GEAR REVIEW
THE PUREPATH: THE LITTLE BLACK BOX THAT LETS YOUR AMP BE ITSELF | Chris Rocha
There’ s a moment every player knows: you plug straight into an amp, roll the guitar’ s volume back a touch, and it’ s just you, your amp and your guitar alone in the world. No pedals, no presets— just the sound of your hands meeting a transformer that’ s paying attention. Bad Cat’ s new PurePath— a deceptively simple reactive loader and cab stimulator lives for that moment, and it refuses to apologize for it.
I first plugged in the PurePath in my studio and slammed a Hot Cat Bad Cat amp into it and reveled at the tone I achieved. I dove straight into a guitar session I had scheduled for that day and started to experiment with all the different tones I needed to create. There’ s something special about having a boutique tube amp at your fingertips in the studio while you record. The organic tones just flow out of the speakers. The Pure Path gave me the opportunity to drive my amp the way I wanted to and not be distracted by the decibel level amp cabinets put out. I could hear just the pure tone that was being recorded. In this article I want to dive into what the Pure Path is and how beneficial it can be in our chaotic guitar world.
Bad Cat’ s PurePath is the most guitaristfriendly solution. It is not a modeler, it is not a compromise attenuator, and it’ s not a plugin you have to babysit. It is a mechanical reactive load and a fully analogue cabinet simulator in a box the size of a lunch pail( 178 × 190 × 102 mm, 2.72 kg) that lets your amp see a load that behaves like a speaker— because the load is built to move like one.
Bad Cat didn’ t hold back on the practical details. Impedance covers 16 / 8 / 4 / 2 Ω— yes, 2 Ω for those vintage heads that are happiest there. There is a balanced XLR Line Output with the analog cab simulation for your interface or front-of-house, and a 6.3 mm Speaker Output if you want to drive a cab at the same time. Level gives you 0 or – 20 dB( handy when your
56 April 2026 Subscribe for Free...