Hotone Ampero II Stage (MP-380)

[laxu]

It's the main operation mode; you can see the cursor popping up when the screen is touched as well. It's similar in essence to how PC touchscreens emulate mouse pointers.

I don't see anything wrong with that. It just highlights the last selected option so you can use the scroll wheel to move it. Helps also highlight you've done something.

 

[Lysander]

You mean the little "rectangle" markers around the blocks?
Some may not like how that looks, but I don't think there's anything that weird about it. Just another way of indicating what's selected.

It's not the "look" but, again, the operation mode: everything needs to be selected before it can be interacted with. Which is fine... if you're a general purpose computer.

Reminds me a lot of the Smooth Hound SIVA UI, which many didn't have kind remarks for back in the day.

 

[the-trooper]

everything needs to be selected before it can be interacted with

Don't you have to do the exact same thing on every other modeler out there? How do you change anything before selecting it first? Want to change something on drive, have to select it. Now on amp, yup, select it.
You lost me.

 

[JCW308]

Needs to be in black. Not white. Then I'll buy. :-)

 

[Lysander]

Don't you have to do the exact same thing on every other modeler out there?

No, you don't. This unit looks very menu driven; see the "Assigning Quick Access" chapter in Henning's video for an example. It's three side-by-side menus where you select screen, select menu, then select item in menu, then select back the previous menu again. There's an extra "click" on every step as you move focus from dialog to dialog.

And that's with your fingers. It's even worse if the joystick is used instead.

Now, if you come from a PC this can be very intuitive... but it looks clunky. The UX is graphical, but it otherwise feels like there's even more menu dancing than on Fractal products.

 

[laxu]

No, you don't. This unit looks very menu driven; see the "Assigning Quick Access" chapter in Henning's video for an example. It's three side-by-side menus where you select screen, select menu, then select item in menu, then select back the previous menu again. There's an extra "click" on every step as you move focus from dialog to dialog.

When he clicks on the Master it seems like the click goes through straight away if it lands on the label, so it might not be "select section, select item" type stuff unless you hit an empty area.

 

[GuitarJon]

Here's my little demo:

 

[laxu]

You can see the different models in action here pretty well. The Mini seems to be using older gen hardware so it sounds worse than the Ampero II Stomp/Stage.

While the Stomp/Stage could use at least one more encoder, I think they've done a good job with what they've got.

The cursor thing seems to be only on the Stage so maybe these are on different firmware versions. In any case it works exactly like operating a touchscreen UI on most things and the cursor is only to highlight things you clicked. I guess the menu/value knob is just an alternative way to move the cursor around if you prefer that. I like alternatives rather than locking you to a single paradigm.

It's also clear they've tried to alter the UI a bit to fit each device. The Stomp/Stage don't have those +/- buttons of the Mini because you have the encoders for that. There's also plenty of thoughtful little touches like very fast access to overall volume control (touch the left knob to pop up output levels) or toggling between scene/stomp modes. That's nice attention to detail.

They've also thought a bit about parameter order where e.g Amp is Gain-Presence-Master --> Bass-Middle-Treble which works in an intuitive manner for commonly adjusted together things. Both Fractal and Line6 could take notes from these because their onboard UI parameter order is often not intuitive for "what is adjusted together most often" and thus requires extra paging. Line6 especially buries its Mix parameter way deeper than it should be and Fractal requires a good bit of back and forth on some blocks because e.g Amp gain vs master/level, or 3-band EQ vs presence/depth on different rows.

I'm not saying it's some pinnacle of UI design, but it seems fairly straightforward and easy to use without too many "how do I do this again? where was that thing?" pitfalls or too nested navigation.

These are 466 and 699 €. For comparison, you can get the Stage for the price of a HX Stomp and a FM3 is double the Stage's price in Europe. Sure, the sounds aren't exactly at the level of the gear we usually discuss here, but for the money, pretty good. @GuitarJon certainly gets good tones out of the Stage. I don't think any of us here are jumping to swap their Helixes, Fractals or QCs to these but for players with less money, pretty easy to recommend over the "Slap your own label on it" gear at the budget end.

Our favorite modeling companies have just put the bar very high for amp/fx quality and without capturing I don't think it's easy for any smaller company to compete, when even Fender is not at the Line6 or Fractal level.

 

[Lysander]

I briefly tried the A2S for maybe 15 minutes recently, at a rehearsal room. It was plugged into the FX loop of some cheap Marshall halfstack.

I just danced through some presets my buddy created, but the thing sounded really good, IMHO. My experience with the previous Ampero line is limited, but i'd say it was at least comparable. IMHO both Nux and Hotone offer, hands down, the best products in that price segment.

What i really really liked though was the form factor. It's about the size of a Quad Cortex, but the footswitch spacing felt sooooooooo much better. The LED lightbar thing too is cool - i was expecting it to be more of a gimmick.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I briefly tried the A2S for maybe 15 minutes recently, at a rehearsal room.

Oh, and you are accusing me of having no experience in the other thread? Amazing, really. I mean, I thought I only fooled around with it too briefly to allow myself for any educated comments - but at least it was longer than your testride.

 

[Lysander]

Dude.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Dude.

Sweet!

 

[Sascha Franck]

Dude.

Yes.

 

[Sedaxel]

I briefly tried the A2S for maybe 15 minutes recently, at a rehearsal room. It was plugged into the FX loop of some cheap Marshall halfstack.

I just danced through some presets my buddy created, but the thing sounded really good, IMHO. My experience with the previous Ampero line is limited, but i'd say it was at least comparable. IMHO both Nux and Hotone offer, hands down, the best products in that price segment.

What i really really liked though was the form factor. It's about the size of a Quad Cortex, but the footswitch spacing felt sooooooooo much better. The LED lightbar thing too is cool - i was expecting it to be more of a gimmick.

Eeeehm... measuring from pictures and applying scale corrections, I get exactly the same footswitch separation in both units: 64.5 mm. Obviously, this method is not exact, and maybe one is 64 mm and the other is 65 mm... but what I´m sure is that they don´t feel differrent in that regard.

So no, the Stage isn´t "sooooooooooooo much better" regarding footswitch separation, because they´re quite just the same.

This is also something you can deduct just at a glance, since they´re almost the same dimensions (301 vs 290 mm), they have 5 footswitches in a row, and the shorter one (QC) has the side footswitches more close to the edge.

 

[laxu]

Eeeehm... measuring from pictures and applying scale corrections, I get exactly the same footswitch separation in both units: 64.5 mm. Obviously, this method is not exact, and maybe one is 64 mm and the other is 65 mm... but what I´m sure is that they don´t feel differrent in that regard.

So no, the Stage isn´t "sooooooooooooo much better" regarding footswitch separation, because they´re quite just the same.

This is also something you can deduct just at a glance, since they´re almost the same dimensions (301 vs 290 mm), they have 5 footswitches in a row, and the shorter one (QC) has the side footswitches more close to the edge.

Looking at pics on Pedalplayground, which is usually fairly accurate, the spacing looks the same to me too.

Maybe what makes it better is not having that second row of switches? Which to be fair can be a bit trickier to hit on the QC, and the two rows being close together maybe makes it harder to have confidence you are hitting the right button.

 

[Lysander]

So no, the Stage isn´t "sooooooooooooo much better" regarding footswitch separation, because they´re quite just the same.

Well, i didn't have a ruler with me at the time but i can tell you for a fact that my size 44 shoes had no problem switching effects / presets on the A2S.

Whereas with the QC i had to constantly be careful about it. In particular, i found myself regularly hitting the upper row switches by accident.

 

[Sascha Franck]

So no, the Stage isn´t "sooooooooooooo much better" regarding footswitch separation, because they´re quite just the same.

Can't exactly comment, on my brief testride I only used it on a desk, but the switches seemed to be fine and I actually second what @Lysander said, with the QC it seems to be much more the upper row getting in the way.
Fwiw, on the Stomp, the switches (center to center of course) are like 67mm apart from each other. Not exactly a world of a difference.

It's actually making me wonder, because when I tried the QC (which wasn't any intense) I thought the switches would be much closer, but possibly it's in fact the upper row fooling the brain.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, I think you can pretty much trust Pedalplayground: Stomp, QC, Ampero.

 

[Lysander]

Just Googled the dimensions for both the QC and the A2S and yes, it appears that the horizontal spacing is almost identical on both

That's... weird, because the A2S footswitch separation genuinely felt much better than the QC, and i'm pretty sure it's not my brain playing tricks on me - i stepped on the wrong QC switch multiple times in the past.

 

[Sedaxel]

Looking at pics on Pedalplayground, which is usually fairly accurate, the spacing looks the same to me too.

Maybe what makes it better is not having that second row of switches? Which to be fair can be a bit trickier to hit on the QC, and the two rows being close together maybe makes it harder to have confidence you are hitting the right button.

Yeah... I don´t like at all that couple rows... for me it´s excessively risky (I have big foot and am not very accurate...). It´s one of the reasons I wouldn´t buy a QC.