What do you think of the new TONEX Mesa Amps?

[MirrorProfiles]

True. That said, stuff like this makes products like the NDSP Mesa IIC+/IIC++ look very attractive (which I've said time & again) for what they offer.

100%. Do you want a captured amp at every setting, full UI, pedals, tuner, full cab IR’s etc AND presets?

But I guess there will be people who prefer snapshots and the ability to put them in a pedal (!!). IK really need to get on with updating amplitube so the modelling keeps up with everyone else. The modelling in AT5 should be able to sound pretty close to the ToneX models, which sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t…

 

[SKU]

True. That said, stuff like this makes products like the NDSP Mesa IIC+/IIC++ look very attractive (which I've said time & again) for what they offer.

Good point. Writing software take infinitely more - applied - time. I know this is not apples to apples but still ...
And when you think about other things like video games. The budget is millions/tens of millions for a game. The game costs $60...
And one more thing. Since this is a product sold by IK Multimedia, it is strange that it's more expensive than all other similar products from other vendors. You'd expect IK to release cheaper packs to pull in potential customers to their platform or at least as a form of appreciation for existing customers for buying in into their ecosystem.

 

[BenIfin]

True. That said, stuff like this makes products like the NDSP Mesa IIC+/IIC++ look very attractive (which I've said time & again) for what they offer.

..... the NDSP Mesa IIC+/IIC++ plugin sounds especially great when you use it for a live gig on your hardware QC .... and .... oh wait .....

 

[Orvillain]

There's also the argument that not everyone has to buy it. If you don't think its good value, use something else. Stuff takes time and effort to make and we can be made to feel that we HAVE to buy everything and anything. If its "too expensive" you don't want or need it badly enough, and thats fine.

100%. Which is kinda why moaning about the price is just not very productive. Buy it, or don't.

I'm tempted. With Jampoints it would cost about £60.

 

[Orvillain]

Do you want a captured amp at every setting

Honestly, when I open up the last 10 music projects I've started. Most of them are using ToneX with one of my own VH4 captures, and the mildest of tweaks, inside AT5 - with some AT5 effects in there, and also the BigSky plugin.

Soooooooo.. for writing demos.... no, I actually don't want a captured amp at every setting. It is very easy to convince myself that I do need that... but I really don't. All I need is 4 or 5 profiles that are ballpark where I want to be. Because in those scenarios my goal is to get three people writing music as quickly as possible.

I've only got two or three presets on my Axe FX III too, that give me the same sort of experience. A clean, a crunch, a lead with a few effects.

When I strip back my desires and ignore the consumer behaviour that is instilled in me by not only this industry, but also my job in it .... take all of that away, and what I want can be boiled down to three things:

1. High quality sound.
2. Very quick to load up.
3. Very limited in capabilities so I don't get sucked into "production" mode.

For me, I'm starting to realise that there is a time and a place for the kitchen sink mentality. And it is quite often only relevant to me when I am actually in the studio recording something that I am intending to release upon the world.

For demos, rehearsals, and even gigs.... my needs are fairly trivial and boomer-ish.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

tbf, what I meant by "at every setting" was "do you want a complete model with the real UI, like what NDSP offer?" rather than "do you want a long list of files that you have to scroll through and guess which might sound best?"

 

[Orvillain]

rather than "do you want a long list of files that you have to scroll through and guess which might sound best?"

Yeah for sure. This experience is defo wank.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I think the price is fair. This race to the bottom where everything needs to be throw away beer money, or else I'm not buying!!!

...ehhhhh... sack that. It is a lot of work to make these things. Companies and thus individuals who work for them - often people who are specialists in their field - deserve to be compensated.

I dunno - the 20 minutes isn’t a man-hour thing but a downtime thing. I’m guessing the Mesa license cost was at least the same as the cost to make the captures? Marketing budget probably on par, too, if not more? They are probably charging what they need to charge, the question is whether or not there is a market for these at that price. Probably … but if I were in the market for captures, I’d be much more likely to throw my money at somebody making smarter decisions re: costs and thereby able to keep their prices down while making more than the whatever IK is paying the actual engineer to make these.

 

[Orvillain]

I dunno - the 20 minutes isn’t a man-hour thing but a downtime thing. I’m guessing the Mesa license cost was at least the same as the cost to make the captures? Marketing budget probably on par, too, if not more? They are probably charging what they need to charge, the question is whether or not there is a market for these at that price. Probably … but if I were in the market for captures, I’d be much more likely to throw my money at somebody making smarter decisions re: costs and thereby able to keep their prices down while making more than the whatever IK is paying the actual engineer to make these.

Not 100% sure I get what you mean about man-hour versus downtime thing? It isn't like an employee can set up a system and just walk away and not have to manage it. You could with NAM I reckon. But not with ToneX.

Although thinking about it... they probably have internal dev tools for making ToneX captures in a batch process kind of way, that they just haven't released to the public. So they probably get some time optimization that way.

Think someone else said it, but they probably calculate that the majority of their sales will be discounted using JamPoints and future sales promotions. They're after volume sales, rather than high-dollar low volume sales. That seems to be IK's M.O.

 

[creative360]

While I prefer profiles/caps to component modeling, truth is no single session is the final word on any magnificent amp. So many creative variables keep these things relevant and evolving. Then there’s how different one great Deluxe for instance is from the next. That’s why in Kemper rig managers you may see several iterations of amps with the “same” pedigree. Therefore, I find something a bit offensive about the price of the IK collections.

Bert Meulendijk can sell an entire studio’s amp collection worth of profiles for a quarter this price, or beautiful single (or double in the projector amp case) packs for $15, and make a living, while also getting promo support from the Kemper marketing machinery, like several other excellent vendors. (There’s also something cool about established pros profiling based on their own experienced and ear.)

I do also agree that no one needs more than a handful of tones—most legends are associated with literally one amp. So yeah if these expensive packs satisfy a guitarist’s needs, then cool, maybe a real value. Is there a try before you buy option? Recently I had the opportunity to use one of my desert island amps, a 62 brown Deluxe. It was noisy and dull, a real disappointment.

I’m not an obsessive profile collector so those few gotcha moments I’ve experienced when a pack didn’t do for me what I heard in the demos were real disappointments.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Not 100% sure I get what you mean about man-hour versus downtime thing? It isn't like an employee can set up a system and just walk away and not have to manage it. You could with NAM I reckon. But not with ToneX.

Although thinking about it... they probably have internal dev tools for making ToneX captures in a batch process kind of way, that they just haven't released to the public. So they probably get some time optimization that way.

Think someone else said it, but they probably calculate that the majority of their sales will be discounted using JamPoints and future sales promotions. They're after volume sales, rather than high-dollar low volume sales. That seems to be IK's M.O.

Honestly, I care so little about this device I have t watched the capturing process. I assume that it’s just a longer version of Kemper process where .. even if you don’t want to walk away from it you could use that time to be doing other things. The point on rough split of their costs still stands. I disagree that use of IK points/bucks/whatever they call them now equates to a 30% savings to user - if it were that simple/straightforward, they’d just…price their stuff 30% lower and use a normal loyalty program.

 

[Orvillain]

Honestly, I care so little about this device I have t watched the capturing process. I assume that it’s just a longer version of Kemper process where .. even if you don’t want to walk away from it you could use that time to be doing other things. The point on rough split of their costs still stands. I disagree that use of IK points/bucks/whatever they call them now equates to a 30% savings to user - if it were that simple/straightforward, they’d just…price their stuff 30% lower and use a normal loyalty program.

It takes a lot longer than the Kemper. But there isn't any refining process to speak of. You can dial in the default amount of gain at the end of the capture, and setup tags and an amp UI for it... but that's about it.

The thing people don't understand about this industry is, nobody really plans for their sales to be RRP price. Stuff is priced so that when you see 30% or 50% off... you think you're getting a deal, when actually you're paying what the company planned for anyway. I see it all the time. Sales are forecast across different price brackets in order to estimate quarterly and annual revenue figures.

If IK priced their stuff 30% lower, the customer would just expect to see a 30% discount on that new price before they were willing to purchase. It's all about the psychology of the customer, ultimately.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

It takes a lot longer than the Kemper. But there isn't any refining process to speak of. You can dial in the default amount of gain at the end of the capture, and setup tags and an amp UI for it... but that's about it.

The thing people don't understand about this industry is, nobody really plans for their sales to be RRP price. Stuff is priced so that when you see 30% or 50% off... you think you're getting a deal, when actually you're paying what the company planned for anyway. I see it all the time. Sales are forecast across different price brackets in order to estimate quarterly and annual revenue figures.

If IK priced their stuff 30% lower, the customer would just expect to see a 30% discount on that new price before they were willing to purchase. It's all about the psychology of the customer, ultimately.

My own personal experience with IK, which was some years ago, so maybe things have changed, is that I had to buy bucks to get the 30% discount. But they only sold them in bundles of 25 and what I wanted to buy was priced at 79. So…yeah, savings, but only 30% if I bought more than I wanted. There are WAY more straightforward ways to offer discounts than that convoluted system. And $70 is still steep, even giving the benefit of the doubt.

There are plenty of Kemper profile sellers that aren’t relying on monthly flash sales, discounts, or “10th pack is free!” Promos, but instead just set up a website with some decent demos and a price of $30 or less per pack, so it’s not like selling these specific types of digital content without discounts isn't done pretty regularly.

I get the cost of stuff like toontrack Sdx packs, Spitfire libraries, etc., that pretty much require the infrastructure of a company behind them and are only going to be something worth investing in the making of if you can sell them at large scale which necessarily involves occasional sale/discount windows, etc.. But IR packs and amp profile/captures are so easy to do WELL at low cost, that I’m not gonna feel too bad if IK finds itself with not a big enough market for these at the price they need to sell them at and the dude they paid to make them has to find another way to apply his skills for money.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

It takes a lot longer than the Kemper. But there isn't any refining process to speak of. You can dial in the default amount of gain at the end of the capture, and setup tags and an amp UI for it... but that's about it.

The thing people don't understand about this industry is, nobody really plans for their sales to be RRP price. Stuff is priced so that when you see 30% or 50% off... you think you're getting a deal, when actually you're paying what the company planned for anyway. I see it all the time. Sales are forecast across different price brackets in order to estimate quarterly and annual revenue figures.

If IK priced their stuff 30% lower, the customer would just expect to see a 30% discount on that new price before they were willing to purchase. It's all about the psychology of the customer, ultimately.

Just checked the BFD website (also…really need to look into this now as it has grown significantly since last I looked):

Looks like there isn’t a single drum expansion pack that lists for more than this ampmcapture pack, and most are for at least 30% less than this amp pack (all before applying any discounts). Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the costs involved in making a drum sample pack, even for just a single small kit, are going to be significantly more than those required to make an amp capture pack?

 

[Iron1]

Understand where you are coming from.

I think IK presumes most will use points to get 30% off.

Note, each capture takes 20 minutes or more to make. Very time consuming.

People definitely deserve compensation for their time/effort. No doubt. But 20 mins x 7 captures if only sold once is still like 3x minimum wage.

If it costs $45/hour to capture and they “only” sell 100 of them, that’s an insane profit margin. Granted you have to factor in web hosting, packaging/delivery, marketing etc. but still a pretty nice payday.

Now, sell it thousands of times and the effort involved becomes a non-factor when debating EU pricing.

To use that “argument” with the Beta Monkey analogy, they pay a pro drummer for roughly 40 hours of work. A sound engineer has to capture that work, so that’s double the time. End product sold for $29… thousands of times.

In a world with Helix, Fractal, Kemper, ad nauseam, $100 for only 7 captures just makes bad sense to me. That’s a quarter of a Stomp Buck. No thanks.

But, YMMV.

 

[JiveTurkey]

7 captures? Am I missing something here?

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

People definitely deserve compensation for their time/effort. No doubt. But 20 mins x 7 captures if only sold once is still like 3x minimum wage.

If it costs $45/hour to capture and they “only” sell 100 of them, that’s an insane profit margin. Granted you have to factor in web hosting, packaging/delivery, marketing etc. but still a pretty nice payday.

Now, sell it thousands of times and the effort involved becomes a non-factor when debating EU pricing.

To use that “argument” with the Beta Monkey analogy, they pay a pro drummer for roughly 40 hours of work. A sound engineer has to capture that work, so that’s double the time. End product sold for $29… thousands of times.

In a world with Helix, Fractal, Kemper, ad nauseam, $100 for only 7 captures just makes bad sense to me. That’s a quarter of a Stomp Buck. No thanks.

But, YMMV.

Maybe I'm mis-reading, but looks like it's 70 actual captures of 4 different amps? This equates to roughly the amount of content typically included in two, MAYBE three $20-30 Kemper profile packs. It's not WILDLY over the top price wise for the market. But still a little high, and the "added value" is the name-drop of Doug-whats-his-face and Mesa, and I hate IK, so I'm still gonna bicker with @Orvillain

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

7 captures? Am I missing something here?

I think it's 70? https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/tonex-mesa/

 

[Iron1]

Maybe I'm mis-reading, but looks like it's 70 actual captures of 4 different amps? This equates to roughly the amount of content typically included in two, MAYBE three $20-30 Kemper profile packs. It's not WILDLY over the top price wise for the market. But still a little high, and the "added value" is the name-drop of Doug-whats-his-face and Mesa, and I hate IK, so I'm still gonna bicker with @Orvillain

Oh, that makes a whole lot more sense.

 

[Jkist7]

Understand where you are coming from.

I think IK presumes most will use points to get 30% off.

Note, each capture takes 20 minutes or more to make. Very time consuming.

20 minutes time consuming? I dunno. Even with 70 captures at 20 minutes each, that's just about 24 hours of work. Sure you have to dial the amps in, set em up, etc

Given that, once the simple work is done, you have an infinite resource that you can sell, it very much justifies whatever work was required, i think.

Digital goods are some of the easiest products to sell. No cost to produce once the heavy lifting is done. If it's software you obviously have to pay to keep updating the product (if you even want to).

But with captures, it's one and done, then host them on your website to be sold until the end of time if you want, with no further effort needed.

All I'm saying is 20 minutes per capture is a drop in the bucket, especially for a company like Mesa Boogie, when with just a handful of sales they can recoup that cost.

Granted, I'm making a hefty ton of assumptions, but yes, 20 minutes isn't "hard work".