Synergy Amps Presented by Steve Vai and Greg Koch • NAMM 2019 

These two guys, even though they have very different playing styles, are talented beyond belief. i would love to hear a jam with these two, each bringing their own touches to a piece of music. I think they would compliment each other and make it great.

Holy smokes...satan´s personal lead guitarist....and Steve Vai!

OMG... I just heard Steve Vai say that he couldn't steal Greg's stuff, even if he watched. Okay, fellas? How good do you have to be that *Steve Vai* says "he's a freak"?!? I feel sooo much better right now, thought it was just me. The talent concentration here is near critical mass.

Ah man...I've loved Steve Vai since I was a fresh-faced 12 year old way back in 1990... ...but there's only one human on the earth like Greg Koch. He's the greatest.

WTFF?! This is completely INSANE!!!! This is going to create a before and after in technology era on the guitar. What an amazing gear!

There's more guitar talent in that room than 80% of the world.

Talent overload. Talk about top shelf players. Mind blown!

Would I ever love to hear that pair trade licks! Great video, thanks for sharing.

I love those guys!

Enjoyed the presentation, thanks guys!

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE ❤️ LOVE ❤️ LOVE ❤️ LOVE ❤️ LOVE THIS VIDEO.. FROM BEGINNING TO END... I HAVE WATCHED THIS VIDEO REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY REPEATEDLY..

I think my screen just broke from the awesomeness of this 2 gentleman!!!

two awsome guitarits and amazing persons!

This system is a dream for session work!!!

Two different styles and I can appreciate and enjoy both! Koch for emulation of other artists work, Hendrix, Page etc. Saw him live in a pretty small venue. He is a realist when it comes to the guitar and i enjoy his honesty! Vai for his showmanship (bit of a show off), his inventiveness when it comes to the guitar, his tone and the areas he can take us to. He is very cerebral much like Satch which seems to open up possibilities for others.

What fine men and guitarists!

Having Vai demo is worth every penny. I started playing 25 years ago because of Steve and have spent thousands in his name. His customer lifetime value (a metric known as CLV) must be off the charts.

"I gotcha" - Greg Koch

Thanks Steve for your explanation on how a amp works internally - pre amp & amplifier bravo :)

two best of the best!!!

Excelente. Puro carisma de estos dos guitarristas. Cada uno en su estilo.

2 of the best guys out there. Makes NAMM actually look like fun.

Holy shit the gristleman and Vai together!!! Never thought I'd see it!!

Steve Vai and Greg Koch talking gear...good lord...guitar nerdgasm.

Meeting of great guitarist.

That's my two favorite guitarist right there.

Steve not only is a great player but a gear expert too which is a skill on it's own..

The level of talent in that room....... Man, lovin the mutual respect from Steve for Greg. The only downside is that Greg didn't have a guitar. Alas, no jam.....

I just remember having a couple of pedals through my amp!

I just saw two titans fawning over gear like two young children playing with their favorite action figures. This is truly a sight!

My 💓 melts

two gentleman with massive hands

the only guy that makes a 6'1" steve vai look like a tiny shrunken old man

Sweet!

few comments...Cool to see Koch in this setting. He's from where Im from and I used to see him at the Music Store he worked at. And one of the great players there told me 'you just see Greg play". Some time later I was in there and Greg had some guitar out plinking..and I was like. WTF was THAT??? LOl. He just dominated the goddamned thing. And on Vai… the thing about him is the guy always delivers. He can talk in depth about sounds and music with total credibility. One of the few guitarists who can actually back up what he's talking about.

Steve: “Tone is in the preamp”. Greg: thinking, “Welllllllllll, …”.

2 Monster guitar players in one room!!!!

greg needs his own talk show on primetime

magnifico 👏👍

Greg's thinking "Hey dude I just plug into a Fender and play, I don't know what all that stuff is you just said, but I can dig it."

Greg & Jack Butler talk amps.....Nice.

Thumbs up! Cool to see Greg and Steve in the same vid. Now.....I'll never forget when PIL generic album came out...to this day my favorite Via sound and playing of all time. If you've never heard it....do yourself a favor.

Rock and Roll!!!

Turn the delay off and use a strat. Greg not impressed with Steve's tone.

Randall already did the preamp module thang. Quite well.

Cool ...take Steve to Jamaica !

This video is essentially me talking to a friend having popped my car bonnet and now pointing at things and hoping they’re interested. They never are.

At first I wanted them to jam, but then realized the earth would implode.

Am I the only one who hears like 99% effects and like 1% tube amp? Basically, these modules are a tone stack and preamp tubes. The tone stack components, minus the pots, could fit on a quarter. It would be easy to combine about 20 of these modules in to one, since most amps have very similar tone stacks. I don't understand having an entire different module for like 2 different resistor values, LOL. They could just have a rotary switch with a bunch of resistor and cap values - then maybe a bunch of different pot values that light up when engaged. (Check out and download the Duncan Tone Stack Calculator... it has a schematic for the main tone stacks). I'm sure the preamps sound fine when they're dry, but they all sound exactly the same to me, and kind of crappy. Also, the tremolo and reverb, on the Fenders especially, are a huge part of what makes them so fun to play, and simply having the volume and tone stack is not a complete amp. Another thing is... the power tubes being driven hard is what makes the amp sound awesome; I think Steve has it backwards here. I'd take a digital modeler in to an awesome Deluxe Reverb power section over any of this stuff. I mod my amps to bypass the tone stack with a switch, which in my opinion works wonders! The amp becomes much louder and more 3D with the tone stack bypassed.

I,ve been fantasizing about one power section with a bunch of different vintage preamps. Fender ,supro, gibson ect

Got to watch Vai do this interview...through a sound proof window :( At least got to wait in a long line to absorb some of his power through my right hand.

Greg:. I just plug straight into my little fender.

Man people really need to listen to Steve bais tone it took me a while to really understand it and I love how he still keep the snap in the tone uts beautiful for a rock tone it really is and people that say he just plays fast are ridiculous and do not know anything about guitar he can play blues and he cna play extremely tasteful he can literally play like anything you throw at him look at the way he moves his strings there is s ton of feel in that alone he makes every single note sound good and anybody that truely understands guitar theg know how important it is just to make each single note sound amazing we see fast players alot now but they cant make a note by itself sound good it's just plain I practice every note single notes how to move them how to make them just sound incredible

I love the giant GREG on his hanging name tag... just need a sticker on his shirt that says, "Hi, my name is..."

Greg is saying Just give me a amp and a guitar! Steve is a rocket scientist when it comes to gear and what not.

Holy fuck!! Are you kiddin' me?

Great!!! 😈🤘🏻

He lost Koch at Kochery!

The Gristle King's doing his best to appear politely interested in Vai's gear babble....yep...right...right right...uh huh...yup...umhm...sounds great...got it...I got you...LMAO!!!

they need to make a preamp module for "The Greg"

That’s the most subdued I’ve ever seen Greg Koch - hilarious. “Teacher, am I allowed to speak?”

Steve Vai knows his gear!!! sometime we gotta ask him where he gets those glasses too!

I played the T/Dlx module into the effects return of a Hot Rod Deluxe(?) at a local music store and it sounded amazing. OTOH, Synergy has been saying that they're getting all these other amp manufacturers to create modules, but they haven't released any new modules in two (or more?) years.

The talent in that room. Both amazing players who speak truth.

How many amps am I gonna' use? All of them.

Got to shake hands with Greg at 2019 NAMM, super cool guy and amazingly quick witted. Greg is such an incredible monster on guitar, freakish talent and huge brain capacity. I think he's like 6'7", so my theory is that he acquired the talent of two mortals which gives him his unearthly abilities. Either that or he's actually an alien, like in Men in Black. I want to believe Greg is crying inside during this filming, and hoping it will end soon so he can get back to creating brilliant music. Just my humble opinion, we understand Greg, duty calls.

I get the impression that the Gristle Missile was secretly thinking they ALL sound like crap.

Clean sound by Steve Vai, he even manages to saturate a Fender "Deluxe". :D

That's a plexi... yeah yeah yeah! Take it on the road boys lol

He kind of missed the best part of the Syn-1.... The fact you can run it directly into the effect return of your existing amplifier, and essentially add another channel to your amp that can be bypassed, and has an effect loop that will continue working when the Syn-1 is bypassed. The bandwagon I hope they jump on, is an onboard impulse response loader in the Syn-1 !!

Vai`s tone $10.000 rig ...Greg's tone straight amp

After watching many video of greg k.. finaly here for mr.vai.. it's funny when i see mr.vai play guitar and funny tone too .. like i see kid play guitar Lol

My suggestion - find the one amp tone you like and discard the others! (Or buy a Spark for $299). Or if you're Steve Vai and have a $Billion buy one of these!

What the heck kind of tuners does Steve have on his guitar?!

Vai's hands are amazing! Hard not to watch them.

Meeting of the tall peoples lol!

the audio sounds like it was a mic being shuffled around in the bottom of a bag of stuff.

Has anyone noticed the tuner knobs on vais guitar ? Does he have regular volume knobs? Lol

These 2 guys have more talent than 100% of this comment section.

i was expecting them to play together.

Is there a Koch module? Lol

"The tone is not so much in the power amp as it is in the preamp." (11:20). Paradigm shift announced by Professor Vai!

Koch--That's great Steve. Now just give me a fucking 63 Blackface and leave me alone

Greg is horrified by this situation of horrible tones. Uncomfortable.

I want the new Steve Vai green preamp

What a pair.

2 cool cats

Not to question Steve Va's judgement, but is he saying that power tubes and the OT have no impact on an amp's tone?

I think mr k was doing his Ali g imitation

Greg is my favourite guitarist! Yes, Steve is famous and deserves accolades...but Greg just sounds better than MOST guitarists to me. 🕶🎶✌🏻

Vai is an amazing musician but his tone is not something that I'd strive for. I would love to hear Greg demo it.

Vai's like "Plexi" and Greg's like "uh yeah mmm-hmmm"

Man thats a hell of knobs n Buttons and blinking lights and all these mother of Pearl fret board inlays..i'm completely lost with the overview....this was all about the Synthesizer of Rick Wakeman..when he played " the six wives of Heinricht XIII" am I wrong...did I digg It?..

Er those clean channels sound shit! Steve what!!

Got to watch these two through the window at the boutique booth at NAMM, that was some bit of luck! I'm.a big Vai fan ...but don't know much about Greg Koch other than what I've seen on Wildwood Guitar vids...really wish Greg had a guitar in his hands to check it out as well! Volume on guitars are very low...didn't hear anything outside...wasn't the best sound for guitars through the video...wondering how it really sounded? Henning was gaga over these like a year ago or more...am I right? With Vai's stamp on these...I bet they really start selling now, but will they overtake Kemper? It seems like a battle of the technologies and also who's doing it right....at least Synergy pays licensing for the cloned sounds...Kemper...well we know how they do it, and the controversy there. I guess time will tell!

Problem is that this guitar works only with 'Legacy' ;)

Gregory Cockery is Awesome

Love Steve but having his delay always on doesn't give us a clear picture of how the amp's actually sound.

Doesn’t a lot of the tone we love come from the power amp side?

I can't decide between: - Vai is so smart I just can't follow him. - He just can't explain things very well. - He doesn't really understand what he's talking about. But whichever it was still entertaining.