Line 6 Spider Valve 212
The Line 6 Spider Valve 212 is the bigger brother of the 112 and features a pair of Premium Celestion® Vintage 30 speakers but still retains the 40 watts RMS power rating. The lay out and facilities are also exactly as appears on the 112 with 12 pre-set Amp models and 7 Smart control effects type, alongside these the 212 offers 36 user programmable channels.
So essentially the Spider Valve range offers Amp modelling, for those of you that are not familiar with the term this means that all of the characteristics of a particular amplifier are emulated by modelling software so that when you dial-up a particular pre-set it sounds as if, for example, you’re playing through a Twin Reverb combo.
Modelling amps have been around for a while now although previously the issue has been that the modelling software could never accurately capture the warmth and characteristics of the valves. Line 6 have resolved this issue by including real valves in the pre-amplifier architecture stage (2 x 12AX7) that feeds the modelling software and re-creates faithfully the response of real valves. It also uses valves at the output stage – 2 x 6L6 Power Tubes to accurately recreate the sonic and electrical response that a valve amp produces in a real-life use situation.
Aside from this, Line 6 have added 7 high quality digital effects (3 can be used simultaneously) with adjustable parameters that include Tape Echo, Sweep Echo, Standard Delay (all with Tap Tempo) Chorus/Flanger, Phaser, Tremolo, and Reverb. There are also equalisation options that include Bass Middle Treble and Presence, there’s also a Drive parameter and each of the six amp “groups” (Clean, Twang, Blues, Crunch, Metal and Insane) each have a secondary voiced sound option making a total of 12 amp models.
There are over 300 artist created pre-sets on the Spider Valve 212 and 36 user pre-sets for customisable stored sounds. There’s also a dedicated XLR direct out on the rear of the combo for studio recording or connection to a PA feed and a few different sets of speaker and power amp connectivity options for increasing the power rating of the 212. A neat addition is a tuner built onto the front panel of the amplifier for the rapid tuning of your instrument, the amp weighs in at 27Kg with dimensions of 762 L x 635 H x 381 D mm.