Hotone Ampero II Stomp - Review

I'm in club "spring reverb is the weakest of the reverbs". I don't even care for real ones!

The HQ 140 Plate is really nice. I really wish they'd add more HQ models and fx.
Yes Sir, the HQ plate is my go to. The HQ Velvet Verb is also quite lovely.

Totally agree that more HQ models/effects would be very welcome. I remain hopeful that Hotone will deliver!
 
Playing the Stage tonight. Really enjoying the Bogner models. Blue Vintage, Blue Modern, Red Vintage, Red Modern.

Super cool and a blast to play. I think they have the same ones for clean but f*ck that! Using either a plate or delay with them is tremendous fun. Super eay to set up and tweak.
 
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You can get a new Ampero II Stomp from sonicake on eBay for $365 including tax and shipping right now.
 
New Ampero II Stage is $547 shipped with taxes included.

Coupon on product page and another applied automatically at checkout start. On both products.
 
That’s Mooer territory!

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Looks like another new box from Hotone coming June 30th wonder if this will be a ToneX catch
Looks a lot smaller than the Ampero stuff for sure. Maybe it's something akin to an upscale Valeton GP5?
 
Looks a lot smaller than the Ampero stuff for sure. Maybe it's something akin to an upscale Valeton GP5?
It’s actually about the size of your stomp if you flip it sideways maybe a tad smaller
Looks also about nano sized
If you look there are definitely footswitches at
Least 3 possibly 4
 
Well, fixed my Ampero 2 Stomp power jack.

It fits a standard 2.1/5.5mm 3-prong DC jack like this:

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They really could've used a 0.1 cents more expensive part here.

The repair itself isn't too hard, but I don't recommend swapping the jack without a heat gun, plenty of flux and good desoldering tools. It's a pain in the ass to desolder 3 prongs, and you might damage the pads if you are not careful.
  1. Open up the unit.
  2. Disconnect front panel flat cable (turn up the little black flap holding it in place) and power cable.
  3. Disconnect the short fx loop PCB cable.
  4. Remove the square wave shaped support beam. Three screws under the device.
  5. Remove nuts and washers from jacks.
  6. Remove 4 screws from I/O board.
  7. Lift the I/O board until the 3 thick conductive pads underneath it become loose. It can be stuck pretty tight.
  8. Desolder DC jack.
  9. Clean up pads with a desoldering braid.
  10. Clean up any solder and flux residue with isopropyl alcohol.
  11. Solder in new DC jack.
  12. Clean up any solder and flux residue with isopropyl alcohol.
  13. Test that it works by connecting the front panel power cable. No need to connect the flat cable. If the footswitches and touchscreen light up, you're good.
  14. Reassemble.
 
The new Hotone product mentioned a few posts before:


Please continue discussion about it in that thread and let's leave this for the Ampero 2 Stomp.
 
Heads-up, 20% discount at Amazon (prime day) for Ampere II stage ($560) and stomp ($400).
 
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I am attempting to unbrick one of these units that is stuck on the recovery screen. Have any of you dumped the 16MB winbond ROM on the bottom of the core board? The one under the shield on the top I believe has more to do with the SHARC core. The recovery area is at 0x20000 in the bottom 0x20000 ROM. This area is not included in any of the firmware updates. They seem to only update >0x80000.

I also found that the USB was datalines out the USB-C port were having 6V transients due to a 5R1 5.1ohm R66 resistor failing open between the USB multiplexer IC and the USB-C port ground. The two MCU that are connected to the USB port are the RT1052 and the XU210-256-TQ128. RT1052 does the controls and display and the XU210-256-TQ128 handles the midi and audio. The RT1052 seems to be connected to the usb port for recovery and the XU210-256-TQ128 seems to be used when the device is stated for audio interface duties. It could be the USB PHY on my RT1052 is dead or the area <0x80000 has been corrupted on the failed update and the USB PHY isn't being setup properly.
 
I am attempting to unbrick one of these units that is stuck on the recovery screen. Have any of you dumped the 16MB winbond ROM on the bottom of the core board? The one under the shield on the top I believe has more to do with the SHARC core. The recovery area is at 0x20000 in the bottom 0x20000 ROM. This area is not included in any of the firmware updates. They seem to only update >0x80000.
I'd contact Hotone and see if they can help you, or maybe sell you a module with the ROM or something.
 
I'd contact Hotone and see if they can help you, or maybe sell you a module with the ROM or something.
I bought it off a guy that reached out and they said they couldn't even repair it. I did send them an email to see though. I'll likely need to replace the RT1052 MCU or get a second device to dump the ROMs from.
 
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