Review license purchased by the reviewer. All thoughts and opinion’s within this review are my own and do not reflect those of the developer or others.

Intro

Sometimes you just find that instant sound, you know the one that makes you go “Hell yes!” Well this my friends is that sound. This all in one suite is a brutal power house, that has been part of my arsenal since Its inception. The endless tones of massive bass are truly remarkable.  The name fits this well, as it does raise some hell. Not only is this thing very sadistic sounding, but the interface is devilishly beautiful. This is no sleeper by any means. This all in one plug in is loud, proud, and sadistic! Joey Sturgis is known for hard hitting huge compressed mixes. One of his key elements is a bass that glues the guitars, beefs up the energy, and rips through mids like a wild fire. The techniques he spent decades developing are harnessed into this all in one masterpiece.

Experience

The default setting tightens up the Di of your bass, and sounds very pleasing right out of the gate. I like to set my input before really tweaking anything so I know I have a strong signal. This will ensure your signal is hitting the plug in just right. Lack of signal won’t push the harmonics, or compressor to its full potential. The input and output have an impressive -70-12 db range. The gate will go from zero to negative 10 and since some of my basses are passive and noisy, this is a great feature. There are 5 input signals to chose from and I find going in order from first to last usually does the job.

    The first inout signal is the Demon fuzz. From here I’ll try to get a good solid tone. It’s very loud so be cautious and turn volume in the pedal all the way down first. The tone knob can either brighten or darken the distortion. I tend to brighten most cases as it helps the top end in the mix. The sustain is the amount of harmonic distortion the pedal can achieve. Most of the time I find myself between 2-30.  The fuzz gets real nasty from 25 to 100, so I tend to wait until the end of the mix to add more if needed. There’s three flavors to choose from, it has bass boost, dry, and normal. Bass boost is huge and (usually my go to initially,) but it could change by genre. As the first part of the signal chain, I do find that this section can really overwhelm the tone we’re seeking (if too much is used.) This can be solved easily by A/B-ing the tone with and without the Demon Fuzz to see if its sitting right or not.

     The second input signal is the amp, and I must say it’s a real work of art. The road worn tweed, and Vinyl wrapped with barbed wire give it a real aggressive look. Chicken head knobs in blood red are separated by upside down crosses letting us know this things unholy. The interface Hellraiser logo lights up red when signal is detected, this adds to the the menacing factor. The amp has a gain, bass, mid, treble, and clank knobs, for shaping a great tone easily.
The clank is a sweet spot midrange adjustment that really stands out in a mix. This edgy chain dragging sound we love is easily found by just turning up this knob. There’s also two switches to utilize, raise hell which is a tone boost, and the enhanced sub, which is great for booming bass out of small speakers. Using the plugin without the raise hell switched on is something I rarely find myself doing, although if the Demon Fuzz is activated, I may toggle it to see if it adds something missing.  
The midrange is a good solid tone area, I’d say between 500-1000 range, and can really clear out some space for a mix, and push this thing into no mans land. Treble tends to stay a little lower than expected and boost seems to be in the 2-4k range. As a good rule of thumb if it sounds good, it is good. Letting yourself get caught up on numbers is a dangerous road. Pushing a knob up or down and using your ears will develop skills overtime.

The third input signal is the cab section which has 3 cabs, each with 4 mics to choose from. The default cab is the JST matched cab which, is a staple on the JST suites. It’s a great sounding all around Ir and I use it often. There’s an Ampeg 8×10 and JST big boy 2×15, I don’t find myself using the 2×15 for mixing much, but I do use it for playing some old school Burton riffs haha.
The microphone choices are top notch, and really compliment the cabinets well. They also have an impulse loader and a volume slider, which is always a great option for use with third party Impulse responses. Its very rare that I venture from the in-house IR selection. I do like the Matched cab as it just has a special something to it.

The fourth inout signal is the parametric equalizer. This five band EQ is good for dialing in desired frequencies, and removing undesired frequencies. It has high pass and low pass filtering, or High and low shelf options. Depending on which we choose, this works well and is simple to use. Just preselect a spot, and you can literally get surgical with this eq. It’s quite impressive for a 5 band eq. This is good for keeping the signal chain to a minimum. I do tend to pic a plugin that has it “all in one,” rather than adding an EQ or compressor after it. This is not only good for saving time, nor take away from inspiration.

The final input signal is the splitter. You can separate high and low frequencies, and really fabricate the precision tone here.  Bank A handles the low end, which gives me a clear picture on how much bass I have (or need.)  From here I can compress or limit it, to get a solid consistent low end. Bank B handles the high end, and is separated by the crossover between them. I can split between 30-800hz anything above the threshold is effected by distortion. I like to compress my high end so it’s not poking out and make up with some gain.  I’m ok with a lot of limiting of the bass signal.  If it’s too rigid I’ll pull the di slider back to give back some natural dynamics to the mix.  The input, output, gate, and tuner are always a welcome attribute to any amp sim. The tuner is designed for bass, gets a nod for being possibly the coolest one I have ever seen. The hand moving on the Ouija-board is unique touch, and beautifully crafted. 

Nicks Pro Tip: Use the settings from the screen shot pictures to get the tone I achieved when reviewing this plug in!!

Ups/downs

This plug in is not only beautiful, but very easy to manipulate. It covers many genres, and is quite universal. There’s not much needed outside of this plug-in (as far as mix processing goes,) and I find use of maybe just an eq and limiter after it at the most. It’s very easy on the CPU, despite that it encompasses an entire signal chain. This suite is a very good value and tends to be on sale often. Nothing sticks out as a bad feature as far as the plug in itself goes but, the only con I can find is it’s direct competition made by JST the Rex Brown plug-in.  They very similar in may aspects, and sometimes I don’t know which one to try first haha. 

Conclusion

I have used this since it was released, and really fell in love with it. No matter how good of a sound I can find, I always comp this plug-in against my tone (if I don’t choose it first.) Keeping this in your Arsenal of plugins is a wise choose, as it just flat out works and sounds amazing. I would also state that its very universal to many genres. I can get a really cool Motown sound from my p bass, or a really aggressive punk sound. it really reacts well to a fretless bass with flat wound strings, for some smooth brightness. But put a fresh set of strings on your bass and give this baby a whirl, it will amaze you how crisp the harmonics can get. This devils greatest trick is making you believe it does exist!

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See more – quick demo from JST and Nick Meola below.