ToneDexter 2 - initial thoughts and reviews

[tadol]

Since UPS says my TD2 should be here tomorrow, and since James has posted the first user manual for it, and also opened direct orders on his website, I think we should start a separate thread here to discuss initial thoughts & experiences. Plus, James has said that he’ll jump in as often as he can when people have questions or problems, to help make sure accurate info gets out and people have the best possible experience with it - and who knows, it may give him some ideas to integrate in a future firmware update! 🤔

So - since no one seems to have one in hand yet - the best I can offer is a link to the manual -

https://audiosprockets.com/support/user-guide/

(Please read this before asking James questions!)

[Larrison]

Following- and thanks for the User Guide link!

[tadol]

Well, this is exciting!





The screen is fantastic - clear, sharp, color is fantastic and makes things very easy to see and distinguish . Plug-in to start-up is a matter of a few seconds. Unfortunately, I brought home my reference mic and cables, but left my guitar and mic stand at my shop/studio - so, actual plugging in and playing with won’t happen for a few more hours at least - [emoji58] - but initial impression is off-the-charts!

[mondoslug]

Tease!!!!!

[mondoslug]

....I deleted, didn't want to mess your thread up!

[tadol]

Just a quick one - Wow! It really does a great job - the tuner is incredible, can’t decide whether I prefer strobe or bar, and the controls are so much easier to figure out when its in hand instead of just reading the manual - I ran through one training exercise, and it is all extremely quick and painless. Sound is great, but I went into this knowing I needed to change the strings on my SC F, and just as I was getting done playing with the various new settings in the TD2 and thinking I should try a different mic and mic position, I snapped a string -

Ok - I had to change a couple guitars anyway, so thats tonight - and hopefully by tomorrow a few more will have them in hand!

[jplee3]

Originally Posted by tadol

Just a quick one - Wow! It really does a great job - the tuner is incredible, can’t decide whether I prefer strobe or bar, and the controls are so much easier to figure out when its in hand instead of just reading the manual - I ran through one training exercise, and it is all extremely quick and painless. Sound is great, but I went into this knowing I needed to change the strings on my SC F, and just as I was getting done playing with the various new settings in the TD2 and thinking I should try a different mic and mic position, I snapped a string -

Ok - I had to change a couple guitars anyway, so thats tonight - and hopefully by tomorrow a few more will have them in hand!

Awesome! Would love to hear or see some sound samples/recordings or a video if you have the chance!


BTW: I came across this of James playing an SSS strat through the TD and having it sound pretty close to an acoustic which is amazing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N6SWIwt2B4

I was curious to know but is there a specific setting or control on the TD where you would specify the type of pickup you're using on the instrument that's plugged in?

EDIT: NM - he has a piezo bridge on the strat lol that's why

[tadol]

I’m hoping others are seeing their units getting delivered, and can post their initial impressions -

My plans for spending the evening running through some tests with different (freshly strung) guitars and mics were waylaid by wife and family, who have had me spend the evening setiing up and decorating our tree and living room, so, hopefully tomorrow - unless theres more decorating on the agenda -

[tadol]

I’ve managed to get a couple hours to play while my wife is out shopping, so a few more initial discoveries -

Like the TD1, mic choice and placement is important - unlike the TD1, TD2 likes you to play more firmly and solidly, as it adjusts the gain for mic and pickup automatically. You do have the option of modifying eq and gain on the mic, but I haven’t bothered trying that yet.

I did 4 trainings using my Koa H14 with UltraTonic pickup, 2 with a “reference” mic, and 2 with a Sennheiser e935, one at the soundhole, one at the 14th fret. Each time it does a gain test, then starts the training process. Training doesn’t take long, then you can preview the sound (pickup direct, mic direct, and wavemap direct) before saving the wavemap, which I did the first time, but after that I just saved when done. You can give each file a nice alpha-numeric name by turning the right hand knob to choose a character, and the left hand knob to choose the position for each character - you hit another knob for the spaces. It sounds odd, but after the first few characters it makes alot of sense. However - another option is to hook it to your computer and log into the TD, and you can manipulate the file names, locations, and even save or load them. Well, I don’t carry a laptop with me, but I found a USB C to USB A adaptor, and was able to plug the TD2 into my iPad Pro, and could easily bring it’s webpage up, and name and move files that way - Extremely handy & very easy! I have not tried saving & restoring files on my iPad yet -

Now I did have one problem - the TD2 has a “feedback” knob, and after training, I was getting some odd feedback. I could eliminate it by just turning up the feedback knob, but that wasn’t the cause - when you press the feedback knob, it also gives you an option to adjust “spaciousness”, which is like a reverb setting. On my trainings, the spaciousness was set at close to 100% - so I turned it down to around 10% or so, and the feedback issues disappeared. I’m thinking I may have set a default for that somehow when I was playing with all the knobs and settings the first night, and I’ll email James to check that.

The sound quality on my wavemaps is fantastic - you can really hear the difference between using a fancy vocal mic vs using a very cheap reference mic. Honestly, for most of what I played listening to the wavemapped sound, the reference mic was better - the richer midrange on the e935 was good on a couple songs, but not overall. This may be because I really like the tone of my guitars unamplified, so the more exact & un-colored sound picked up by the reference mic suits my ear better.

After that, I got out my maple F, and started a couple trainings with it, but got a call from the wife asking about status on the projects she asked me to do, so . . . .

Hoping others are getting a chance to play with theirs as they arrive, and looking forward to others thoughts -

[tadol]

Screenshpt from my iPad -

[Larrison]

Mine is at my house waiting for me- home in an hour but may not get to make noise with it until tomorrow.

Thanks for the initial impressions!

[mondoslug]

Originally Posted by Larrison

Mine is at my house waiting for me- home in an hour but may not get to make noise with it until tomorrow.

Hey, it's tomorrow.

[Chriscom]

Originally Posted by tadol

I’ve managed to get a couple hours to play while my wife is out shopping, so a few more initial discoveries

Thanks much for all that!

Curious what reference mic you're using.

[Larrison]

This is my first Wavemap and first Soundcloud upload so bear with me.



My guitar has a K&K Trinity in it, and the wavemap was created using a Lewitt LCT 040 which is a really affordable SDC.

There are two takes of each sound- one strumming, one picking, and one very bad fingerstyle since I don't do much of that. The first take of each set has 25% of the trinity mic blended in and the second take is straight K&K SBT.

I have not scratched the surface of the Tonedexter yet, so I believe there is room for improvement. However, I'm really impressed so far. I needed to test it today to see if it was useable enough for my Christmas gig tonight, and it passed that test. I'll give it a whirl and report any issues running live (its an acoustic + piano gig so it'll sound great in that context I'm sure).

***EDIT*** The recordings were done with a UA Volt II interface using the DI out on the TDII- into Garageband where I tried to turn all the processing off (no EQ or plugins of any kind).

[Uncle Pen]

Originally Posted by Larrison

This is my first Wavemap and first Soundcloud upload so bear with me.



My guitar has a K&K Trinity in it, and the wavemap was created using a Lewitt LCT 040 which is a really affordable SDC.

There are two takes of each sound- one strumming, one picking, and one very bad fingerstyle since I don't do much of that. The first take of each set has 25% of the trinity mic blended in and the second take is straight K&K SBT.

I have not scratched the surface of the Tonedexter yet, so I believe there is room for improvement. However, I'm really impressed so far. I needed to test it today to see if it was useable enough for my Christmas gig tonight, and it passed that test. I'll give it a whirl and report any issues running live (its an acoustic + piano gig so it'll sound great in that context I'm sure).

***EDIT*** The recordings were done with a UA Volt II interface using the DI out on the TDII- into Garageband where I tried to turn all the processing off (no EQ or plugins of any kind).

Sounds really nice! Have to say, between the two takes, I'm not sure the Trinity mic adds too much to the tone. It adds a little, but not much, which makes sense with the TD pedal simulating a mic.

On that note, does anyone have insight as to the reason James added phantom powered dual source stereo mic support to the pedal, as it kinda seems redundant? I'm not complaining, just curious. Does he have sights set on competing with other high end dual source preamp pedals?