I would
very much doubt that there is any legal/licensing issue here. You can't use a brand name without dealing with the legal/licensing issues, but you can readily make clones and/or near clones in the form of physical or digital models. This is why many models in AmpliTube are described as "based on" (only officially licensed models can use the associated brand names). Likewise, there are huge numbers of boutique (and, indeed, some major) gear makers who explicitly clone vintage gear. You want a physical reproduction of a specific early Marshall model? A specific version of a specific treble booster unit? There are people out there selling all the physical clones you could ask for. You just need the cash!
It seems to me that, in recent years, IKM has been heavily focused on portable physical accessories and the mobile device market. Moreover, many of the new AmpliTube gear models have been part of licensing deals, whether the Mesa, Fender, or Ampeg packages, or a few pedals from Fulltone or Wampler, etc. (What
was, actually, the last
non-licensed gear model to come out!? Maybe the "Brit" amp/cab models with the initial AT$ release?) I presume licensing deals with recognized names are attractive to both the licensee and IKM, or they wouldn't do them.
Perhaps marketing believes there is less interest in "generic" models? Or, while IKM, has lavished considerable attention on Hendrix-related gear in the past (
we have two "Fuzz Face" variants! we have a Sunn 1200S head!), the rest of the "vintage" gear offering has long been ... spottier? Maybe (excepting someone with a particular Hendrix fandom), marketing doesn't think people are as interested in models of vintage gear? I would admittedly, have difficulty in seeing how one could arrive at such a conclusion, though. Overall, the digital-plugin and physical gear markets have
both been falling over themselves in a race to put out ever more authentic reproductions (physical or digital) of vintage(-style) gear, whether for mixing, or guitarists, or analog and "digital analog" synths, or whatever!
Treble boosters are admittedly particularly weird case. They were only a big deal, at least with pros, from the very late '60s to late '70s, at which point they were eclipsed by overdrive pedals. Only when people started getting more excited about "vintage" amps and amp-styles in the '90s did treble boosters also start to come back, too -- logically enough.
Frankly, I am not sure I will ever be able to justify owning a real, physical amp of the style (i.e. high-wattage "vintage Brit" types) that
genuinely benefits from a treble booster. But I could certainly justify digital
models of such things -- and, in fact, I already
have all of AmplTube's models of such amps. The JH Gold, the HiAmp, the OR120, the Red Pig, the various "based on AC30" models, etc. -- they all really cry out for treble boosters.
Also, a lot of AmpliTube's basic pedal models go back to AT2, the original "Metal" package, or the original Hendrix package. There is a
great range of stuff, but ... much of it is a bit "long in the tooth" theses days. Modelling in general, and not least IKM's own modelling, has moved
very far,
very fast in recent years. I would love to see a lot of the older models updated and reissued. I would buy a lot of them again (maybe not all at once, but I would certainly start cherry-picking my way through favorite pieces). There would then also be an opportunity to put out more vintagey stuff, like treble boosters, more early Marshall (or any Laney!) style models, etc. I think all of this could be easily marketed by emphasizing precisely what is attractive to people like me (of any age group): maybe you can neither afford a giant vintage amp rig, nor could you actually crank one up wherever you live, but if you want a practical solution to capturing crazy old guitar hero tones, Amplitube has you covered with top-notch, up-to-date models of the all the classic gear.
If I only had to drop a few bucks on amp/cab and a couple stomp models to sound like Tony Iommi in my headphones, why the heck not!?
But I guess we'll have to wait and see. IKM have never been hugely forthcoming about their plans, and AmpliTube users
might perhaps be forgiven for wondering "what's up?" when even the preset exchange is still trapped in AT3. I like AmpliTube and I like the "app store" approach to selling the models taken in the Custom Shop. The recent gear models sound great, and I've certainly picked up a few things in the last year or so -- though I also wish we had a bit more variety coming through the pipeline, including updates to some of the basics and classics.
