First impressions from the Tonex, which arrived this afternoon. Very easy to get it fired up and find a few decent tones. Easy to tweak with the knobs on the front panel. Sounds aren't blowing me away, but then I've been listening to FAS modeling for a long time. The box itself seems well made, and it comes with enough electrical adaptors to play anywhere there's electricity.
The interface on the unit makes the best of the little room it has, giving you a preset number and a six character name. Also tells you if it's an amp and cab model, or just a amp (stomp boxes also seem to light just the amp light, though I'm not in far enough to verify that is right in all cases yet).
The software and registering is... ponderous. Let me say that you can use the Tonex as it comes with no computer stuff at all, but you'd be stuck with what's in the box, and with all of the models available for free, that seems a bad move. You have to make an account with IK Multimedia to register, and then download and install the IK Multimedia Product Manager, along with a driver if you happen to be on a Windows machine. I downloaded and downloaded. The Tonex showed it was Authorized, but I couldn't find the Tonex Librarian the manual kept referring to on my machine. After much looking, I saw it (oddly) authorized with them, but didn't install unless you tell it to do so... silly when you wouldn't be authorizing it if you weren't going to use it. Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'll just say it isn't as intuitive as, say, an FM9.
Banks are arranged in sets of three, as that's how many buttons you have on the Tonex. Another oddity... stepping on a button selects that preset (as expected) but stepping on the same button again bypasses that preset... you just get direct guitar. I hope that can be changed, because it would be a real bummer to accidentally step on the wrong button and go from raging Recto to direct guitar with no amp sound. I'll look into this more. It's a great feature if you're running into an amp and just using stomp box models, but not for traditional modeler use.
I love the knobs on the front panel probably better than anything so far. Super quick tone adjustments, always available. there are 7 of them, each with two functions so it's a lot of control in a small space. Amp guys will like this a lot.
So, VERY early impressions:
1. Sounds are ok, and I think you can get some good tones out of it,
2. Software implementation is a lot like Protools or similar, and that blows. Be prepared to spend some time getting that how you want it.
3. The weird bypass function has got to go. I'll need to sort that one quickly.
4. Control surface is very cool, and offers a lot of direct control.
5. The only effects are drive based and built in, so I think your fave OD, Chorus, Delay, and Reverb are necessary adds. Think of it like a barebones amp and cab.
Overall, easily worth the price and should be more so in time. It's really only ever going to be a backup for me, so it offers all I need to get through a gig comfortably attached to a couple of basic pedals. I'll play more tomorrow and over the weekend and update with a more educated viewpoint! You can tell by my structure here I’m a little cross eyed by this point.
