BBE Green Screamer (Plugin)

The BBE Stomp Ware Green Screamer is a software overdrive plug-in that is clearly meant to resemble the Ibanez Tube Screamer. The plug-in is found in the Stomp Ware bundle of plug-ins that are a series of stomp box plug-ins for all different types of effects. This bundle of plug-ins was actually designed in tandem by BBE and Nomad Factory. I installed the bundle all at once, which was a quick and easy process that shouldn't be a problem for users as long as they have proper compatibility happening. Using the plug-in is also quite easy, even if you haven't used a real Tube Screamer pedal before, but it will help as it does share pretty much the same configuration. The setting controls that it has are for level, tone, and gain, which is a very common configuration for overdrives and distortions even beyond the Tube Screamer. The plug-in also has a switch for either an amp or DI mode.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I'm running the BBE Stomp Ware Green Screamer plug-in right now in my home rig, which is Pro Tools LE based. I have a Mac Book Pro computer that has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM, while I'm running Pro Tools LE 8 with a Digi 002R audio interface. I haven't had any issues at all running the Green Screamer within this system. It's hard to say how well this will run on any given system, but I'd really be surprised if many users out there had any performance issues.

OVERALL OPINION

I'm usually skeptical of software overdrives and distortions, and I believe I have pretty good reason with the BBE Stomp Ware Green Screamer. It's okay for getting some quick overdrive/fuzz, but for me it's not a plug-in that I would ever print with as I just don't like the sound very much. For me it comes off as thin sounding, and while it's in the same vein as a Tube Screamer overdrive, it doesn't live up to the name. The good news is that the Stomp Ware bundle of plug-ins comes with a number of plug-ins of all different types of effects and is very reasonably priced. Even so, I'd probably only recommend it if you're looking to get a bunch of different effects all in one place on the cheap. Overdrive is really hard to emulate with software, and they haven't quite nailed it here...