Hotone Ampero II

[mikah912]

Does anyone here ha e the Ampero II? I was thinking of giving it a run since I can get it at a pretty good price, but I noticed that it's missing the adjustment knobs of the Stage.

Wonder if that makes it clunky since you have to use the touchscreen for almost everything.....

 

[laxu]

Does anyone here ha e the Ampero II? I was thinking of giving it a run since I can get it at a pretty good price, but I noticed that it's missing the adjustment knobs of the Stage.

Wonder if that makes it clunky since you have to use the touchscreen for almost everything.....

It's a bit of a mixed bag. I can test this out on the Ampero 2 Stomp.

• You can tap a control and use the Menu/Value knob to adjust the parameter. This works best when you operate it with two hands: one turning the knob and the other tapping params.
• You can drag the parameter slider to adjust the value
• You can tap either half of the parameter slider to decrease/increase the value by 1.

Even on the 1" smaller screen on the Stomp it's honestly not terrible, but I still do prefer the 3 knobs.

It comes down to how that price stacks up vs the Ampero II Stage, and how much you care about having a built in expression pedal instead of more footswitches/knobs.

The specs comparison on the Ampero 2 product page seems most up to date between the 3 models. One thing not mentioned is that the Ampero 2 Stomp can't make captures (just load them), but otherwise it seems pretty up to date.

 

[Los-D]

What's with that name ("HO-tone"

My beef with the Ampero stuff is that the amp sounds are ok-ish, and the effects are solid but not better than Boss or Zoom (let alone Strymon, Fractal, Eventide), plus they aren’t cheap-cheap either. That said, the capture stuff sounds good (jury is out on having a robust community of captures), and for meat-and-potatoes stuff the effects are not bad at all. The GUI is nice too.

So it’s a pass for me but may work for a lot of folks (I tried both first gen on the Mini and second gen on the Stomp II).

 

[laxu]

My beef with the Ampero stuff is that the amp sounds are ok-ish, and the effects are solid but not better than Boss or Zoom (let alone Strymon, Fractal, Eventide), plus they aren’t cheap-cheap either. That said, the capture stuff sounds good (jury is out on having a robust community of captures), and for meat-and-potatoes stuff the effects are not bad at all. The GUI is nice too.

So it’s a pass for me but may work for a lot of folks (I tried both first gen on the Mini and second gen on the Stomp II).

For me, the capture stuff doesn't really sound better than what I can get out of the amp models...which to me means the amp models can be pretty good sounding but tend to have inaccuracies in behavior. If you treat them more like "just dial them to whatever sounds good" rather than "try to use them exactly like the real amp", you will have a better time. They are not all built equal either so depending on your tone preferences you might have a better or worse time with them.

Same for the effects, especially drives. Some of them are not that great, others are very close to real pedals.

It's a lot of "this is not the best, but this is more than good enough" at play on this range. I think they are well priced in that regard.

We are in this annoying in-between period where the higher priced units can sound better, and have more capable footswitching features, but the Hotone stuff is massively more user friendly for editing presets and really nails the form factor, at a much lower cost too.

 

[Los-D]

"this is not the best, but this is more than good enough

This should be their slogan, lol.

Seriously, though, I do think it depends on the geographical location too. In the US,
with NAM being free (though still in infancy), a new FM3 on sale several times a year at under $1K, and a used Hx Stomp for less than that, it’s a hard proposition for me. But outside the US (where we know Fractal is a more expensive option) things change.

In Latin America, for example, these things are making a killing (I have friends that have confirmed this). The new Mooer GS1000 launch was treated like a Fractal AxFx 4 Turbo Special Championship Edition release (people going crazy over them due to value proposition). Again, not for me but YMMV as always.

 

[laxu]

This should be their slogan, lol.

Seriously, though, I do think it depends on the geographical location too. In the US,
with NAM being free (though still in infancy), a new FM3 on sale several times a year at under $1K, and a used Hx Stomp for less than that, it’s a hard proposition for me. But outside the US (where we know Fractal is a more expensive option) things change.

In Latin America, for example, these things are making a killing (I have friends that have confirmed this). The new Mooer GS1000 launch was like a Fractal AxFx 4 Turbo Special Championship Edition release (people going crazy over them due to value proposition). Again, not for me but YMMV as always.

Here in Europe, the FM3 is already ~3.3x Ampero 2 Stomp. I don't think I have ever seen a sale from G66. But similarly the QC and Helix Floor are a lot more expensive, while having their own issues. Fractal and Helix are also at the tail end of their product cycle.

I never liked the HX Stomp because its onboard UI is so gimped compared to the Helix Floor. The A2 Stomp solves that really well while offering similar capabilities for less money. Plus it has a more sensible parameter order in every block, something that Line6 adamantly refuses to fix.

I can totally understand the Hotone or Mooer being a huge hit in Latin America or Asia where buying something like this might be a significant investment, and buying a Fractal would be the equivalent of buying a car or something.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I was going to say "If they play their cards right; they'll be the first touch screen modeler bought by JiveTurkey!" Which would obviously provide brand cachet.

...but then I re-remembered I bought the TurdBlasterPro so that differentiator is lost forever for them

 

[KingsXJJ]

I was going to say "If they play their cards right; they'll be the first touch screen modeler bought by JiveTurkey!" Which would obviously provide brand cachet.

...but then I re-remembered I bought the TurdBlasterPro so that differentiator is lost forever for them

Is TurdBlasterPro a euphemism for something? I might want one.

 

[mikah912]

Is TurdBlasterPro a euphemism for something? I might want one.

Fender Tonemaster Pro.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Is TurdBlasterPro a euphemism for something? I might want one.

You don't

 

[KingsXJJ]

Fender Tonemaster Pro.

Nope. Not unless they finish it. Then I’ll give ‘er a go.

 

[KingsXJJ]

I was going to say "If they play their cards right; they'll be the first touch screen modeler bought by JiveTurkey!" Which would obviously provide brand cachet.

...but then I re-remembered I bought the TurdBlasterPro so that differentiator is lost forever for them

I’d be interested in what you think if you try one but I’m not an influencer like you.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I’d be interested in what you think if you try one but I’m not an influencer like you.

 

[KingsXJJ]

Now THAT is a euphemism!

 

[eon]

Is it true you can only store 10 tone catches on the device?

 

[GTR37]

Is it true you can only store 10 tone catches on the device?

View attachment 36771

I am not sure but I think maybe it limits you to 10 John Mayer Captures

 

[ericbr1]

Is it true you can only store 10 tone catches on the device?

View attachment 36771

Yep. Hopefully that changes as it's that's a really small #, and I'm finding some really good tone catches, and I haven't even started tone catching my own great amps!

 

[laxu]

Yeah the 10 slots is pretty limiting. If I could make my own captures on the A2 Stomp it'd be enough for me, but with 3rd party captures you really have to curate it to the best ones.

 

[ericbr1]

Yeah the 10 slots is pretty limiting. If I could make my own captures on the A2 Stomp it'd be enough for me, but with 3rd party captures you really have to curate it to the best ones.

It's pretty bizarre (at least on the stage II) as soon as you load a Tone Catch and you already have 10, you need to overwrite one you have stored. You can't just audition them. Unless you did a separate process to 'export' the one you just got rid of, it's gone. They didn't fully think things out at all. The other thing that is strange on this is from day1 , you can't do a bulk backup of your presets/tc's,etc . You have to export 1 at a time, which is funny. I have 0 other gripes with this thing, and it's 1 of my favorite pieces of gear ever.

 

[laxu]

It's pretty bizarre (at least on the stage II) as soon as you load a Tone Catch and you already have 10, you need to overwrite one you have stored. You can't just audition them. Unless you did a separate process to 'export' the one you just got rid of, it's gone. They didn't fully think things out at all. The other thing that is strange on this is from day1 , you can't do a bulk backup of your presets/tc's,etc . You have to export 1 at a time, which is funny. I have 0 other gripes with this thing, and it's 1 of my favorite pieces of gear ever.

It's clearly something they shoehorned in as a value add feature because the II and Stage had the hardware to do it. Maybe because the Mooer GS1000Li was coming out as similar competition.

It's worth remembering that the Ampero II came out in November along with the Tone catch feature, and they quickly expanded it to the Stage and Stomp.

Maybe they will release a firmware update this year that optimizes the capture CPU usage and carves out more memory space for captures. Expanding the capture slots to 20-30 with maybe a couple of "scratchpad" slots for use during the capture process would go a long way.

Alternatively they are already working on a 3rd gen lineup, considering there were some holiday sales for the Ampero II range, and the A2 Stomp is about 3 years old now. If they were to release a new model this year, that would make for a similar cadence to Ampero 1 -> 2.

I feel like Hotone wouldn't even need to do that much for me to buy it. What I'd like to see:

• Improved drive and amp modeling.
• Higher quality effects. Especially many of the delays and modulations are "sounds good, but a bit generic" stuff.
• More capture slots.
• NAM support would be huge. No need to build up a community library of captures.
• Mic input on the Stomp size so it can also make captures and be used for vocals.
• 4-5 encoder knobs with a screen format to match so you can see more params at once.
• More flexible footswitching. Momentary controls, more options, separate tap/hold functions etc.
• "String Shifter" effect that actually works. It's the only broken effect in the unit.