"Pretty Distortion" Art TPSII Vince Naeve Mod Rev7

[Dakota]

This is an unusual piece of gear, and not quite like anything else available on the market. I think it's just the kind of thing the extended Tape Op culture gets enthused about, in that it's a terrific sounding and not so expensive character machine that dials in controlled amounts of very analog sound, so I thought I'd post a review.

There are two layers going on here: what the Art TPS II is stock, and what the Vince Naeve Mods and fixes build on top of that.

I've been guilty of generally ignoring Art gear in recent years, as even though they have some cool points from their origin as an MXR spin off company, they've made so much erratic entry-level consumer "toy" gear. Then again, I'm always looking for diamonds in the rough, under-appreciated and undervalued cool gear, and secret weapons. Add to that that Art has been very deliberate in recent years with trying to do a for real "affordable but pro audio" higher line, and getting over my snobbery, I'm starting to acknowledge that they are making some surprisingly great stuff that bats way above the price point. See: Art Pro VLA II, Pro MPA.

I never tried a stock TPS or TPS II, but on poking around the nets it's been considered an inexpensive trick toy with wildly varied reviews, some saying "hissy clippy trash", some saying "amazing secret weapon". I suspect some of the erratic experiences are due to Art's general strength and weakness: American design, some of which is clever and some of which is odd, and Chinese manufacture to meet a price point. QC, the usual stuff we trade off in a bargain. Some of these were under spec and semi-broken when sold, some weren't.

On opening the unit, I was actually really surprised. I expected all IC's and mini wave soldered modern disposable design, and it's not like that at all. Surprisingly old school, more discrete transistors than IC's (very surprising), not a cramped board, toroidal transformer, room for repair and modification.

It's a two channel hybrid solid state / tube preamp and DI and line level color box, meant to do a "tube character" thing on the cheap. Which means starved plate, yes. I think the plate voltage is not as starved as some, but not full plate. Middling, but not bad. I think the modification raises the plate voltage some, not sure of that. Swapping the stock modern Asian tube to well chosen vintage tubes does make a huge difference in these, as seems to be the case with a lot of the Art gear. A must-do, I think. And it's really fun to try the different tube personality flavors. A vintage Telefunken black plate tube was in the TPS for most of my appraising. Other tubes had different personalities, but none were overall better out of what I had on hand.

Now specifically on to the Vince Naeve Rev 7 mod of the TPS II. He's been tweaking these for years, there are many layers of improvements and new features added.

First off, signal to noise ratio. This thing is amazingly quiet in standard gain structures, and still waaaay hiss/hum quieter than it should be when pushed super hard. Vince tends to tweak that way, as he rigs at home for one-man-band live looping/recording, and reflexively works over all his gear for minimum hiss/hum. A copper shield is added around the transformer, transformer rotated for minimum EM field into the circuits, parts values modified as needed, and ground points are optimized.

First thing the signal hits is the adjustable input impedance from 150 to 3000 ohms, which is a very engineer/producer useful feature. It affects input gain in an obvious way, but what's more exciting is how it affects the perceived "hardness or softness" of the signal, opacity/transparency, and frequency response. One can either politely match a mic or line source, or get creative. An analogy would be a lens, adjusting focus. Or bicycle gears, adjusting coupling. The mod gets the adjustable impedance feature to also work with the back panel XLR line ins, and opens up the gain structure so that the back ins can take full on very hot studio line levels. And it does. The input stages don't collapse or clip unless you want them to.

Then an input knob for the first solid state gain stage that drives into the tube stage. I think this is a discrete transistor stage, not sure. In any case, great range of "tube drive" adjustment from clean/open to somewhat driven, to cooking hard. Input and output controls behave just like an engineer would want, all the useful choices for gain staging. Input clip lights tell you when you get solid state clipping at the first stage, useful.

Then it hits a 20db boost switch you can either engage or not. This is kind of "free lunch" gain, as it does not make the first solid state gain stage clip, it just jumps up the gain right before the tube, getting it into nice sounding tube-working-harder territory. With the mod, Vince re-voices that boost stage for a warm vintage fat sound. I'm not sure what he changes to do that, and those are over-used catch words, but indeed, the boost sounds really great. Warm, thick, not at all the tizzy/fizzy/buzzsaw Chinese starved plate sound. VU meters indicate how hard the tube is working (and the limiter behavior if engaged), also a useful indication. I don't think the meters are clinically accurate, but they are certainly informative enough for useful and quick judgments.

Then it hits the 16 position Art "V3 variable valve voicing" rotary switch. Bewildering on first approach, is this a dumb gimmick or a swiss army knife of creative sound variations? It seems to be a combo of different bundled EQ presets and tube gain/voicing combinations, plus a limiter in/out. My inner control freak would prefer separate controls for every function, but my inner studio dog pragmatist knows the benefits of fast flipping through presets, you immediately get an "ah ha" or not. Fast "ah ha" is great. Many internet reviews gave a thumbs down on this knob as originally implemented, evidently there were huge jumps from too quiet to too loud, the EQ presets too hard over one way or another, and the limiter engaging at way too low a level and sounding obvious and dumb rather than useful. Vince has deliberately re-worked all this, smoothed out the settings and made them optimized for recording use. Not having a stock unit to compare, in any case I can say these settings are actually great now. You just use your ears while flipping, and it does roll through 16 noticeably different personalities that put emphasis on different spectral and dynamic aspects, some of which are more flattering than others to whatever signal is currently being fed through. Flip to flatter. I ran white noise through and back to a spectrum analyzer to check what the heck the EQ presets are doing, and it's pretty sensible stuff with smooth curves - combinations of varied high pass, slight high shelf boost, flat.

Vince also re-does the limiter circuit, and I have to say it sounds great now, it's one of my favorite aspects of this piece. No control at all for attack/release, and only a fixed threshold that you work at by adjusting how hard the tube is being hit. But a lot of vintage limiters work that way. The attack sounds great on drums and transients, it lets a wonderful popping but not harsh snap through on the transient, and then lurches a little in a good way like a level-loc or primitive limiter with cool character. When driven hard, the sound is absolutely flattened out except for the transients that pop through and submerge again, and it sounds very tubey and old school and oddly sort of "lo fi personality" but "hi fidelity sound " as it does this. Paradoxical but true. Dynamite stuff for drum parallel compression, & bus parallel. Explosive but controlled, pretty but attitude. The limiter also works fine for polite tracking use, if one keeps in mind it's going to do what a primitive limiter does and not always be unobtrusive when it chomps.

Now the real heart of the mod: variable dynamic harmonic distortion. This has nothing to do with the stock unit, it's a family of original custom circuits Vince has been optimizing for years. New feedback paths are introduced back to the tube, through little networks of parallel diodes and resistors. The result is that the tube is held into doing 2nd harmonic distortion even when the signal is low, and as far as I can tell, the tube sort of complexly self-compresses the overall level as it's being driven harder, in effect doing a useful auto gain sort of thing. It is surprisingly forgiving of variations in input level, and tends to automatically package the signal into a nicely handled state. Odd, I'm not used to gain stages helping you out that way on their own. I can't emphasize enough that this no longer behaves like a conventional tube gain stage. It's always distorting somewhat, but it's the pretty "good guy" distortion that's sought after from tubes and tape and vintage gear, the kind that adds thickness and liveliness. And it's the stuff lower in the overtone series, mostly 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th harmonics, not extending up into the buzzsaw/ugly higher harmonic distortion. The unit has a strong tendency to generate nice "voice" harmonics from low and mid frequency contents, and comparatively not make fizz and hash in the highs while doing so. So it's a harmonic synthesizer in some ways, but it's a real and complexly behaving tube circuit that's doing so. It makes new and good sounding frequencies almost out of thin air, that tend to round out holes in a spectrum, do a "fullness" thing.

Best knob on the whole item: Vince adds on a dial control on the right of the front plate that varies this new diode/resistor feedback path behavior. What it does exactly varies a bit depending on the other settings, but it's basically more transparent to the left, thicker to the right. More emphasis on 2nd harmonic distortion to the right, and evidently in phase / opposite phase distortion components in some settings. I ran pure sine tones in and back out to a spectrum analyzer, and indeed you can see and hear the mix of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th harmonics change smoothly and usefully as you adjust the knob. Sounds kind of like changing organ stops, surprisingly wide variations in timbre colors are available. Another happy surprise, this overtone generation dynamically varies as the signal changes amplitude and frequency content. This also varies quite a lot depending on what the V3 knob is set to, those functions seem to be in the feedback path as well, which makes different spectral areas jump out in the tube emphasis. It's quite lively what it adds to dynamic content, but not in a hokey auto-wah over the top way, more like the way a fine tube amp responds to the player. I'd be suspicious if someone else told me this, but it really does add "life" and "magic" to tracks. You'd have to hear it for yourself, but I doubt anyone would send one of these back after a fair studio workout.

Another big difference with this unit as opposed to other color box or saturation devices, it tends to add more detailing/thickening distortion to quiet signals, and cleans up more and more as things get louder. Totally upside down from usual tube and tape and transformer saturation! Once I got used to using it that way, I found it a very exciting new tool (I already have tape, tubes, transformers that behave the way we're used to). This device puts a unique take on that "vintage" harmonic richness flavor into a sound, but does not muck up crisp rhythmic articulation, does not collapse the spectrum when things get loud. It does really beautiful things to bring up fine details in a way that doesn't actually sound distorted at all when blended in carefully, just articulate and pretty.

I've already used it thoroughly on a mastering job, laying it in in parallel but quieter than the main mastering compression/EQ pass. Being mostly octave distortion, it doesn't sound nearly as fried as you'd think when handling full program material, and laid in at subtle levels, the new frequencies sound natural and exciting. Adds fine detail, glue, 3D, a bit of "tuff", thickness and richness, dynamic liveliness, and a very hardware-not-plugin sound. The tendency of it to clean up on louder moments means it does not muck up the gloss aspects of mastering. A great tool right there even if that's all I ever used it for. But I've also used it as a mic pre for a folky session, very lovely/warm/old-school when dialed in gently, and to run all sorts of tracks through to add that mojo thing. It's a swiss army knife of controlled and pretty sounding tube distortion. And even a great and quiet but tubey sounding 2 channel mic pre and DI that can run clean or thick.

Cons: the controls are laid out in an odd mirror-symmetric way that I'd guess Art found clever, but I just find annoying as it breaks engineer convention. I find myself when trying to fine tune output at the same time on both sides, I've actually grabbed input on one side and output on the other. It's not that big a deal though, I'm getting used to it. Also, it's initially almost overwhelming to get a handle on all the controls, laid in a tight space and some not doing conventional things. The controls all interact with each other to varying degrees, so there is huge variation in parameter spaces this thing can do. But that's part of the fun if you are of the tinkering / exploring temperament. 3rd con, it's an Art piece that doesn't have snob appeal in the rack. But clients looking over the racks seldom have any idea what's $50 pawn shop stuff and $3k stuff you slaved over budgeting, and any pro audio guest would totally get it once they heard what it actually does.

As far as I know, these are currently $380 from Audiopro if you get one already modded from a factory new one they've stocked. Vince warranties, and amazingly his mods do not void Art's warranty, as they don't interfere with Art getting to the standard components. If you already own a TPS II, you can send it for a mod. I don't know the price on that, but I'd guess between $200 and $300.

Info page on the audiopro site: http://www.audioproz.com/AP.php?Article=94
This information, while helpful, doesn't do the thing justice, and I don't think is updated to cover all the features in the current revision 7. The manual I got with it goes into a lot more detail.

General site with contact info: http://www.audioproz.com/


Bottom line: sounds awesome. New unique take on vintage inspired timbres. Not a played out sound yet - fresh sonic territory. Lots of control variations. Very cheap for what it does. Fun.

[Dakota]

Addendum:

On the front there are also polarity flip switches, useful. & 48v phantom, useful, and seems a good full 48v, haven't noticed any mics acting underpowered.

I'd guessed at the mod cost if you already have a TPS II. The audiopro site lists it as $180. At that price, way worth it in my opinion, and I'm hard to please and slow to crack the wallet.

Pictures:

You can see the mod added "more 2nd harmonic" knob on the right, works great. Also note Art's mirror symmetric front layout, which takes some getting used to.


Note that the stock Art design uses only 3 IC chips, everything else is discrete transistors. Cool. See modded feedback path running from the tube to the added knob, and some other modded bits added or changed in the stock layout.



Power supply side, note added shield. Every bit helps with S/N. Other funky mods going to the tube area.



Closer up of the 2nd harmonic distortion circuit. Super funky, almost like a circuit bent thing - but it's stable and repeatable. I watched him put together one of these, and it's quite particular balancing the behavior, the parts values have been carefully chosen over time, and sometimes have to be fine tuned for each installation.

[JWL]

Wow, cool.... thanks for this. I have 2 of these boxes and they have gone mostly unused the past few years. I'll have to check them out again. I may actually splurge and get these mods done. We'll see.

I do however use my ART TubePACs pretty regularly....

[Dakota]

You're welcome, JWL. I was debating whether to just keep the word to myself on these as a secret weapon, or let tape oppers know. Well, these are so flexible that everyone is going to get different things out of them anyway, and given the general support around here for Michael Joly/Oktavamod, Black Lion Audio, Square State Solid State, Jim Williams, etc., Vince's work is much along those same lines but not as well known. So now you know.

Keep in mind this has taken me a while. Lucky for me his shop is local, and based on good conventional repair work for me over time, I've slowly started to check out his modded gear without having to get into shipping and long distance worries.

Tube pac, I've heard those are good for cheap, but have never tried them. No idea if Vince mods those. I know he mods a lot of the Art gear, and I briefly appraised his modded Pro MPA, which was pretty astounding actually. I'll probably pick one up later on.

[JWL]

The TubePAC has pretty astounding band for the buck, imho. I replaced the tubes in them, and they are quite useable on a variety of sources where you want a bit thicker/more distorted tone than a clean pre. They are probably my favorite bass DI as well, but I use TubePACs on about anything that needs some fattening.

[Dakota]

Addendum II:

Vince indicates to me that while tube-swapping can make significant differences in some gear case by case, it's his opinion that in this specific TPS circuit, tube swapping doesn't make as big a difference.

The one I now own, it did make a difference when I put different assorted 12ax7s in there. Now I realize: the one I have had been tweaked with the tube I liked best already in it. I ended up with one of Vince's test bench TPS II's that he'd developed the mod on. I ended up with that one by choice, as I was already part way through some work and wanted to make sure of keeping the tracking timbre matched.

So it's said: it's an open question whether tube swapping makes as big a difference in this specific unit. YMMV.

[changeng]

So a couple of months in, are you still using it? What situations is it best suited for? Have you used it for vocals and if so, how does it handle fast transients? Is it clean enough to record a professional vocal track? I started a bunch of years ago with the ART MP and this looks like two of them put together - not a great piece of kit when it's stock - very slurry on consonants.

Based on your review I sent an Art Pro Channel to Vince to work his alchemy on - really eager to see what he does with it!

[Dakota]

So a couple of months in, are you still using it? What situations is it best suited for? Have you used it for vocals and if so, how does it handle fast transients? Is it clean enough to record a professional vocal track? I started a bunch of years ago with the ART MP and this looks like two of them put together - not a great piece of kit when it's stock - very slurry on consonants.

Based on your review I sent an Art Pro Channel to Vince to work his alchemy on - really eager to see what he does with it!

"A couple of months in" - ha! Well, it's still pertinent 2 years in, and to post a general update if the novelty wore off - which it has not. I've still been using this steadily for the very same things I liked about it in the first place, and nothing else in my toolkit does what this does. I'm very happy with it.

"What situations is it best suited for?" - When you want well-behaved ear-candy controlled 2nd harmonic (octave) distortion. Which is sort of a distillation of what people like about the desirable non-linear behavior of some old vintage gear. And when you want that plus a primitive smooshy pumping limiter that happens to sound really cool (in the modded TPS). I don't think the stock limiter circuit ever sounded cool, Vince's mod re-does the limiter behavior. Best suited for: adding color, animation, warmth, thickness, exciter, sparkle, girth, pump, harmonics, etc. to sounds needing those qualities. I use it much more at line level to send tracks to to be treated than I use it as a mic pre from the get-go, but it does get used happily that way as well. And sometimes as a DI, guitar, keys, bass - it's sometimes just the thing depending on the track.

The really killer app (for me) is in mastering. Running the track through this and gaining for the sweet spot with the added 2nd harmonic distortion control to a sweet tubey "singing" cook but not overdone, and riding the limiter into good pumping, then printing that and laying it in sample-aligned with the more conventional mastering print. Then bringing the TPS up at somewhere around -24db to -14db of the main print. It adds almost nothing to the measured RMS, yet the track suddenly sounds much more vivid and and 3D and fine detailed, without the ear-tiring qualities most exciters bring. This treatment bears up very well on repeated listens, it's extremely musical. This parallel treatment is also great on subgroups like drums, strings, backing vox, etc. And non-parallel and just replacing the dry track, it'll take the digititus right off many things, softsynths, samples, et al.

"Is it clean enough to record a professional vocal track?" - Professional vocal track, like slick modern R&B pop or dance track or diva stuff? It wouldn't be the first thing I'd reach for in that circumstance. This is no magic substitute for a dedicated pre of 20 times the cost, and shouldn't be expected to be. The stock unit is a budget pre with some odd design ideas, and behaves well enough for realistic expectations at the very low price point it was targeted for. The mod doesn't magically make it a high end clean tube pre - the mod makes it a much improved pre that's spectacular as a specific harmonic distortion color device. Recording "color" vocals on the other hand - yes, the unit is great for that. I've tracked all sorts of stuff that wanted to be tubed out from the get-go, with very happy results.

"how does it handle fast transients?" - well, the solid state gain stages are perfectly serviceable, but overall... that's not the strong point of this device. It's apples and martian blueberries compared to an API or API clone.

Vince's mod of the Pro MPA would be much much more suited for tracking money vocals. Still though, a completely different feel than a fast transient API style thing. It sounds more like a butter/silk thing.

"Based on your review I sent an Art Pro Channel to Vince to work his alchemy on - really eager to see what he does with it!"

I'd love to hear about the results if you are still checking this board.

[changeng]

chure! I posted this on gearslutz almost exactly a year ago - my opinions are the same a year later - I don't use it all the time, but it's nice on some vocals, some acoustic guitar and definitely on electric guitar and bass.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/low-end- ... -read.html

[Dakota]

chure! I posted this on gearslutz almost exactly a year ago - my opinions are the same a year later - I don't use it all the time, but it's nice on some vocals, some acoustic guitar and definitely on electric guitar and bass.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/low-end- ... -read.html

Thank you for the link, changeng! Very informative read.

Re: mic transformer added to loop in the opto compressor - I haven't heard Vince's Pro Channel mod, but I had appraised Vince's related mod to the opto compressor in the Pro VLA II, which had really cool character. One could definitely hear dynamically changing 3rd harmonic soft transformer saturation as the compressor worked harder. A "thick" sound. Much more flavor than the stock opto behavior. I didn't get my VLA modded that way at the time, as I'm usually tasking the VLA to do its stock clean thing. If I had a second VLA, it would get get Vince's mod.

And yes, Vince is not an enthusiastic proponent of tube swapping, in general, with some case by case exceptions. I think he thinks people think it's a magic fix more than it actually is - a hype thing. (My experience: it makes a big difference in some gear, other gear not so much). I do know he fine tunes the component values in his mods specifically for the tube installed at the time of the mod. Over time, when I've messed with swapping the tube in the TPS he modded away from the one he calibrated around, it doesn't behave the same. Results are interesting, but I always go back to the tube that he had in there when he tuned the unit. But it isn't a modern asian tube, it's an old nice telefunken. Telefunkens are quite hi-fi clean under normal drive conditions (too much so for some guitar amp tone seekers) but do still sound really musical when driven hard, still a nice spectrum.

In my Pro VLA II, the stock tubes were "ok", but not really dimensional or special sounding. Perhaps even cheap sounding, a tone bottleneck. On swapping around, it did make a very noticeable difference with different tubes. The best two flavors I found: 60's RCA blackplates, which have a full-spectrum but kind of rocking hard and focused tight sound when pushed, but mostly clean and electric vivid, no particular area of the spectrum more emphasized than any other, best general purpose tubes. And 60's mullards which are softer edged and prettify the mids and upper bass more and flatter vocals, bass, and individual tracks more, but can soften the lows and highs too much to put subgroups or entire mixes through. Unless they need softened that way.

[Dakota]

* Adding some thoughts about the topics raised, and distortion "color":

2nd harmonic distortion (and even order distortion in general) is characteristic of asymmetrical non-linear gain, one side of the waveform transformed differently than the other. Prominent musical sound is an added octave, timbre is kind of string-like. Single ended or class A tube circuits tend to do this, as do solid state circuits with single polarity power supplies, solid state if the bias voltage is not centered in the headroom, compressors when the detector is getting a half-wave or the rectification is not even, and inductor and transformer coils in the comparatively rarer cases where the field is asymmetrical, like a fasel wah inductor.

3rd harmonic distortion (and odd order distortion in general) is characteristic of symmetrical non-linear gain, both sides of the waveform transformed the same way. Prominent musical sound is a 5th added in the second octave, timbre is kind of clarinet like. AB "push pull" circuits do this, both tube and solid state, and balanced power supply solid state, tape saturation, transformer behavior most of the time, compressors when the detector is fed symmetrically.

Both 2nd and 3rd harmonic flavors sound really cool, they are two different but related spices. In the real world they seldom occur as purely one or the other kind, it's mostly about which one sounds prominent, and what the spectral blend is.

What I'm getting increasingly averse to lately is aliasing distortion, a purely digital problem. It's when frequencies higher than the sample rate are in play and not removed due to technical limitations - they "reflect" like a mirror off the nyquist frequency and spread back down into the audible spectrum - totally unmusical, not harmonically related, like unintentional hard and nasty sounding ring modulation artifacts. Once your ear starts to identify aliasing, it really changes one's approach to which plugs do and do not get used, and how.

Which is a big reason why plug-in saturators and tape sims and compressors are still struggling to actually sound entirely pleasing. It'll keep getting better as design and computer power gets better, but it's still not really there yet. Not completely delicious - just less bad tasting.

I'm very very happy to have hardware devices like the thread-topic Vince TPS, tape machines, tube and transformer gear, etc etc to get proper harmonic distortion when it really counts. No substitute for the real thing.

[Snarl 12/8]

Can you post examples of files with and without the aliasing distortion? I want to tune my ear to it, although I'll probably regret it. Like seeing the fnords.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

if you want to hear a really obvious example of aliasing, pick up def leppard's 'hysteria' and listen to the "cymbals". especially on the first song, near the beginning. man oh man is it bad.

it's also the 'space monkeys' sound you hear on crappy mp3s.

[Greener]

Get a record, buy an mp3.

Play both through the same system.

The difference is aliasing.

[Dakota]

Can you post examples of files with and without the aliasing distortion? I want to tune my ear to it, although I'll probably regret it. Like seeing the fnords.

Snarl, it's tricky to try to get an audio example that isolates the aliasing problem and makes it easy to tease out from whatever other sub-par aspects might be going on - one way to do that is to take a guitar amp sim plug or compressor or saturator that you know sounds like ass, render a track through it in a 44.1k session, and then do the same plug settings and render in another highest sample rate session your DAW can do. Compare the two, and line them up for a null if you can, listen to the residue difference. (Because some aliasing issues get way less ugly at high sample rates - although this varies per each plug).

And ha! Yes, you may regret training your ear to listen for aliasing distortion... because it's a rampant sound in modern production, both amateur and unfortunately loud pro pop as well.

More Space Echo is totally right about those cymbals! Early "samples" and digital "assist" of cymbals really reveal some severe aliasing trash in the highs and mids. This can be *ahem* charming if it's selective retro-digital one is laying in as track color - but it's way not charming on a lead vocal that's supposed to sound tasty.

Some compressor/limiter plugs that don't alias so much: Rcomp if you switch "warm" and "arc" off, Rvox, OldTimer particularly if you switch the saturation off and don't compress more than 6db, TheGlue particularly with oversample enabled, Voxengo Elephant with oversample enabled... and others if you geek out with your research. The older TRacks plugs aliased really badly... I remember back in the day wanting to like those, but always feeling like they trashed everything up in a totally not charming trashy way... Dyn3 can alias pretty badly if you leave it on hard knee and are trying for fast attack and release and a lot of compression, which is a shame because it's otherwise a pretty good utility tool.

Fast attack and release are pretty much always going to put a digital plug into territory that's likelier to alias badly. But sometimes you really need fast attacks and release, so this is an ongoing struggle.

There is a completely exhausting but informative very long thread on the GS forum about plugs that do and don't alias so much, and analyzing that. I like this forum much better, but there's occasionally useful info in the noise at GS.