ($500) or something like a T-Rex ($400).

AMP MODELS: They sound pretty good to me-- but I'm using this with an electric *fiddle*, so my opinion is irrelevant to most of you guitar players.

TIME-BASED FILTER EFFECTS: This is kind of the "killer app" for this box (if indeed it has one). You can do a couple of musically useful tricks with it. When you play a solo, it provides an interesting sort of extra articulation between the notes (since the filter changes are synced to the note transitions) which sounds cool and can help the solo cut through a crowded mix; when you play sustained notes, it will turn the sustained note into a kind of Eurotrance-y rhythm track.

"ARPEGGIATOR": This is an arpeggiator in name only. Normally, what an arpeggiator does is to produce some sort of rhythmic pattern which is harmonically related to the note you're playing. As you change the note, the pattern transposes to a different key... What the Adrenalinn does is something quite different. Play a C into the Adrenalinn, and the box plays a sequence of notes in C minor. Play a D, and the box plays the exact same sequence of notes, still in C minor. Play an F#, and the box plays the same sequence of notes in C minor... This is NOT MUSICALLY USEFUL, folks, unless you're a lot more avant garde than me...
The basic problem here (for those of you who are experienced with complex effects) is that the Adrenalinn does not have a functioning pitch sensor available to modulate other effects. And that's OK-- pitch sensing is a super-expensive algorithm in terms of DSP power. I can understand why they left it out. But for god's sake don't say that you have an "arpeggiator" built in when you don't.

This is my 2nd review. You might think that is ridiculous, and so do I, but I gave a very harsh review cause I have this love and hate relationship with this pedal, and I was in critical mode, but I do really like plugging into the box , using the stereo outs, into a fender princeton reverb and a geng-benz black pearl 1x12. I cook with an A/B/Y pedal so I bring along a roland jazz chorus 120, but it is untouched, it is the tube amps set at clean that are feeling the adrenalin rush. I have the box with amp out, a system setting, and first I only used the chieftan and fender champ settings, and pretty much still do, but they are a fun injection into the amps, with the adrenalin III effects off. The fender simulations sound a bit thin to me right off the bat, but I have tweaked them some, and adjusted the genzy-benzy tone bump and things now move along clickety clack. I have to note that the black pearl is playing with boost off, but when I don't use the box, or bypass the box, I play the black pearl with boost on.
I think I like the box as an amp pusher. The box helped me write a tune, a tune that doesn't exist, doesn't make sense, without one of the the adrenalin effect patches. I adjusted the default tempo,modified the resonance slightly. The fading time delays make for amusing phrasing puzzles, instant harmonies, the beat timing is awesome. It is a one of a kind unique kinda crazy box, I wish the drums had 4 measures instead of 2, more complex interesting patterns, current drum programming on the box is sorta like software assembler language programming ha ha! It is not meant to be a drum machine, I have to accept that, for songwriting it is very suggestive for creating sound textures. I can play it through the headphones which is great. The sound in the phones is much different than the amps when it comes to drums. On the amps, the setting that work on the headphones sound screaming loud through the amps. The headphone sound through adrenalin is much fun and for me a great getaway place to be.

passes through really well when bypassed, adds a little chime, a brightness which I tweak on the box, but most of my adjustments are on my amps, this is what I had to learn. It is sad but true, but it works pretty good. I like adjusting my amp more than adjusting the box, cause the amp is much easier to adjust then this complex box as far as amp tone tweaking. However, that being said, fiddling aside, I can shape the tone textures well enough, save the patches, after I finish fiddling with the effect parameters, and all is good. The sound quality is righteous at times, cause when I don't want amp simulations just want the effect o pass through, the box does the job with righteous tone delivery. Both the nighthawk gibson and the 70's reissue strat with custom '69 pickups hit both amps smoothly, and injecting the adrenalin in between the signal path I can pick up grit, smooch, brownsheez, brownmeez, spank, crank, lank, and trank, with scoop, noop and shining rush. I like the box with the fender champ and chieftan simulations. High Fun factor.

yeah who knows, still works ok, don't think about it, it is a cool complex toy.

yes

fun creative toy, more than a toy, could use effects with simulations right into board, have done that into a recorder, it records well, lot of play in the input level. It gets a high rating because of all that it can do, amp sounds, maybe the heavier tones work for you, I look at it as a guitar amp tweaking pedal, very cool for that, and then all those timing delay tricks and frequency modulations. Together with a beat, and ya feel you are 16 again. Not many pedals make me feel like that.

I bought the original Adrenalin, returned it, and then bought this 'upgraded and improved' Adrenalin III. After a few months of playing around with it I have decided to get rid of it. I like 2 of the amp simulations, the Chieftain and the Fender Champ, and 1 patch. The sound quality, at least to me, is the biggest drawback. More on that later. It is easy to modify the effect settings, and also easy to modify the amp models, though it didn't do me much good. The timing of the effects to the drumbeat is very cool, and I think this is the best part of this unit. I don't care for the drumbeat selections, and to create your own drumbeats is possible, but you need a lot of patience. It is quite awkward to do that, and the interface is somewhat clumsy. I was able to save modified effects and amp sounds, but I had a hard time saving drumbeat tempo. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. The unit shut off 2 or 3 times, had to reset it to get it to work. Most of the time it works fine, though it has a quirky aspect to it. The manuals are ok, though the index is missing all kinds of references, but wading through the manual I find what I need.

I think the effects are obnoxious to the extreme, not many of them I find useful. In fact I only use 2 of them, the rest appear to be 'puke-bucket' effects. The biggest drawback of this unit is the sound quality. The tone on all the effects is very bright, as though the treble is at 100, and the sound of my guitars - a fender strat and a gibson nighthawk - get thinned out, the low end gets destroyed. I dislike the amp simulations, the word 'harsh' for the most part is an accurate description, and I get better results with the amp simulations turned off. I used it through a genz-benz black pearl amp, a fender princeton amp, and through a Mackie mixing board, as well as a house PA at a gig. The 24 bit drum sounds of the Zoom entry level recorder made in 2002 are better, richer, warmer than the current 32 bit Adrenalin III drum sounds, but the drum sounds are OK, not great, but ok. I wish I could say the same thing about the effects. There is no noise, the sound is clean, but the excessive thin bright tone is pervasive in this unit, there is no getting around it. Compared to the lush sound of the Diamond Pedals Memory Lane 2, the sound of this unit is, well to be polite, grossly inferior. There is a nice 'fun factor' with this unit, but I can now see why Long & McQuade has stopped carrying this product. It just is not good enough for professional use, and it is a wee bit too expensive for beginners to fool around with. I dislike the distortion sounds, the chorus/flanger is ok, but not great. There are many chorus/flanger pedals that blow away the time modulated effects of this unit.

I used it on a gig with no problems, with the amp simulations turned off. I like the stereo outputs, and it works as advertised, but with the exception of 1 patch, a $100 -$200 chorus/flanger pedal is preferable to that annoying thin sound that is impossible to get rid of.

Roger responded to all my emails promptly, and tried to help me out. Good customer support.

I am selling this unit, it just doesn't work for me. I really dislike the generic thin bright tone that is impossible to get rid of. I have had quite a lot of fun with it, and somebody else might enjoy it.
Compared to the natural class A Genz-Benz Black Pearl amp tone, the amp simulations are really low-rent, not for professional use. If you don't mind the tone sacrifice, perhaps the drumbeat timing with the effects will compensate, and give you satisfaction. For the first 10 hours or so I was tolerant, but the more I used it the more I disliked it. I have finally decided to dump this unit. It bothers me to hear my guitar tone butchered so badly. The effects are just not high quality enough to justify buying this unit, and the drum sounds are only average, the drum beats themselves I don't care for, and unfortunately the drum programming is quite tedious.

Well. What can I say. I just upgraded my old A1 to Ad3. Just playing around with the presets. My wife's jaw dropped. She said I sounded like an orchestra. Well, most fun stuff.

FM quality. Boo

Built like a tank

Excellent. I had a question pertaining to my AD1 to AD3 upgrade. Prompt response from Roger himself. Thanks!

This is a review for the Soundtower editing software that you can get for the Adrenalinn. It should be required with every purchase, as it makes creating your own sounds on the Adrenalinn so much easier.

The software is laid out in an intuitive fashion, letting you program just about everything: amp type, drive, level, EQ, effect type, rate, depth, mix, delay, reverb, compression, plus a few twists.

The twists are that you can choose the order of your effects (well not exactly, you can only have one effect at a time, but you can arrange the order of your effect, compression, delay/reverb, and amp), you can remap what the footswitch to 54 different possibilities, virtually anything that you want to do, there's MIDI, but I don't do much with MIDI, and of course there's the sequence editor...

The sequence editor lets you reprogram your effect type and drum beats, and it's fairly intuitive as well, and of course you can listen to your beats or effects as you edit them. Best of all, you can adjust the volume of the drum machine. I found the drum machine to be a tad loud when running direct, and being able to turn it down helps me get more use out of it.

Lastly, you can obviously load presets from the Adrenalinn, edit them, save them to whatever patch you want, and even rename them.

This won't make your Adrenalinn sound any better, save for the fact that you can refine your settings much more accurately and help you get "that sound," whatever it is.

It's software. Keep your registration code handy, store it on an online email account or write it down. If it crashes or if you have computer problems or change computers, just download another copy. I believe you can only have it installed on one computer, though.

Like I said above, this should be a required purchase with every Adrenalinn for how easy it makes the unit to program. The only downside is that when you use the footswitch with the drive/fx setting, it goes from clean and dry to dirty and effect on. There are times when I want to go from a clean chorus sound to a distorted uneffected sound, so if I could change one thing, it would be the ability to do that.

You have to read the manual but i experience it as easy to use
The setup is very logical and if you do not use it for a while it is easy to get working with it again.
there is also the windows editor , this works better, but you have to buy it from soundtower for $ 39.95(which I did)

Th sound is incredible, I updated from the first version which I nearly sold.
But this thing now sounds so much better , I'm very happy that i did keep it.
The audio -quality has improved like there where new AD/DA converters in it
I have played over it with Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster ,also Gibon SG 61
The amp models sound great,better than the pod for me, its more alive
On this point they did a great programming-job
also the effects like Wah, Vibrato,Chorus ,Flanger are super
I using it at the moment in my home-studio but I also want to use it in my band which I haven't tried yet

No problems yet, have the first version, never gone broke

I have had some questions before which were normally quickly answered
Also are they very involved with there product

I play (already 25 years) mostly Alternative Rock/blues but this thing is for all kind of music.
All the amp models sound different, It would be nice if you could chain the drumpatterns to get more variation when you jam with it, but maybe in the next version
If I lost it I would buy it again (if I could spent the money for it at that moment )
I sold my GT-6 and also will sell my pod 2.0 because the adrenalinn 3
sounds better and more realistic in my opinion

Is great overdrive! I really surprise when play it on the first time.
Very easy to operate.
To rock' roll is most indicate.
The sound got a "fat" whit wight but don't lose the definition of notes on the chords. Very good!
The manual of instructions is simple and wrighted with a direct lenguage.

I play a Fender Telecaster with a good brazilian amplifier: Classic Cristalino from Meteoro Amplifier. A have a GT 2 Sams Amp, Micro Amp from MXR. On my next album I intend to try the RotorPhaser from T.Miranda too.

Never hade a oportunity to play with X3 direct on mixer, but a believe that a can't got my sound without that.
X3 gave me possibility to draw my own sound.

Is very easy to get support from T.Miranda. No problem.

I play on a rock'n roll band for 16 years. CASCADURA, my band, have 4 albuns released, and a professional career of much success on brazilian independent rock scene.
I find my sound when a got a X3! Never found too good and efficient overdrive efect. If I lose it or somebody steal me (God, protect me!), I buys it again. Is my sound!

This thing does a TON of stuff! FX processor, amp modeler, drum machine, filters, and crazy sounds. And it only has a few switches and knobs, so there definitely is a learning curve on getting used to this. But it's laid out well, and has some computer based editing stuff too. Older versions had 100 non-editable presets and the same 100 as editable. The new version simply has 200 presets, all editable, a much better choice, because nobody is going to build a sound from the ground up with this thing.

The manual is good too. There's a full manual and a separate guide that has all the presets in it. I use this mostly, because it helps me select a sound and go.

My only gripe is with the tuner. It uses the system LEDs, and there are six of them. With an even number of tuner LEDs, it's hard to know if you're in tune or not.

It's hard to rate it for ease of use because there is so much you can do, but I give it an 8.

Sound is pretty darn good. No noise. This version adds reverb and fuzz, which is nice. There are your models of classic amps, plus a few categories of effects: tremolo, flange, filter, and delay. It can do chorus and phase, but they're pretty much variations of flange. The effects all sound at least passable, except for the rotary speaker sim. If all you had to get a leslie sound was a flange pedal, that is what the leslie sim on this pedal would sound like. But I have never heard a digital multi-fx pedal with a good leslie sim.

Some multi-fx units don't sound good when running pedals in front of them or when plugged into guitar amps, but the Adrenalinn bucks that trend. It sounds good enough that I don't have to change settings on my pedalboard, the Andrenalinn, or my amp (a Fender pro Junior).

I use it with my Fender Pro Junior when I play out and need a drum machine, and direct into a sound system if I don't want to use an amp. Sounds good both ways.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the uniqueness of the sounds. You can get some pretty crazy sounds from tremolo, delay, filter, and other fx that sync with the drum machine but can also be programmed with their own unique sequences (think a phase sound that swells up and down to a reggae rhythm for example) to touch-sensitive flanging, stuff you simply cannot find on other pedals.

As for getting your favorite artists' sounds, both Green Day and John Mayer have used this unit for some of their songs, and their presets are loaded into the new pedal.

Seems pretty sturdy. The footswitches are surface-mount, so don't stomp the hell out of this unit, but as long as you take care of it at least a little bit, you'll be fine.

The knobs tend to fall off a bit too easily, that's my only problem.

Fantastic. I bought a used model I from Music Go Round and it crapped out on me. I emailed the manufacturer, and was surprised to get a response from Roger Linn himself! He answered all my questions and although I couldn't resuscitate the old pedal, he was so helpful that I decided to buy a brand new Adrenalinn III. With such a complex pedal, this level of customer support is appreciated.

Also, I ordered some stuff from Musician's Friend when they were changing warehouses, and the shipment got delayed. As an apology, they sent me a coupon for 20% off, which was nice when buying this pedal.

I play in a church praise band and lead worship at a prison. Sometimes I need to either run without an amp, and I need a drum machine. This pedal does it, but does so much more. I barely scratch the surface. Other multi-fx units have drum machines, but this one is the only one that syncs with the drum machine so your effects are always on time.

If I could change anything on it, I would either make the rotary sim better or just take that effect out, it just doesn't add anything. More importantly, I would redo the tuner so that it's easier to see if you're in tune.

I already replaced this unit once (buying a III after my I broke), so I would probably do it again if it were lost or stolen.