IK Multimedia TONEX

[EOengineer]

Thanks again for these! I messed around with these a lot last night with interesting results.

I put the Tonex in the HX Stomp’s FX loop and setup four parallel presets on both units: 1 with the HX Stomp providing the preamp and the Tonex with your power amp capture,

1 with the HX Stomp providing the power amp and Tonex with your preamp capture,

1 with your preamp+power amp capture,

and 1 with the Cali IV Lead amp block in the Helix alone.

For the Helix preamp, I used the Cali IV Lead preamp block and got it sounding very close to your preamp capture (with no power amp sim or IR when comparing) and level matched them.

For the Helix “power amp”, I used the Archetype Clean amp block + an EQ block for a flat response, and took a little high end off and added a little crunch to match your power amp capture, and level matched that too.

All four presets had the same IR.

I got presets 1 and 2 sounding VERY close and feeling great. The biggest difference was that the Helix preamp always stayed brighter when pushed by a boost, whereas the Tonex preamp felt a bit more natural there.

Preset 3 had a different sound in general (iirc your listed EQ settings were different on this capture vs the preamp capture too). The most noticeable thing as far as good/bad was how pushing its gain was much more “full” sounding. I think this was just the nature of the power amp being pushed by the preamp irl, which is a bit hard to simulate with how I was running things in presets 1 and 2. I did some experiments with preset 1 (HX preamp and Tonex power amp) where I had a footswitch that both activated a boost before the preamp and upped the gain a little on the Tonex, and that got closer. I think I could get similar results with different gain staging and Tonex input trim settings too.

Preset 4 sounded the worst of the 4 and tbh I didn’t spend much time on this. I’m no Mesa expert though, so I probably could have done it better, but it wasn’t really the point of this exercise lol

Anyway, thanks once more for these captures. It was really cool to be able to get similar results with the first three approaches. Now I just need to get an actual tube preamp to try I don’t actually own a tube amp anymore currently lol

Thanks for following up! I’m glad they ended up being useful for you in your experiment! That power amp capture has provided a ton of fun in late night headphone sessions.

I have a Mesa 2:90 power amp I want to capture with variations for the deep, modern, and half drive modes. Need to get that thing serviced first.

 

[Sascha Franck]

but it seems there are options already out there that people are enjoying at this time

They're all limited in one way or the other. If such a small MIDI translator box would come from IK, it'd also be ensured that potential updates would be covered (which apparently isn't the case with 3rd party utilities).
Done right, these boxes would defenitely sell. Make it so that they also work as power supplies, only requiring a single 9V input and allow your users to connect, say, up to 4 Tonex Ones. Then offer a wireless app (the translation box should offer straight MIDI and BT connections) and let people control each connected device in a dedicated tab. When using MIDI, that could be realized via different MIDI channels.
Such a box would be an instant buy for me. I would even promise to buy yet another Tonex One.

Seriously, due to their size (and the autosave function), these units could have sooo much potential.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Theoretically MIDI over USB is just software so it COULD do it

Well, I actually believe @IK Multimedia when he says there's no MIDI in the box per se. It's why the Builty project exists. There's some translation needed.
Now, whether that could as well be done on the unit might be another question, but perhaps it simply takes another small processor to handle the translation duties.

 

[synthpenguin]

I have a Mesa 2:90 power amp I want to capture with variations for the deep, modern, and half drive modes. Need to get that thing serviced first.

That would be awesome! Please feel free to tag me if you ever do that!

 

[synthpenguin]

Well, I actually believe @IK Multimedia when he says there's no MIDI in the box per se. It's why the Builty project exists. There's some translation needed.
Now, whether that could as well be done on the unit might be another question, but perhaps it simply takes another small processor to handle the translation duties.

Okay, so what if they add auto save to the big Tonex… so then you hook a MIDI foot controller to the Tonex, and then the big Tonex sends MIDI thru to the Polar, and the Polar then transmits messages to the Tonex One, and at only 5x the floor space and 6x the cost—never mind haha

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, I thought I could go all crazy and had a look whether it'd be sorta realistic to add two of the smallest Pirate MIDI boxes somewhere under my board and then control away to my hearts content. But FFS, they're from kangaroo land, so that's quite some extra shipping cost and possibly less than ideal should anything ever break. I will now start to annoy the dude I bought the first one from. Or just force him to build me a little box.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, regarding the big Tonex boy, out of plain interest: How does it deal with knob-parameter offsets? What happens when you adjust a parameter and the knob's setting is far away from the parameter value? Does it require "capturing" the parameter? Or are there parameter jumps? And in either case, do you get any indication where the parameter was at before you grabbed the knob?

 

[synthpenguin]

Ok, regarding the big Tonex boy, out of plain interest: How does it deal with knob-parameter offsets? What happens when you adjust a parameter and the knob's setting is far away from the parameter value? Does it require "capturing" the parameter? Or are there parameter jumps? And in either case, do you get any indication where the parameter was at before you grabbed the knob?

When you first start to turn it, the display flashes the parameter name and then the current value, and then jumps to where you have the knob set, and updates the displayed value smoothly from there.

E.g. if the physical Gain knob is set to 7 and the current Gain value is set to 5, once you start to turn the knob it will flash "GAIN" then "5.0" and then jump to 7 (or wherever the current knob position is if you've been turning it—I don't think there's an actual delay in the value changing, just the display)

Hopefully that makes sense lol. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think works decently well, even if not my absolute favorite way to do it. I do wish guitar stuff allowed you to choose knob behavior like many synths do.

In general, I think the onboard Tonex UI is actually pretty good once you get how the menu system works. It's not faster than using the PC editor, but it's consistent, and fairly quick to change most things.