Logandy

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Beautifully flawed and vintage

I already own Rhythmic Robot's take on the Logan, but when I heard this, I HAD to buy it. Unlike RR's take, this thing was recorded to vintage tape using old valves. The result is an authentic sounding creamy distortion that sounds several decades old which, depending on your needs, could be bad or good. The other thing that differentiates this from RR's Kontakt instrument is that the individual patches aren't really tweakable so you can't say, bring up the cello sound and drop the violin sound. In lieu of this, Tronsonic has offered a slew of presets where they do the tweaking themselves and you choose from the list. The highlights here are the recorded chords themselves which just sound so much warmer than building the chords up yourself with patches taken from single notes (the downside is that you're limited to a small range on the keyboard and there are only minor and major chords). Another key difference is that the Tronsonic's Logan seems a bit out of tune in some place. Again, this could be a good thing or a bad thing (when you stack it with RR's though, it's sounds REALLY awesome). Lastly, price is a good selling point. RR's Logan sells for more than twice this, though I'd say they still both fall in the affordable range. Overall, I'd say get RR's Logan if you need something cleaner, in tune, tweakable and easier to put in a mix, but if you're going for something with a lot more character, something that sounds like it's from the past or something that really demands attention in the mix, this is the better option. Or even better... get both!

Jimmie Vigil