Hotone Ampero II Stomp - Review

[laxu]

I'd be interested in seeing how you fix this.

The plan:

• Carefully disconnect the flat cables. There's usually a clamp you need to pop open with a spudger.
• Remove the potentiometer hats and their nuts.
• Remove the 4 screws holding the PCB seen in the top pic.
• Desolder the center potentiometer, its connections are near the footswitch board connector.
• Replace with the matching potentiometer. Finding the exact right part is probably the biggest challenge.
• Assemble back together.

 

[wgowwgo]

The plan:

• Carefully disconnect the flat cables. There's usually a clamp you need to pop open with a spudger.
• Remove the potentiometer hats and their nuts.
• Remove the 4 screws holding the PCB seen in the top pic.
• Desolder the center potentiometer, its connections are near the footswitch board connector.
• Replace with the matching potentiometer. Finding the exact right part is probably the biggest challenge.
• Assemble back together.

Good luck mate.
Hope it's an easy fix.

 

[laxu]

So, faulty encoder desoldered. It was a huge pain in the ass.

Disassembling the unit is actually very easy. Desoldering the encoder is very tedious.

Tools disassembly:

• Screwdriver to remove the boards.
• Allen key to open the chassis.
• Nut socket wrench to remove nuts on knobs without damaging the pedal surface.
• Spudger to open flat cable connectors.
• Small tweezers, preferably plastic.
• Small pliers to get out the PCB connectors.

Good to know disassembling:

• The Volume knob hat can be stuck harder than the rest. The others you can just pull by hand but you want to carefully wiggle the Volume knob out as that knob is its own separate little PCB so don't pull too hard.
• The flat cable between the two halves can be a bit tricky to get out and back in since it's right against a footswitch. Use a spudger.
• The touchscreen cables are also a bit finicky, just work carefully and slip them under the PCB they are connected on.
• Remove the processor/memory board (small board with a metal backplate).
  • It's good to remove this so you have more room with your soldering iron and don't risk scorching the brains.
  • I thought the backplate was a heatsink but it's just a cover, under it you can find a Winbond chip of 256 GB DDR3 or DDR4 I think.

Then on to actually desoldering the encoder.

Tools for desoldering:

• You absolutely need a proper soldering station! Even with one, I had a helluva time getting enough heat going to get the solder out of the larger tabs holding the encoder.
• A PCB holder is a very useful tool to help you.
• Solder wick.
• Desoldering pump.
• Good solder, duh!
• Good lighting is essential.
• A magnifying glass and a small flashlight are great for actually seeing if you got the solder out.

Good to know desoldering:

• Be very careful around a few places:
  1. The multi-pin connector for the "brain" PCB. I slightly scorched mine because I tilted my soldering iron a bit too much, but thankfully no real damage was done and I could get the PCB back on just fine.
  2. There is a surface mount resistor very close to the center encoder's 3rd leg, and there are others close to the other encoders.
  3. The pins of the encoder are close to the footswitch PCB jack, so avoid melting that.
• The actual encoder is held by 3 pins, and 2 legs.
  • I recommend you treat the encoder as a goner because I broke one of its pins getting it out and mangled it a good bit too.
  • It's best to desolder the legs first, then you can bend it out so it's hanging by the pins and desolder them. The encoder should then just drop.
• Finally clean up any stray solder, metal bits etc. I use a bit of isopropyl alcohol to clean it up with a small brush, and finally use a bit of canned air to dust it off.

Finally just assemble it back together in reverse order. It will work fine without the encoder, you can use the param/value knob as a replacement until then or operate the middle button with the touchscreen. It's great that Hotone has fallback options like these!

So what about replacement parts? I contacted Hotone, and they said then can ship me spare encoders! Will probably take a few weeks to arrive.

 

[KingsXJJ]

So, faulty encoder desoldered. It was a huge pain in the ass.

Disassembling the unit is actually very easy. Desoldering the encoder is very tedious.

Tools disassembly:

• Screwdriver to remove the boards.
• Allen key to open the chassis.
• Nut socket wrench to remove nuts on knobs without damaging the pedal surface.
• Spudger to open flat cable connectors.
• Small tweezers, preferably plastic.
• Small pliers to get out the PCB connectors.

Good to know disassembling:

• The Volume knob hat can be stuck harder than the rest. The others you can just pull by hand but you want to carefully wiggle the Volume knob out as that knob is its own separate little PCB so don't pull too hard.
• The flat cable between the two halves can be a bit tricky to get out and back in since it's right against a footswitch. Use a spudger.
• The touchscreen cables are also a bit finicky, just work carefully and slip them under the PCB they are connected on.
• Remove the processor/memory board (small board with a metal backplate).
  • It's good to remove this so you have more room with your soldering iron and don't risk scorching the brains.
  • I thought the backplate was a heatsink but it's just a cover, under it you can find a Winbond chip of 256 GB DDR3 or DDR4 I think.

Then on to actually desoldering the encoder.

Tools for desoldering:

• You absolutely need a proper soldering station! Even with one, I had a helluva time getting enough heat going to get the solder out of the larger tabs holding the encoder.
• A PCB holder is a very useful tool to help you.
• Solder wick.
• Desoldering pump.
• Good solder, duh!
• Good lighting is essential.
• A magnifying glass and a small flashlight are great for actually seeing if you got the solder out.

Good to know desoldering:

• Be very careful around a few places:
  1. The multi-pin connector for the "brain" PCB. I slightly scorched mine because I tilted my soldering iron a bit too much, but thankfully no real damage was done and I could get the PCB back on just fine.
  2. There is a surface mount resistor very close to the center encoder's 3rd leg, and there are others close to the other encoders.
  3. The pins of the encoder are close to the footswitch PCB jack, so avoid melting that.
• The actual encoder is held by 3 pins, and 2 legs.
  • I recommend you treat the encoder as a goner because I broke one of its pins getting it out and mangled it a good bit too.
  • It's best to desolder the legs first, then you can bend it out so it's hanging by the pins and desolder them. The encoder should then just drop.
• Finally clean up any stray solder, metal bits etc. I use a bit of isopropyl alcohol to clean it up with a small brush, and finally use a bit of canned air to dust it off.

Finally just assemble it back together in reverse order. It will work fine without the encoder, you can use the param/value knob as a replacement until then or operate the middle button with the touchscreen. It's great that Hotone has fallback options like these!

So what about replacement parts? I contacted Hotone, and they said then can ship me spare encoders! Will probably take a few weeks to arrive.

I don’t think this will end well but I wish you luck.

 

[laxu]

Same pictures from the previous page just to put them all closer together:

The main PCB:

The I/O PCBs:

More pictures of the insides. Sorry for a bit crap quality here, just quick snaps.

Main PCB. Backplate from processor removed. You can see here I've desoldered the encoder right near the white connector up top.

Main PCB with processor removed. It's stuck pretty hard so you have to carefully wiggle it out from the sides to lift it.

Back of touchscreen. There's a bit of tape to hold the cables flat against it when it's assembled, and the cables go through the slot in the main PCB.

Back of processor board. You can see the Winbond 256 Mbit memory module here.

Other side of the PCB. You can see the ADSP-21573 DSP chip, and interestingly a separate MIMXRT1052 ARM core most likely used for UI etc.
There's a Winbond 25Q128JV 128 Mbit flash memory module.
Then there's a Micron D9PSL memory module. It's afaik a SDRAM DDR3 module but no idea about the size, couldn't find much with those .

 

[laxu]

Encoders from the other side of the main PCB. The one in the bottom center is the one that was stuck. The hardest to replace would be the bottom left encoder because it's close to a few capacitors. I'd probably try to clip its legs instead of trying to desolder the whole part.

Closeup of the faulty encoder. After removing it (and breaking one of its legs in the process) I took it apart completely but still could not figure out what exactly makes it stuck. My guess is some tiny metal shaving has lodged in it somewhere.

No pics of the disassembled encoder, but it's a couple of contacts on each side, a greased wheel that clicks and pushes the contacts together, a plastic shaft inside a metal one that connects to the wheel. Pretty simple design so it's no wonder these probably cost very little in China.

New encoder. There's no markings for value or anything on these. Hotone says they are customized somehow from the OEM.

 

[laxu]

Then I'm proving @KingsXJJ wrong.

I replaced the faulty encoder, and now the A2 Stomp works like brand new!

Good to know:

• As I said in my earlier desolder post, a proper solder station is a must for this repair. No cheap ass 15W soldering irons!
• The 3 pins on the encoder are quite easy to bend by accident, so make sure you clear the PCB holes for these very well.

The installation of the new encoder is easy, desoldering the old one was much harder.

1. Clean the board first with some isopropyl alcohol. Let it evaporate for a minute or two.
2. Carefully push the 3 pins of the encoder in first, then push the two legs in and make sure the encoder rests firmly against the board similar to the other encoders.
3. Then just carefully solder the 3 pins and the two legs and you are done.
   1. With this encoder's position, the parts to watch out for are the white footswitch connector (easy to melt plastic), the surface mount resistor right next to one of the pins, and the processor board socket. So don't tilt your iron too much.
4. Clean the area again with isopropyl alcohol. Let it evaporate for a minute or two.
5. Use canned air to clear the board of any solder flakes, hair or dirt that might've landed on it.
6. Reassemble the device.

It cost me $32 to get 3 encoders shipped from Hotone to Finland. The parts were free but the shipping was not, or you can consider it parts + shipping cost. While that's a somewhat sizeable chunk of the cost of the unit, I still commend Hotone for being willing to send spare parts like this to some random owner. They didn't ask for receipts, serial numbers or anything like that.

I consider the encoder fault to be a fluke. These are just some OEM parts that probably don't cost a lot and there's always a chance that one of them fails along the line. I bought this Ampero 2 Stomp used, and the seller had used it for over a year so we are not talking about a brand new unit here. Otherwise I would have just had it replaced under warranty.

I have to give them props for the Ampero 2 Stomp design. It's very modular and pretty easy to disassemble, and if you can get the parts all boards would be easy to swap.

My least favorite part of it is the power supply. It's cheap, and it sucks. It doesn't use a standard IEC connector but a 3 prong fitted version so you can't just use a longer cable on it. The included cable is annoyingly short. I've got a CIOKS doubler cable coming from Thomann and I'll see if I can power the A2 Stomp with my CIOKS DC7 or CIOKS Expander 4 instead.

 

[KingsXJJ]

Glad that you proved me wrong and that it worked out!

 

[wgowwgo]

Thought I'd give an update on my experiences with the Ampero 2 Stomp.

TLR It's great.

I've used it for five shows since I bought one second hand in February. I've not experienced an major problems. I'm a weekend warrior who plays in a Royal Blood style two piece, but with a guitar instead of a bass.

This means the Stomp is providing the bass and guitar tones, so if anything goes wrong, the show is over.

I have the Stomp set up for one guitar output with an IR to go to the front desk, one guitar output to run into the fx return of a stage amp, and an octave down "bass" output to run to the bass amp.

It does everything I could ask of it. Sometimes I run into DSP limitations, but I expected that. It does require me to prepare everything before the show though, so there is a bit of homework in regards to setting up my patches and scenes.

I would recommend the Stomp to anyone looking for an affordable entry into going digital. It's made my life a lot easier at shows.

Thanks again to all the people who answered my questions about this unit.

 

[laxu]

Tested: Powering the Ampero 2 Stomp with the CIOKS 4 Expander.

This works fine using the gray CIOKS doubler adapter. Join two outputs together, hook it up. Works fine.

I even got it working fine with a USB power bank, which is cool. No idea how long the battery will last but anything is better than the shit tier power brick on the pedal.

 

[KingsXJJ]

Absolutely loving my stage! Creating patches with HQ Amps, HQ Digital Delay and HQ 140 Plate. Add in a AI noise gate, couple of EQ’s and Cab with no CPU problems whatsoever. It sounds flippin’ amazing. Plenty of feel and tone with tremendous touch sensitivity and dynamics. It just flat out rocks. My Fractal FM3T sounds better but not as much as you might expect. Using the drum machine, looper, Bluetooth and nice responsive touchscreen… no editor needed at all. Very intuitive programming and quick workflow.

 

[KingsXJJ]

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, this is what I wish the HX Stomp would look (and operate) like.

One question, not sure whether anyone knows: When you connect their Ampero Press II pedal, can you easily configure it to work as a Wah/Vol pedal? From all I rememeber, it doesn't seem to work well with the HX Stomp for whatever reasons (let alone I need the EXP Ins on the Stomp for other things anyway), but that's the very functionality I'd like to add ocassionally. I have a Soulpress II which I like a lot, but I'd vastly prefer my volume pedal to sit behind the amp.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Oh, and some questions regarding the looper. Can you do the following things:
- Cancel the initial loop recording instantly? As in "uh, that wasn't too great, let me just press this switch once and everything is deleted".
- Stop with one single switch press? Given the controls, the answer very likely is "yes", but I'd like to make sure because there's even some loopers with more than one switch requiring you to press twice to stop.
- Can you easily delete the entire loop with a single longpress of a switch?

 

[laxu]

Fwiw, this is what I wish the HX Stomp would look (and operate) like.

One question, not sure whether anyone knows: When you connect their Ampero Press II pedal, can you easily configure it to work as a Wah/Vol pedal? From all I rememeber, it doesn't seem to work well with the HX Stomp for whatever reasons (let alone I need the EXP Ins on the Stomp for other things anyway), but that's the very functionality I'd like to add ocassionally. I have a Soulpress II which I like a lot, but I'd vastly prefer my volume pedal to sit behind the amp.

The Ampero Press 2 is just an expression pedal so I don't see why it wouldn't work with the HX Stomp.

On the Hotone it's easy to configure to control whatever parameters you want, but the lack of auto-on functionality is a nuisance for using it as a wah. the A2 Stomp only has one EXP jack so you can't use the switch on the Press together with the treadle.

 

[Sascha Franck]

The Ampero Press 2 is just an expression pedal so I don't see why it wouldn't work with the HX Stomp.

Someone round these parts said there was an issue with polarity (even if you can switch it within the Stomp, which is why I was wondering) and the travel range wouldn't transfer too well to a volume parameter of whatever block - and the only way to change that would likely be to use a dedicated volume block (because it's the only block with 2 curves to select from), which would be quite a waste on the Stomp.

On the Hotone it's easy to configure to control whatever parameters you want, but the lack of auto-on functionality is a nuisance for using it as a wah. the A2 Stomp only has one EXP jack so you can't use the switch on the Press together with the treadle.

I defenitely don't need any fancy auto-on functions, just wah/vol as on a classic wah/vol pedal, using the toe switch.
Do you think it could easily be configured that way on the Stage? I mean, it really should, especially as the pedal is from the same company.

---

I think I've asked something similar before, but I don't exactly remember, so here we go: As far as a kitchen sink preset is concerned, how far can you go?
For example, could I load 2 amp blocks, 1-2 dirt blocks, a comp block, an EQ block, a delay (or maybe 2) and a reverb and run all of that into one common IR block and possible still have 1-2 blocks left to load one or the other fun thing? That's a pretty typical setup for me to get through pretty much any gig and the Stomp falls a little short here, so I have to deal with compromises, use external pedals or switch patches (which I try to avoid on all units without a global block functionality).
If that was possible, it'd likely be the perfect small rig for me.

 

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, I don't think I'd need the capture blocks, which seem to need more CPU, IIRC.

 

[laxu]

I defenitely don't need any fancy auto-on functions, just wah/vol as on a classic wah/vol pedal, using the toe switch.
Do you think it could easily be configured that way on the Stage? I mean, it really should, especially as the pedal is from the same company.

Yes. There's two sets of expression parameters, EXP 1/2. Each set can control up to 4 parameters, can be any param in any block, or multiple params of one block. Each param can be given a min/max value and you can choose from different curves (linear/logarithmic/exponential).

You can assign an onboard footswitch to switch between them, or use the other EXP jack on the Stage for the switch on the Ampero Press II. You then just configure that EXP as a switch in the global settings and I think you can assign it to toggle EXP 1/2 from there.

I think I've asked something similar before, but I don't exactly remember, so here we go: As far as a kitchen sink preset is concerned, how far can you go?
For example, could I load 2 amp blocks, 1-2 dirt blocks, a comp block, an EQ block, a delay (or maybe 2) and a reverb and run all of that into one common IR block and possible still have 1-2 blocks left to load one or the other fun thing? That's a pretty typical setup for me to get through pretty much any gig and the Stomp falls a little short here, so I have to deal with compromises, use external pedals or switch patches (which I try to avoid on all units without a global block functionality).
If that was possible, it'd likely be the perfect small rig for me.

It's max 12 blocks and what you can cram in depends heavily on the blocks and models. There's a difference in CPU usage where some drive types are more demanding than others. I think your setup would be possible, though you'd have to sacrifice a block for a Volume block if you want that functionality.

I don't have my A2 Stomp with me atm but maybe e.g @KingsXJJ can test it out if you list your full desired signal chain?

It works similar to the full Helix where you have two DSPs on two rows so you can use that to optimize. Hotone is worse for parallel fx because it's always "split here, merge here, full 2nd row becomes parallel slots" so you can't do "just one slot in parallel" type stuff.

 

[Sascha Franck]

It works similar to the full Helix where you have two DSPs on two rows so you can use that to optimize.

That sounds good.

Hotone is worse for parallel fx because it's always "split here, merge here, full 2nd row becomes parallel slots" so you can't do "just one slot in parallel" type stuff.

I possibly would be able to get away with that.

What I really only wanted/needed in comparison to the Stomp:
- 1-2 more blocks (and I usually don't happen to use very CPU intense things). I could possibly even get away with one amp and use a bunch of drives instead of an extra amp block. That's how I'm using the Stomp (need to add external drives due to the block limitation) and I'm basically fine.
- A simple but decent looper (for a duo/trio gig). So far I have to bring my old Zoom G3 and would really like to get rid of it.
- 1-2 more switches, hence exactly what the Ampero provides.
- An easy way to add a wah/vol pedal.

Looks as if all these could be checked with the Ampero.

Oh, yet another question: is there a mode allowing me to configure the switches freely and have them do multiple things at once?

 

[laxu]

That sounds good.



I possibly would be able to get away with that.

What I really only wanted/needed in comparison to the Stomp:
- 1-2 more blocks (and I usually don't happen to use very CPU intense things). I could possibly even get away with one amp and use a bunch of drives instead of an extra amp block. That's how I'm using the Stomp (need to add external drives due to the block limitation) and I'm basically fine.
- A simple but decent looper (for a duo/trio gig). So far I have to bring my old Zoom G3 and would really like to get rid of it.
- 1-2 more switches, hence exactly what the Ampero provides.
- An easy way to add a wah/vol pedal.

Yeah all that seems doable. I recommend downloading the manual and checking the looper features to see if they do what you want.

Oh, yet another question: is there a mode allowing me to configure the switches freely and have them do multiple things at once?

The Ampero 2 has a "Preset" and "Stomp" view. Preset switches between presets, but Stomp view allows you to assign the footswitches, and configure 3 quick params from any block to the knobs. In Stomp view there's two different views: one that shows the footswitch assignment and another that shows the routing. Kind of like a "gig" vs "edit" views.

It's pretty much one function per footswitch + MIDI out if needed. Nowhere near as flexible as Helix in this regard. There are some preset hold functions to toggle Preset/Stomp view, turn on tuner or access the looper.

Note that there's a big stupidity to scenes: if combined with "toggle one block" type functionality, that change will be saved to the scene because the unit does not make a distinction between "I set this from the UI" vs "I toggled this with a footswitch or MIDI". This can be unintuitive if you expect the scene to revert back to its initial state. So if you activated a Drive block when in Scene 2, go back to Scene 1 and then Scene 2, the Drive block will still be activated.

I've reported this to Hotone but no idea if they will fix it. Helix does this so that only UI changes are stored to scenes and footswitch/MIDI are not.