$399 ToneX pedal puts AI-captured guitar amps at your feet

IK Multimedia’s attractive ToneX pedal stays unequalled at its value level as 2023 involves an in depth, changing your guitar amp with a cornucopia of tone profiles both captured immediately from your individual rig, or downloaded from hundreds on-line.

There are many amp-capturing profilers on the market – Kemper and Quad Cortex models are in all places, giving guitarists entry to large libraries of superbly captured amp profiles in models vastly extra transportable and hardy than the amps themselves, in addition to equally spectacular results chains. However they’re expensive – a QC will run you US$1,700-odd in the intervening time, and the getting older Kemper Profiler continues to be commanding $1,600 in the event you’re shopping for new.

Likewise, there’s loads of reasonably priced multi-effects pedals you possibly can stick in your board that additionally provide you with amp mannequin choices – the Boss ME-90 and Headrush MX5 spring to thoughts. However at this value level, the sounds get very hit or miss, and also you’re caught with the amp fashions you are given, somewhat than gaining access to a neighborhood of individuals all working round making one of the best captures they will of the best gear they will discover.

So the ToneX pedal made a heck of a splash when it landed in February, even when it stored its scope slender. This compact, cool-looking field, replete with three stomps, eight knobs and a collection of orange-backlit holes within the sides is de facto designed to interchange only one a part of your sign chain – the amplifier. Or a drive pedal; offered it isn’t a time-based impact like reverb, modulation or delay, it might probably do this too. You simply cannot seize an amp and a pedal, then use them on the identical time. Except you seize them collectively, wherein case, positive.

The ToneX seize course of

Here is the way it works: any person – both your good self, or an IK Multimedia consultant, or certainly anybody else with entry to the ToneX seize software program – units up a sign chain which may embrace an amplifier, speaker cupboard and/or results pedals, and runs that by means of a microphone or load field, and an audio interface, into a pc with the ToneX seize software program put in.

This bit does not require the ToneX pedal in any respect, by the way – and annoyingly, you may want a separate machine, be it IK’s ToneX Seize field or one other reamplification machine, to do it.

Then, you twiddle the knobs in your gear till it sounds the best way you want, observe a collection of prompts within the ToneX software program, hit go and wait. And I do imply wait; a medium-quality AI seize is a 20-minute course of even on a comparatively latest Mac Studio pc, and a high-quality rip can take upwards of an hour to run by means of IK’s AI model-building course of.

As soon as that is accomplished, although, you’ve got received a tone mannequin you possibly can stick straight into the ToneX pedal – or right into a DAW, by means of the ToneX plugin or by means of IK’s terrific Amplitube 5, the place you possibly can encompass it with a full results chain and apply it to recordings.

I took it straight spherical to a well-equipped buddy’s place and captured a clear tone from his Two Rock Traditional Reverb Signature and a Plexi-tastic crunch out of his 50-Watt Friedman Smallbox, sending each by means of an Ox field as a substitute of miking up a cupboard. The outcomes had been spectacular, capturing the character of the amps superbly. They weren’t good – we seen some EQ-type variations between the captures and the true issues. If we had extra time, and the method did not take so lengthy, we might have gone again and tweaked a couple of issues.

ToneNet: The place the world shares its Tone Fashions

However we actually did not must. The ToneX pedal ships with 150 fashions pre-loaded, plus a ToneX MAX subscription that offers you full entry to an enormous number of IK-captured tone packages. After which there’s the ToneNet library, the place actually hundreds of others can be found, captured and shared by different customers. Many of those captures are terrific, and yow will discover just about something you may want in the event you’re keen to sift by means of them within the app.

For those who’re not, the usual pre-loaded tones are superb anyway, famously together with at least 17 spectacular captures from the rare-as-hen’s-teeth Dumble Overdrive Particular, in addition to a great deal of Voxes, Fenders, Marshalls, Mesas, Soldanos, Oranges, Bogners, ENGLs, and lots of extra. The sounds are vastly diverse, and react dynamically to your enjoying, making it a enjoyable and galvanizing machine to play straight out of the field.

And if the usual amps by some means fail to scratch your sonic itch, you possibly can then purchase “collections” of all kinds of drugs captured by third events – typically YouTubers – so as to add into the combination. You’ll be able to trial them immediately within the app. The choices listed below are staggering; any person’s received what you want.

Certainly, IK itself has simply launched a brand new pack together with 20 captures of 4 extra Dumble ODS amps it is managed to get its fingers on, every with its personal character, since Alexander Dumble famously hand-built every amp to swimsuit the fashion and preferences of the participant he was constructing it for. At about $55 (or free with the ToneX pedal in the intervening time), it is much more than a lot of the tone packs on the market on the market, however contemplating that persons are slapping $474,900 value tags on the true factor proper now, this can be a super-affordable solution to seize these tones for reside, studio or dwelling use.

Have a pay attention, they sound unbelievable.

I am going to say this, although: the ToneX app shouldn’t be notably nice or straightforward to make use of. Whereas the amp fashions are pleasantly visible and simple sufficient to work with, discovering issues in ToneNet is clunky – it isn’t very clear what the distinction between a preset and a tone mannequin is, or how one can edit and save them, transferring issues to the pedal is a clunky course of …

It is all these little interface points, like while you open up an amp’s “superior parameters,” the drop-down for these sits over the principle amp image, so you possibly can’t see the knob labels. You will determine all of it out and get on with the music quickly sufficient, but it surely’s an space IK can undoubtedly tighten up for future iterations.

Taking part in by means of the ToneX pedal

Plug a guitar in a single aspect, and both a connection by means of to a PA, FRFR speaker or a set of headphones on the different finish, and also you’re away. The ToneX pedal is comfortable to work together with your different results pedals, both earlier than or after it in your results chain – though it is potential to overload it in the event you crank too many overdrives in there without delay and do not alter the enter sensitivity.

You’ll be able to edit the amp parameters, both on the pedal or within the app, and add issues like noise gates, compression and slightly reverb. It is necessary to notice that in the event you fiddle with the knobs, you are technically transferring away from the precise approach the captured amp would behave; IK’s model-building AI is deciding what results the acquire or EQ or presence knobs have on the sound, not the unique circuits. That is to not say the outcomes are dangerous – they are not, they’re intuitive and cleverly accomplished, and behave roughly as you’d count on. Simply do not count on an 8 on the ToneX acquire knob to essentially sound the identical as an 8 on the true amp.

So as to hold the fee right down to that outstanding $399, IK has gone with a reasonably limiting show, with simply eight characters constructed out of 16 little segments, like a glowing orange model of an old-school LCD calculator. A lot just like the app, it isn’t an excellent nice interface, and it requires some fiddling to search out and make the modifications you want. However it does the job, and it will be as readable on a darkish stage as it’s in your lounge room, so as soon as it is arrange, you are good to go.

The sounds are offered in banks of three at a time, switchable by means of the stomp pedals. Hitting the fitting or left two pedals on the identical time scrolls by means of the banks separately. You actually do not wish to be tap-dancing from financial institution 2 to financial institution 45 between songs, so you may wish to spend a while ordering your favourite presets so that they’re shut to at least one one other, or else management your rig swaps through MIDI in the event you’re constructing a wise pedalboard.

Operating a ToneX pedal into your present guitar amp

Oh, and in the event you’ve received a daily guitar amp with an results loop, or a separate energy amp, you possibly can shortly flip off speaker cab emulation and run the ToneX pedal straight into your energy amp, successfully changing your preamp however holding your actual speaker cab within the loop. In case your setup is stereo, no downside, the ToneX field has stereo outputs.

How effectively this works is completely a operate of how effectively your speaker cab and energy amp mesh with a selected tone mannequin. In my case, working clear and crunchy fashions into my Victory V40 Deluxe combo tends to work actually properly with its 1×12 Creamback speaker, so there is a ton of nice tones to select from – however higher-gain amps are much less convincing and would most likely swimsuit a distinct setup higher.

Many of the normal tones have separate preamp and amp fashions, which means you possibly can swap the cab emulation off simply for this course of – but it surely’s price noting that any third-party amp + cab seize goes to have the cab baked into the sound, so you will not be capable to flip it off. In these instances, you may successfully be placing a speaker cab emulation by means of a speaker cab, and it sounds godawful. Plan accordingly!

I Multimedia

Wrapping up

There are many issues the ToneX may do with; it is annoying, for instance, that there is not a tuner in there. However there is not one in your amp, both, and that is all this pedal is right here to interchange. It is tempting, given the huge vary of tones it covers, to begin pondering of this as a multi-effects board. It is not, and in the event you’ve received that concept in your head, you may be irritated by the small number of reverbs and such. If you wish to exchange your complete sign chain, that is the area of machines like Line 6’s HX Stomp, which, superb as it’s, will value you almost twice as a lot.

The ToneX pedal does not actually really feel prefer it competes immediately with modeling pedals like these from Common Audio, Friedman and the like; these do an incredible job recreating a single amp, at the same value. Likewise, you would not put it up towards one thing just like the Strymon Iridium, which does one thing related, however with three fashions to select from. There’s lots to be stated for these “much less is extra” pedals; in any case, most guitarists all through historical past have gigged with a single amp and labored out how one can get all of the tones they want from that.

However if you’d like one thing that may bottle your individual amp tone, or allow you to play other people’ captured amps and people vaunted Dumble captures, the ToneX pedal stands alone at its value level. It is restricted in scope and typically irritating to fiddle with, but it surely’s rugged and roadworthy, it provides you entry to a dizzying vary of sounds, and with the fitting mannequin loaded up it sounds adequate to go toe-to-toe with machines three or 4 occasions its value.

Realistically, I think lots of customers will spend their early weeks occurring a voyage of discovery by means of each tone mannequin they will get their fingers on, after which they’re going to decide on a handful they love and just about depart the ToneX field alone, getting the remaining accomplished with their pedalboards. Which is nice – you do not wish to spend too lengthy being paralyzed by the huge vary of choices right here, however all these selections imply that there’ll undoubtedly be one thing right here to suit what you are after.

At $399, it is terrific worth for what it delivers, notably on condition that it comes with a full ToneX Max membership. And the ToneX ecosystem undoubtedly feels alive and vibrant, so there will be no scarcity of recent tones to attempt over the approaching months and years. An ideal piece of equipment and effectively price an audition as a part of a reside, dwelling or studio setup – particularly proper now with these further Dumbles thrown in.

Supply: IK Multimedia