IK Multimedia TONEX

[Chocol8]

Yeah, with the Tonex Editor and all that, I think I'm coming in at a better point than a lot of people were before! And thank you!

Uh, WAY better point!

 

[synthpenguin]

Uh, WAY better point!

haha honestly, watching a video on the new editor is the only thing that made me seriously consider it again! I'm not super interested in spending a lot of time chasing different captures, I mainly just want a few good sounds and a few specialized ones, but even then it seemed like such a chore before.

 

[jimmy Biter]

Picked one up last week, did the firmware update, I'm rather impressed with it..I integrated it into my pedalboard and it works and sounds great as a stereo rig for live streaming ... Got a clean Fender sound, a JCM 800 for the crunches, and an SLO for the heavies, been using a real SD-1 to goose the front and haven't had an issue with clipping...

 

[EOengineer]

Picked one up last week, did the firmware update, I'm rather impressed with it..I integrated it into my pedalboard and it works and sounds great as a stereo rig for live streaming ... Got a clean Fender sound, a JCM 800 for the crunches, and an SLO for the heavies, been using a real SD-1 to goose the front and haven't had an issue with clipping...

Tonex seems to handle pedals in a way that feels more consistent with my tube amps. I love having it on a board. You can pull a ton of really great tones with a couple presets and a few drive pedals.

 

[synthpenguin]

Got the Tonex today, and I only messed around with it for about an hour, and without hooking it up to the editor or anything yet, but I like it a lot! I did find a lot of the presets pretty bright for the guitar I was using, but I found some I liked quite a bit in there (some of the Fender captures sound great). I'm looking forward to grabbing some of the Amalgam captures and a couple others!

Re: input trim and clipping. I didn't seem to have any trouble with clipping with passive humbuckers or single coils. The only pedal I tried through it for now was a fuzz that isn't actually boosting the output much anyway, but it was fine. Though is there any visual indicator for actual input clipping? I thought I saw people say there was an LED or some sort of on-screen indicator before, but maybe not.

And on the input trim, I messed around a little with the oft-suggested 0dB and +6dB settings, but for now I'm pretty happy with the +8.5dB default. My single coils responded like single coils, and my humbuckers acted how I'd expect relative to that (I prefer that to every pickup hitting the captures the same). A few of the presets seemed a little hot for their description, but most didn't, and turning the gain knob down a little was nbd when they did.

Also, the reverb sounded better than I expected or remembered from the demo, which was a cool bonus.

Anyway, I'm happy so far! I'm excited to hook it up to the software later.

 

[Chocol8]

Did you get the OG pedal or the One?

 

[synthpenguin]

Did you get the OG pedal or the One?

The original one! I was originally going to get the One, but decided I wanted the MIDI etc

 

[synthpenguin]

Connecting to the editor and all that was smooth sailing. The editor is very easy. The only thing I don't like is that I have to replace entire presets to try out captures; I wish you could just import the captures from a preset.

Anyway, haven't bought anything yet, but tried plenty of free sample presets from people who make premium ones, and so far my fav has been a driven Bassman from Amp Gems (I think it's actually a Synergy BMAN preamp in a Syn30 head). It's a direct capture that I've been running through a G12H30 York Audio IR, and I really love how it cleans up and responds to dynamics. I also liked a cranked Princeton from Amp Gems and a cranked Vibroverb from Keemosawbe with the same usage + IR. I also tried a couple free Benson Chimera captures someone had uploaded, and those sounded pretty nice too.

Anyway, so far I'm enjoying using these cranked captures, and then fine tuning them a little with the gain knob, and controlling the rest with my guitar volume knob. I like that, because my plan is to figure out macros (looks like you can't set them up in the Editor..?), and then use it to attach gain to an external footswitch (or MIDI) as a lead boost, e.g. start with a capture that, with gain on 5, is around where I want to be for leads, then set gain to maybe 2 or 3, and use the footswitch to turn it up to 6 or 7. That's exciting to me, because ideally I'd like to find 5 or 6 captures I like a lot, and build a few presets like this around them, and then be done with it for the most part.

Thanks again for the help and advice, everyone!

 

[Chocol8]

Anyway, so far I'm enjoying using these cranked captures, and then fine tuning them a little with the gain knob, and controlling the rest with my guitar volume knob. I like that, because my plan is to figure out macros (looks like you can't set them up in the Editor..?), and then use it to attach gain to an external footswitch (or MIDI) as a lead boost, e.g. start with a capture that, with gain on 5, is around where I want to be for leads, then set gain to maybe 2 or 3, and use the footswitch to turn it up to 6 or 7. That's exciting to me, because ideally I'd like to find 5 or 6 captures I like a lot, and build a few presets like this around them, and then be done with it for the most part.

This is exactly what I thought Tonex did better than most other platforms: the ability to adjust the gain through a wide range on a single capture using the gain setting and/or guitar/effects volume.