Analog heat is brilliant. No other word for it.
I use for all sorts of things.
My favourite being adding colour and flavour to a mix. For me its not about extreme settings, but bringing out detail, presence, and space.
It does a really good job at adding a bit of sparkle, and it does something really nice to the low end that none of the plugins i tried ever pulled off.
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I’m currently borrowing a Heat from fellow 'naut @plragde and I’ve been doing the exact opposite of what most people seem to do with their Heat — I like hanging out on the extreme settings and using it as a heavy-handed sound-design tool, something that really changes whatever I send through it.
It’s a lot of fun to use it this way. Obviously the music you end up making is generally noisy, distorted, and kind of insane, but if you’re interested in that stuff it’s a great tool for pushing the limits. I actually had to stop using it for a few days after the Heat sound became my new normal while “dry” synths and drums just sounded flat.
I’m trying to figure out where it fits in the workflow. I like to use it while coming up with ideas because it becomes important for sound design, but I also want it at as an end-of-chain effect to glue things together. Maybe all of you dual-Heaters are on to something…
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Yeah it was legit! I turned around and sold it really quickly. I ended up not liking it at all. But it was a genuinely amazing deal!
It is a great box of tricks, I don’t use the distortion side as much, but round fuzz can be really nice on drum machines. I really like the envelope and filter, can do some very funky things, everyone should definitely build one of these to use with it:
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What is it, a controller using TRS as MIDI?
No just plugs into the exp inputs, you can assign the two inputs to pretty much any parameter so it makes a nice tweak box, you can use quite long TRS cables too, so if your heat (or ARmkII/A4mkII) is out of reach it can be a handy remote. Easy build for a beginner, about £20 in parts or less if you use a cheaper box.
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That looks nice. I think I’ll build one for my AR MkII. Are those 10k pots?
Totally agree, I really love mine and find it indispensable now. Another great use for AH when using it on end of chain is to use Overbridge to record whatever is going through it. I had mine on the end of my chain at a recent live show and recorded my entire set through OB. It has so many uses and it can be super subtle or super extreme. Almost don’t want to talk about this thing too much bc I could definitely see prices going up if / when it gets discontinued.
i also had an ambivalent relationship to the heat. on individual sounds it was never a real wow experience, by that i mean that it took a while until you were reasonably satisfied. I would really have to try out other analog distortions personally to have a clear comparison, but with the heat on individual sounds I had the feeling that it didn’t give the sound what I imagine warm distortion to be. but i have to say one thing. on the whole it was definitely good, because the eq and slight distortion also had very good results here. the analog filter is of course also a cool feature, but the results were so-so. and just for the sum, it’s too expensive for me, so i sold it. the master studio can also do that in the end. At some point I would like to try out the Sherman with its distortions, they’re supposed to be really good.
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Pretty much how I feel about mine and I’m in 2 minds to keep or sell.
I’ve had a few of them and each time I’ve thought I’d feel differently. But I’m always back to the same feeling of indifference.
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Yes 10k 
Analog heat for subtle, analog drive for extreme dirt.
I have to ask, am I the only one who uses the filter on the the whole mix ?
High pass with a slight resonance boost, I love how that glues the low-end together.
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…u gotto be pretty confident with ur monitoring conditions, if u do that…
just in case…keep in mind, the biggest hurdle is always the point of how ur speakers and the room they’re in, can actually really translate to the rest of the world…
heat can be amazing for premastering ur mix…but for final master stem…not that much…
heavy use of the filter is more for taping individual signals…
when taping summed up signals, whole stems, i always even deactivate the filter section completely…
while pushing both edges with it’s eq a little is always a good thing… 
clean boost on, drive amount between 12 and 1 o clock, wet amount at 3 o clock and dry/wet ratio also at 3 o clock…whole mix…retaping…that’s pretty much always my pre master setting…
THIS gives the whole mix the overall feel of a decent big name analog mixing console…
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