Tone X Pedal

[Greg Cutshaw]

Tone X pedal does incredible things for a very low price ($399):

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/t ... onex-pedal

Play through hundreds of amps, cabs, pedals and full rigs, including 1000 downloadable premium Tone Models and unlimited user downloads

Doubles as a high-quality USB audio interface

Exclusive VIR™ multi-IR cabinets and custom IR Loader, Noise gate, EQ, compressor and 5 stereo reverbs for powerful on-stage tone shaping

Includes TONEX MAX software all-in-one player, modeler and librarian and AmpliTube 5 software

Also has a headphone jack and gives you access to the world's most popular Amp, cab and effects IR's.

Not pushing this thing, just like to hear from user's that may be trying it. This won't be the first device I've ever considered buying that possibly doesn't live up to the hype!

[Brian Spratt]

Interesting piece of gear, Greg. It's basically a Kemper Junior, which sounds like a great idea to me. For live playing or tweaking settings on the fly like you would a real amp, something like this has much more appeal to me than the Kemper.

[Larry Dering]

This would be a serious bargain if it does all they claim with a quality output. I tried to find some decent video demos but nobody plays clean. I believe someone started it was a mono output. Not sure on that.

[Brian Spratt]

Larry, its got mono-in, stereo-out.

[Greg Cutshaw]

All the demos of the Fractal Axe 3 were also distorted or at least edgy and mostly guitar based. When I got mine I got the same results until I found the one parm that was cranked up on every single preset that caused purposeful pre-amp overloading, even on the "clean" amp models. After cranking that internal gain setting down I was able to get really nice clean sounds with lots of sweet harmonics.

The Tone X demos don't really show the clean capability or the effects or even the USB recording ability. I have one on backorder now and am waiting for someone to tell me it's a bust so I can cancel the order. The life of an early adopter!

[Marty Broussard]

. Thank goodness for early adopters like Greg!

[Greg Cutshaw]

Sweetwater (love them or hate them) has already sold out of their first shipment and expects the next batch in 10 days which translated means 10 days to 10 weeks. I do like visiting their store though and their guitars have had the straightest necks and least defects of all the places I've bought guitars at.

[Brian Spratt]

This is a great *technical* youtube comparison between the TONEX (in software form, not pedal, but I assume the algorithms are identical), Kemper, and Quad Cortex. All are similar products competing in this market. The TONEX came closest to matching (via null test) the wave form generated by the actual profiled amp in several different recording takes. In other words, this thing looks like it is an excellent profiler on par with, if not better than, the Kemper.

The tones are not clean, but that's not really the point of the video. The video focuses on which profiler most accurately matches the actual tone of a profiled amp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avhih6805YU

[Greg Cutshaw]

The ToneX pedal comes with the profiling software plus access to 1000 factory models plus access to the user model library. So you could profile your own amp with this pedal.

On the Null Test the ToneX shows how it really outperforms the Kemper and Quad Cortex.

All of that means nothing if you prefer the sound of one unit over the other in live use. But the ToneX is a fraction in price compared to the Kemper and QC.

[Scott Denniston]

Still very much diggin my Kemp but am curious if this is the same or related profiling tech. If it is that's a great step ahead on size and price. I'm looking forward to some A/B comparisons (hopefully with clean amps). Amplitube was really on the crest of the modeling wave with Line 6 way back when so I have high expectations. I only use a couple of profiles of the unlimited amps on the Kemper. I think most people do that. One thing that really shines on the Kemper are the high quality built in fx and in stereo.

[Jim Fogarty]

Here's a good demo of the pedal, with just what's included (instead of doing your own modeling), plus more cleanish sounds.

I use the Kemper Stage, and love it, and wonder what live use with this would be like, in comparison?

https://youtu.be/c91KiM5auJw

[Brian Spratt]

I played around with the software plugin version of TONEX today. I just downloaded the free version and I'll say I was impressed. Having a clean Twin Reverb profile with the extensive EQ afforded by the TONEX engine kind of brings the Peavey mid-sweepable EQ to a classic Fender. Best of both worlds.

[Greg Cutshaw]

I found the same thing with Fractal Axe3. Incredible control over the tone and so many additional settings to tailor the response of any chosen vintage amp to your pedal steel.

[James Quackenbush]

You have to realize that these programs are modeled for guitar and guitar pickups…As pedal steel players, our pickups are a minimum of twice the power or more of your average guitar pickup…It stands to reason that you would have to make changes to the gain stage for starters to minimize distortion, and other changes simply how the pickup is wound….For $399, I’m gonna have to give this thing a shot….I’ve heard Studio Rats doing some guitar work on some Dumble samples that sounded pretty impressive to say the least….

[Brian Spratt]

I ran the TONEX output into the line in on my Nashville 112 with the cab simulation OFF in TONEX. It felt like a "real" amp that way. I actually prefer the tone with that setup to my usual tone on the Nashville.

[Brian Spratt]

I've been using the TONEX pedal for a while now and I'm very pleased with it. A lot of the free models sound great, but you have to gain down the input a lot to keep clean pedal steel tones. Consequently, your overall volume drops when the pedal is on. Not a big deal, but also not ideal gain staging. To remedy that somewhat I finally got around to making what I believe is the very first pedal steel amp model on the TONEX platform and uploaded it to tone.net. I modeled my USA made Peavey Nashville 112. You can find it on tone.net just by searching for "Peavey Nashville 112".

I also wrote a bit about it on my website here -> https://briancspratt.wixsite.com/theped ... tone-model

I plan to do more modeling as I've already got some ideas on how to re-capture the Nashville better after having gone now through the process once. I plan to try different mics, eq amp settings, some other preamps, and so on.

[Larry Dering]

Brian, that's great. How do you feel about the Tonex in a live setting driving the amps power amp in or the effects return? Greg hasn't used his like that. I'm more interested as a power amp or combo amp user and not the recording side of this. Thanks.

[Doug Taylor]

Brian thank you so much for sharing! I don't have the pedal yet but have the AXE interface which comes with the Tonex software. I have not played pedal steel through it yet but plugged the Tele up and can't stop playing it sounds so good. This by far the best sound I have gotten from Tonex! This makes me think I will purchase the pedal!

thank you so much!

[John McClung]

This is a link to a search on YouTube for Tone X demos.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... one+x+demo

Mike Herman usually does the best demos, no spoken dialog, just scrolling text at the bottom of the video, and he usually does clean demos of stuff he tries out. Reverb does pretty good demos, but usually mostly cranked guitar stuff.

I love Pete Thorn's demos cause he's such a fantastic player.

[Greg Cutshaw]

i've done a ton of recording with my ToneX pedal both mono and stereo with different steel guitars. Mostly I use it standalone into a Zoom R24 but I have used in into a quilter Tone block 202.

Here's a few snippets of what it sounds like in mono, direct to Zoom R24 with the Twin Reverb model:

Sierra D13 in mono

Sierra D13 in mono sound clip 12

Another in stereo:

https://www.gregcutshaw.com/Sierra%20Si ... le%204.mp3

[Brian Spratt]

Larry, the TONEX works really well running into the power amp in on the Nashville 112. I’ve been very happy with the tones I can get. Just make sure to disable the cab sim on the tonex if you run it this way otherwise you’re running a cab sim into another cab which is not ideal.

Doug, thanks for the compliments on the tone model. I will do some more and post them. I am considering posting a thread to see if anyone in the Tulsa area is interested in getting some amps together and modeling them. The Nashville is the only steel amp I own but I would love to model others.

[Larry Dering]

Thanks again Brian and Greg. I guess I could download the trial software and try it in one of my amps. I generally don't have the time to spend tweaking and swapping amps. But that's the only option for me to find out.

[Brian Spratt]

So here's a bit of a game changer idea... you can model virtual amps to create TONEX tone models. I thought of this the other day and almost shrugged it off thinking that it probably wouldn't work... or at least wouldn't work very well due to latency or other issues. I'm happy to say I was wrong. You absolutely can model a virtual amp (a pedal, a VST, or whatever) just like you would a real amp. The process is the same except instead of using an amp and a mic, you've route the signal through your virtual amp.

Here's a YouTube video from Jason Sadites explaining the process in detail -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUwTye51f48&t=333s

I tried it out on my favorite virtual 65 Twin Reverb and it sounds indistinguishable. I love this tone!

Here's my blog post on it -> https://briancspratt.wixsite.com/theped ... tone-model

And here's the tone model -> https://www.tone.net/tonex/tonemodels/35031

Note that I think it would be a little sketchy to model a virtual amp and upload it to tone.net without making it clear that this was a virtual amp. You'll notice in my tone model description I say this is an Amplitube 5 amp, just to be transparent about that. But at the end of the day, all that matters is the tone and it's got that for sure.

[Brian Spratt]

I modeled just the amp (no speaker or cabinet) of the Nashville 112. This is a good option to use and try out different IRs. I will soon be uploading some amp + cab models featuring the Nashville and Paul Franklin 12" and Travis Toy 12" speakers.

Here's the Nashville with no cab:

https://www.tone.net/tonex/tonemodels/35170

[Larry Dering]

Splendid advice and information. Thanks.