Impressed by Heat but damn it's expensive

High Gain - I’m just making these up as I go btw…the A4 and Heat

https://soundcloud.com/djadonis206/highgain_v_2

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im a hypocrite, i must admit :slight_smile: not long after the Heat came out i rant and said: Thats too expensive for just a bit of Overdrive, has no sequencer and stuff. And on Monday afternoon, this just happened:

Oops, where did this thing came from?? Ok, now that its here i can as well keep it! :smiley:

Have to try it out a bit more in the future, did not had a lot of time since. But it instantly made my DAW productions feel “better”, thats where i tested it so far. Guess it will also be a great “summing” device for all of my other Elektron gear. To have a single Device recording my Hardware in general as well, without the need to always hook up the A4 or AR when i want to record my Drumbrute and Stuff. But yeah, its expensive. And im an crazy hypocrite, did i already mentioned that?! :smiley:

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I see my ski hat :slight_smile:

Nice Heat BTW.

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Just for the fun of it, I did a Heat No Heat A/B comparison

:0 - :24 seconds: No heat

:24 - end: Heat

https://soundcloud.com/djadonis206/a-no-heat-b-heat

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Hey djadonis, do you use the heat on the whole mix?

Yes, the whole mix. I have almost all of my boxes (A4, Rytm, TR9 etc) going into different channels on a Mackie 1602. The output of the Mackie goes into the Heat and the Heat goes into my soundcard.

I haven’t used the Heat as a soundcard yet. Maybe I’ll experiment with that today.

I’m recording right into Ableton.

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Hey Adonis, nice samples you posted. Thank you for taking the time!
I was wondering how recording to the heat compares to recording to the mackie and then to the heat? I read a lot about the distortion of the mackie 1602 and was wondering if you can achieve the same results with the heat?

Had some fun the other day with Heat/Overbridge/Live

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I’m not saying it is overpriced, especially given the Overbridge connectivity, but for myself I get plenty of mileage out of VST FX. That price tag is well on the way to a really nice new instrument. I feel like if I were headed towards $700 USD territory I might as well go full on boutique analog and try a Culture Vulture or something.

Though I’ve really wanted a Warm Audio Tone Beast for a long time…I guess the Heat actually makes more sense…

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like anyone with a heat has a lot of other gear that can voice their opinion…

You have to realize that there arre not a lot of boxes that do what the heat does out there. It’s distortion + multimode filter + eq, with a mod matrix, fully analog. Name me some other box that has all this (and stereo).

It is the combination of all these features that makes the product good.

Yeah Ive come around to thinking eventually I’ll probably grab a heat. Had a couple go’s on a friend’s. Cool box, especially for OTB sound design with other hardware stuff. The envelope is cool too. Like others have said, cool for bass/guitar style filter stuff. And it has presets, which is rare in boxes like these… Beyond my means atm for what it is, kind of a luxury item, I can get similar end results with vst/other hardware, but doesn’t feel as intuitive/fast, so one day…

This is exactly it. I was initially disinterested in the Analog Heat. In fact, being a DIY’er my first reaction was thinking “If I want distortion, I’ll build my own”. However, once I added up the number of circuits I’d have to build (x 2 for stereo) it became clear that the Analog Heat was a better use of my time and money - it now seems like a bargain. And it sounds fantastic. I’ve only had mine for a few weeks, so I am still in the stage of slathering it excessively over every signal I can, but it’ll be great for subtle shadings too once the honeymoon is over and I have reigned myself in.

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I went back and forth with the Heat until I finally got one a couple weeks ago and I absolutely love it.

It’s a lot of money for me so I have scrutinized it quite a bit, looking for things I don’t like about it in hopes for an excuse to send it back, but alas, it’s a keeper.

So far I have mostly been running my OP-1 through it, and that combination alone is enough for a lifetime. The immediacy of the OP-1 pairs well with the depth of the AH. I’ve been using subtler settings to enhance drums from the OP-1, but the real fun for me happens when using the OP-1 more or less as an oscillator (or several, using tape) and doing the rest in the AH to get some pretty unique analog sounds.

This is my fifth Elektron (AR,MDUW,MNM,OT) and like the others, AH has not let me down.

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Here’s some Classic Dist with Peak Mode filter. Overdoing the Dist a bit.

https://soundcloud.com/djadonis206/classic-dist

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I’ll be honest when the Heat was announced I was very meh about it. I found a nearby store that had one I could play around with so I tried it out. When o first started playing around with it, that feeling of meh continued.

After I finished playing with it I felt VERY enthusiastic and excited. Damn! That thing is a blast and sounds FANTASTIC!

Edit: I can’t stop thinking about that thing

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Just received mine.

So far I’ve been playing with each of my Elektron machines.
I thought it would be totally straightforward, but in fact the combinations between Distorsion type, Drive, Wet on one side, and EQ + Filter + Env + LFO on the other side are countless.
Add the fact that you can route the ENV and the LFO to two different destinations…
And there are some hidden things like “Dirt”… Haven’t played with it yet…

The really cool things is that

  • you can save presets
  • you can drive it (mad) with CC
  • I have found a way to switch easily from one machine to another (or several ones) by using the alt bus of my Multimix 12, so I can route any track to the AH without touching a wire : I’m thrilled !!

I’m now realizing this was the send/return loop I was looking for on my mixer.
Well it does exist, but send bus is mono and noisy, the actual solution is waaaaay better.

I also want to try it on my guitar + my bass (Rickenbacker 4003 does so well with a fuzz !)
I’ll go step by step, but I can already see that I’ll need to spend quite some time to master it completely.
I hadn’t anticipated the depth of this pedal, to be honest.
I’m excited as hell :smiley:

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Yep, it’s killer. Can’t see myself ever letting go of this one. Deceptively deep.

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Right?! Isn’t there like 2 lfos and envelopes in that thing? I was impressed as I thought there was just one. Also, that distortion sounds REALLY good. Like it really DOES,make the sound FRESH instead of making it sound edgy(like most other distortions I’ve heard

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Nope, one of each.
And two destinations.

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