Role Model

IK Multimedia's Tonex tone-capturing ecosystem expands with a hardware box to take those sounds on stage

- Trevor Curwen

IK MULTIMEDIA TONEX PEDAL £399

CONTACT IK Multimedia WEB www.ikmultimedia.com

Most readers of this mag will know IK Multimedia for its AmpliTube amp and effects software and for its X‑Gear pedals, which we reviewed back in issue 482. But the company has another software application called Tonex that uses AI machine modelling to capture the sound of amp rigs as something called ‘Tone Models’. IK Multimedia recently announced that there are now over 10,000 of these Tone Models available for the platform, either created by the company themselves or by Tonex users. Until now, you could play through Tonex as a standalone application, use it as a plug‑in in a DAW or integrate the Tone Models into AmpliTube. But a major game‑changer is that the company has now released the Tonex Pedal, which puts Tonex Tone Models into a hardware stompbox that can be used anywhere, just like any amp‑modelling pedal.

Following the same triple‑footswitch format as the X‑Gear pedals, the Tonex Pedal comes complete with 150 presets that can be called up by the footswitches. These have been filled by IK Multimedia with some great fully processed and ready‑to‑use rigs with plenty of tweaking available from its front panel, so it could be used straight out of the box without a computer in sight. However, it is part of the overall Tonex ecosystem and comes complete with the Tonex Max software and AmpliTube 5, so by connecting it to a computer and linking with that Tonex software you’ll really maximise its potential. Let’s look at that...