A rather spiffing Poly Ample, picked up on a bit of a deal. I have to say, two days in, that this is a truly truly great bit of kit that I wish had existed much earlier in my gear career. And to be honest something everyone (or at least everyone with a guitar/bass) should buy now. Really. It’s just that great.
In essence it’s nothing new or groundbreaking. Its a kind of Kemper profiler type thing at an affordable cost (of the sort you see loads of around now at well below the premium prices that they used to cost - whether from the likes of IK/Tonex, Line6, Boss, even Mooer).
The critical difference is that this just does away with the complexity for the sake of it you get with almost every other option. It’s stripped bare down to just what you need. Just treble, bass, mids, gain, volume, boost and reverb and thats it. Kind of like a normal guitar amp for a normal guitar player
Behind that you get 56 preselected, and really very decently modeled/emulated amps ranging from 60s British classics to nu-wave high gain monsters and a lot of stuff in between.
There are some frills. A nice touch responsive control surface, a mono/stereo out and (if you can be bothered), midi control and the ability to upload set lists, presets etc. And a pleasant, if basic reverb based on Shepherds Bush Empire (of all things, presumably lifted from the Poly Verbs thingy that shares the same form factor).
But thats it. No ability to upload new IRs or models. No ability to mess around honing stuff for the sake of it. Zero opportunity to indulge in nerdery for the sake of it. No temptation to fritter your life away assembling a hard drive full of 10000 cabinet IRs and 700 different emulated heads. No fancy sound shaping. None of that.
The bottom line is that this fills a gap (enough amps in a box to basically do any job required) whilst being just super immediate and easy to use. You can’t be distracted into wasting time on deep tone tweaking or IR downloading/uploading when you should be just playing. So you just play. It contrasts massively with the modelling pedal I had a couple of years back which sounded decent but had endless flexibility, a control app to fiddle with, and library upon library of stuff online to fill it with. Leading to me wasting hours and weeks indulging my hoarding and geeking out instincts assembling and cataloguing hundreds of IRs of different cabinets, etc to no real purpose at all, rather than just getting stuck into making soundz. Thankfully, I pulled away, dumped the pedal and got on with my life.
But this, this is good. Really good. Seriously try one or get one. Its awesome. I think I’m in love with a small orange and white box. There, I’ve said it. Now back to noodling on the sofa.