
Julian Lage's new Collings signature model has DynaSonic pickups and is fully hollow, with a trestle block, a solid Honduran mahogany body, a maple laminate top, and a Bigsby B3 vibrato tailpiece.
The jazz virtuoso used a new Collings signature model and his stunning command of technique, tone, and composition to craft his new album, Squint, but reflection and intention helped him find its soul.
Getting signed to Blue Note Records—the onetime home of John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Kenny Burrell, and many, many other greats—is a high honor in the jazz world. "It's just incredible," says Julian Lage, whose new album, Squint, is his debut for the famed label. "It's thrilling and inspiring and absolutely makes me want to be a better musician." But sometimes, simply being a better musician in a technical sense isn't enough. In the period between when the COVID lockdown began and the start of Squint's sessions with his trio in August, Lage had an epiphany during the "months of playing these songs, hours on end by myself. I wanted to write songs that would be restorative to play.
"Way beyond the shutdown was a global reckoning of racial injustice, systemic racism, social injustice, gender inequality, and all of these things that are ever-present, but now, here, on a very large scale, there's a discussion," he observes.
So Lage determined to craft an album that could be transformative for both himself and his listeners. "Is this positive music that's pretty for the sake of being pretty," he asked himself, "or is it music that holds a space for a little more fuzziness or emotional complexity? And in addition to just shutting up and listening and learning and saying, 'Wow, this is the work of our lifetime,' I think in not making the record [when we expected to], I developed a real appreciation for the role of sound in music and art with regard to healing. It's a method of transmission, and 'What are you transmitting?' became the question … You make music because you need to make it, you play it because you need to play it," he says. "Then it's by the grace of much higher powers that it ever sees the light of day. Squint is about the unknown, but is also celebrating deep gratitude."
Julian Lage - Saint Rose (Visualizer)
The 33-year-old virtuoso's perspective isn't a surprise to anyone who's met him. Lage has earned a reputation for being genuine and humble, and exuding gratitude is part of his way of experiencing life. He lives up to the Zen adage: The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
But let's rewind to early 2020: Lage and his trio, which includes bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Dave King, were ready to go into the studio when their plans were abruptly upended—and Lage's deep immersion into the nine original compositions for the 11-track Squint began. The results of Lage's reflection reveal a depth not always heard on instrumental albums. Starting with a sharp, delicate solo performance of "Etude" and closing with a cover of Billy Hill's 1940 classic "Call of the Canyon," the pieces are edgy, gentle, smart, and experimental—each an iteration of the album's greater musical personality. Lage notes, "We're putting improvisation right next to composition. These aren't songs that we just take a solo on—you could not hear the melody and just hear the solos. The goal is for you to be able to understand the sentiment."
The Art of Emulating Speech
On Lage's 12th album as leader, there's also the jumpy, swinging title track and the cool, drum-groove-driven "Saint Rose," named after Lage's hometown of Santa Rosa, California. On the quietly chaotic "Familiar Flower," the band members are all "playing different tempos by a few degrees in one direction or another," offers Lage. And the umbral, apprehensive "Quiet Like a Fuse" uses dynamics and varying sections for emotional chiaroscuro. It's not just Lage's guitar that ties them all together, but the feeling that the spirit behind each beat is shared by all three musicians. Surprisingly, part of what guided Lage's process on a technical level were speeches by figures like the poet Nikki Giovanni and novelist James Baldwin. Lage improvised to their words as a way to gain insight into the mode of soloing he envisioned.
TIDBIT: Lage used just two amps to record his Blue Note debut: his Magic Amps Vibro Deluxe, which is based on a mid-'60s black-panel Deluxe Reverb, and a 1959 tweed Fender Champ.
"I think that the way people speak is often more unfettered. There's an urgency which is really striking about speech. There might not be an obvious correlation between the way people speak in a lecture and the notes on the guitar. But it's just a little stretch of the imagination to see that those are pitches, those are rhythms, those are phrases." Lage adds that a seven-to-10-minute lecture might be seen as a correlation to a song's central melody. "The musical version of that is Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things.' It's communication from the second it starts to the second it ends. Lectures help me break it down. And also just recording my own voice talking about something very mundane, then learning the rhythms I use to speak and applying those to the guitar, is really helpful, too.
"Jazz music is abstract art. And for that reason I love taking something that might feel more literal—like influences from singer-songwriters or lectures or spoken-word things—and just saying, 'Okay, my job is to find how notes and rhythms and tone alone represent in an abstract form what these people are saying with words.'"
Not the What, But the How
Lage spent six months both playing and contemplating the intention of the performances that made their way onto his new album, Squint. "I developed a real appreciation for the role of sound in music and art with regard to healing," he says.
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
The team for the sessions included singer-songwriter (and Lage's partner) Margaret Glaspy, and multi-instrumentalist/producer Armand Hirsch, as well as Roeder and King. Lage says he's been playing with Roeder, "an extension of his musical world," for all of his adult career, whereas his musical relationship with King has been just for a few years. "Jorge's really able to listen so beautifully to what's going on, and what he contributes is so supportive and adventurous and risky."
Lage explains that what he learns from his bandmates comes less from what they play together and more from how they play together. "The way Dave looks at time in a band is not selfish at all," the guitarist says. "He shares the responsibility with everybody but has a way of influencing it through a virtuosic lens that never feels macho or overbearing."
In addition to being his favorite songwriter, Glaspy is also one of Lage's most relied-upon critics. "She'll offer very specific help, always," he says, "from the microscopic to the macroscopic. We have a nice mutual rapport, where I do it for her and she does it for me." Lage shares how the band went into the studio on the first day without her, and when he later reviewed the session at home, he told Glaspy, "yeah, you need to come to the studio."
One of Hirsch's contributions was offering his breadth of knowledge on the history of guitar tones. "I could be like, 'the guitar tone on this song … it sounds good, but I want it to be more George Barnes and a little more of the reverb from '70s Jim Hall,' and he would be able to translate that to Mark Goodell, who's our longtime engineer."
Julian Lage’s Gear
Guitars
- Collings 470 JL
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul
- Magic Amps Vibro Deluxe
- 1959 Fender Champ
- Strymon Flint Tremolo & Reverb
- Shin-ei B1G 1
- D'Addario NYXL (.011–.049 sets)
- Dunlop Tortex .88 mm picks
Calling on Collings
Lage's signature Collings is fully hollow with a trestle block, a solid Honduran mahogany body, a maple-laminate top, and a Bigsby B3 vibrato tailpiece. It also has a custom hybrid C/V neck profile, and a narrower fretboard in the upper-fret range. Lage says it's "as at home with jazz as with early '50s rock 'n' roll tone, Bo Diddley, early John Lee Hooker, early B.B. King." Collings' luthier Aaron Huff, director of engineering Clint Watson, and manager of artist relations Mark Althans were also involved in creating the 6-string. "The 470 JL is like a blues machine that's used for jazz," Lage sums up. "That's my favorite sound."
For the album's sessions, the guitar was run through two different amplifiers. Most tracks were cut with a Magic Amps Vibro Deluxe, which is based on a mid-'60s black-panel Fender Deluxe Reverb, while the rest feature Lage's '59 tweed Fender Champ. A Strymon Flint Tremolo and Reverb and a Shin-ei B1G 1 Gain Booster completed the signal chain. The result is a lush, old-school tone with crunch when necessary.
Lage's latest batch of tones are largely the product of a collaboration with Collings Guitars. The primary instrument featured on Squint is his new Collings 470 JL signature electric, which was introduced in February 2021. (He also used a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for three songs.) The development of the 470 JL was, Lage explains, centered on Ron Ellis, the great pickup master—and specifically his take on the DynaSonic-style pickup. "DynaSonic pickups are always fascinating to me, because I like playing on the neck pickup primarily for everything. A Tele pickup obviously has pole pieces that are covered by a metal cover and there's that kind of fuzziness that's nice, but I wanted the directness of having no cover, kind of like Stratocaster pickups, but with a much larger diameter. That led us down the road of DynaSonics and all of the complications that go with those pickups—the good, the bad, and the ugly."
With a Little Help from His Friends
Julian Lage plays his prized 1939 Martin 000-18 acoustic at NYC's (Le) Poisson Rouge in 2016.
Photo by Peter Gannushkin
Lage's interest in making music from an informed perspective often leads him to seek the counsel of musicians he respects. He shares an anecdote about learning from composer and performer Gabriel Kahane that songs need "terms of engagement, reasons to exist." He also relates flying from his New York City base to Chicago to ask for feedback from Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on a slew of new music he'd written. Tweedy explained that, on an album, you "have to tell the listener's ear where to focus and when to focus" through subtle instrumental cues. But it was on a pre-pandemic tour with Bill Frisell that Lage embraced the concept of bringing both attention and intention to music before performing it—which helped fuel his strategy for Squint.
He and Frisell sat down to rehearse Johnny Mandel and Johnny Mercer's "Emily," one of the two covers that ended up on the album, for four nights in a row before Frisell finally approved of playing it in their set. The first night, it was for 10 minutes. The second, 20. The third, 40. And the fourth, a full hour. "No talking, just play the tune and don't look up for an hour. And he's like, 'Okay, we're ready to play it.'
I think it was on the last day of recording—we were about to pack up—and it was like, 'Can we record one more, just in case we need an extra track?' I showed it to Jorge really fast and we played it and that's the one take of 'Emily.' It kind of sums everything up, in a way."
YouTube It
Even before the lockdown, Julian Lage exhibited a talent for turning melodies into conversations. For evidence, check out his 2016 live performance of "Nocturne" by Spike Hughes, Britain's earliest jazz composer. Lage is playing his 1954 Telecaster, which was his No. 1 before the new Collings signature 470 JL.
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Improved tracking and richness in tones. Stereo panning potential. 100 presets.
Can be hard to use intuitively. Expensive!
$645
Electro-Harmonic POG III
It’s been a very rainy, moody couple of weeks, which is to say, perfect weather for getting lost in the labyrinthine depths of the new Electro-Harmonix POG III polyphonic octave generator. The POG III is yet another evolution (mutation?) within EHX’s now rather expansive stable of octave effects. But to those who know the POG through its original incarnation, or one of several simpler subsequent variants, the POG III represents a pretty dramatic leap forward.
There’s a few things you should know about the POG III straight away. First, it’s very expensive. At $645, it’s 245 clams more than its predecessor, the POG 2, (which was already a considerable investment) and more than twice the price of the simplest POG pedals like the Micro and Pico. Cold hard cash isn’t all you’re likely to trade away, either. Extracting the most value and utility from the POG III takes time and effort—even if you’re experienced with other pedals in the POG family. But for the guitarist and musician whose creations and pleasures transcend traditional playing styles and song forms, or for whom sound design is a primary pursuit, the POG III is a potential studio fixture and portal to musical parts undiscovered.
Copious Control
This is no cop out: The POG III has many more features and combinations thereof than can be mentioned in the space of this review—even if we merely listed them. The manual that EHX included (and is a must-read) is 23 pages long. It’s digestible, certainly. But there is much to learn.
“The Organ Swell reveals much about how rich and organic octave tones can sound in the POG III.”
Even so, the POG III’s 10 factory presets (you can create up to 100 of them) are great jumping-off points for crafting your own sounds and understanding the pedal’s basic dynamics, functionality, and interactivity among the controls. The organ swell preset is a great place to start. Players and bands that use keyboard and synth pads behind their guitar phrases were among POG’s early adopters. POG III’s organ sounds are pretty impressive. And while few will be fooled into thinking you have the pipe organ from St. Stephen’s Cathedral at your fingertips, the Organ Swell reveals much about how rich and organic octave tones can sound in the POG III. With precise timing and fretting, crafty chord phrasing and spacing, the right attack setting, and less aggressive guitar volume and tone settings, you can fashion a pretty convincing Bach organ arpeggio—particularly if you add a suitably expansive reverb or delay.
Cooking Up Wider, Weirder Images
A very cool new feature on the POG III is the panning knobs that accompany individual bands. Panning each band as part of a stereo image adds dimensionality. But it can also lend a more organic “live” flavor to a tone composite by situating fundamental sounds front and center, while sounds that serve as harmonic support can be mixed lower and reoriented spatially to offer more or less emphasis. These relationships can be enhanced and manipulated further by using the stereo spread control and the detune slider to create pitch modulation effects that range from mellow chorus to an almost rotary-speaker-like movement. This stereo mixing process is among the most fun and engaging parts of using the POG III.
Unusual filtering effects are here in abundance for exploring, too. Like so many modes on the POG III, the possible permutations feel endless, but here are some interesting examples.
• High-mid filter emphasis, matched to a quacky, fast envelope trigger, a sprinkle of perfect 5th, an even healthier scoop of +1 and +1 octave, and a strong foundation of -2 octave, all driven by a melodic pattern of staccato 16th notes—the result is a strange percolating pattern of carnival organ sounds against an anchor of low-resonant cello tones.
• Shifting the filter emphasis to the low end with similar envelope sensitivity, bumping the -2 octave and fifths, and subjecting the dry signal to the same filtering effects yields tectonic sub-rumbles and swells that a film- or game-sound designer could use to suggest the propulsion unit for a city-sized alien mothership. Even leaning my guitar against my amplifier and bouncing a racquet ball against the guitar body sounds amazing here. (And yes! You should really try this!)
Granted, many of these sounds fall as much into the category of sound effects and design as much as music in the songs-and-riffs sense. But I think strength in one category can reinforce the other, and in the case of the POG III, there is enough range in both directions to intrigue players everywhere along the spectrum. It still excels at funky bass textures, twisted faux 12-string, and at providing ghostly, backgrounded high-harmony lines for leads. But these time-tested POG applications merely scratch the surface.
The Verdict
The POG has come a long way since its old bent-metal, big box days. The tracking is excellent, and there’s a lot less fighting against artificial, cheesy sounds once you grasp the finer points of crafting a sound and your dynamic approach. The POG III’s complexity makes the going a little harder on fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants intuitive tinkerers, and musicians with experience in synthesis will probably navigate the unit’s features much more readily than some. As expensive as it is, it’s probably best to be sure you can find a place for it in your work before you take the leap. But if you can afford $645 to take a chance, the POG III may illuminate whole directions you might not have considered with a less expansive effect.
Vox’s Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
Two new pedals from the Valvenergy series use a Nutube valve to generate unique dynamics and tone ranges that can be used to radical ends.
When tracking in a studio or DAW, you’re likely to use compression and EQ on most things. Many enduringly amazing and powerful records were made using little else. And though many musicians regard both effects as a bit unglamorous and utilitarian, EQs and comps are as capable of radical sounds as more overtly “weird” effects—particularly when they are used in tandem.
I spent a day workshopping ideas in my studio using just the Vox Valvenergy Smooth Impact compressor and Tone Sculptor EQ, and a dash of amp tremolo and reverb to taste. In the process, I produced more arresting sounds than I had heard from my guitars in many days. There were radical direct-to-desk-style Jimmy Page/Beatles distortion tones, sun-sized, cosmic electric 12-string, Bakersfield twang that could burn through crude, and many other sweet and nasty colors. Most decent EQ and compressor combinations can achieve variations on all those themes. But the Smooth Impact and Tone Sculptor also reveal interesting personalities in unexpected places.
The individuality and energy in the Vox Valvenergy pedals is attributable, in part, to the Nutube vacuum tube used in the circuit. Though it looks little like a vacuum tube as most guitarists know them, the thin, wafer-like Nutube is, in fact, a real vacuum tube like those used in fluorescent displays. Fluorescent display tubes have limitations. A maximum operating voltage of around 40 volts means they aren’t useful for bigger power tube applications like a 6L6, which has an operating voltage of about 400 volts. But it can work quite well as a preamp tube in concert with an op amp power section, which is how the Nutube is used in the new Valvenergy pedals, as well as older Vox products like the Vox MV50 and Superbeetle amps.
Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
When you think about “cinematic” effects, you likely imagine big reverb or modulation sounds that create a vivid picture and feeling of space or motion. But narrow, hyper-focused EQ profiles can evoke very different and equally powerful images. Radical EQ settings can add aggression, claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts more evocative of Hitchcock’s Psycho than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Any of these moods can be summoned from the Valvenergy Tone Sculptor. Six sliders cut or boost 10 dB frequency bands spanning 100 Hz to 5.6 kHz. A seventh slider cuts or boosts the master output by 12 dB. This platter of options might not sound like much. But you can use these seven controls together to very specific ends.
“Radical EQ settings can add aggression, near-claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts.”
For example, bumping the high-midrange and the master output produces narrow cocked-wah-like filter sounds with enough push to produce extra amp overdrive—effectively turning the Tone Sculptor into a buzzy, almost fuzz-like filter effect. But unlike a wah, you can carefully scoop high end or add a spoonful of bass to blunt harsh frequencies or give the tone a bit more weight. You can also broaden the palette of an amp/guitar pairing. I matched a particularly trebly Jazzmaster bridge pickup with a very hot and toppy Vox AC15-flavored amp for this test—a recipe that can be spiky on the best days. But with the Tone Sculptor in the line, I could utilize the same sharp, fuzzy, and filtered Mick Ronson wah tones while shaving some of the most piercing frequencies.
EQ pedals exist on many points along the cost spectrum. And at $219, the Tone Sculptor lives on the high side of the affordable range. Does it offer something less expensive models can’t deliver? Well, for one thing, I found it relatively quiet, which is nice whether you’re shaping toppy high-contrast effects or performing more surgical adjustments. And the sliders feel nuanced and nicely tapered rather than like a dull axe with a few basic frequency notches. But in many situations I also liked the color imparted by the circuit—generated, presumably, by the Nutube. “Color,” in audio terms, is a broad and subjective thing, and one should not necessarily expect the warm, tube-y glow of a vintage tube Pultec. Still, the Tone Sculptor has many forgiving, flattering qualities—typical of studio EQs—that enable fine tuning and experimentation with more radical and creative applications of the effect.
Valvenergy Smooth Impact
As with the Tone Sculptor, the Smooth Impact’s use of Nutube engenders certain expectations. It’s easy to surmise that because Smooth Impact has a vacuum tube in the circuit that it will behave like a little Teletronix LA-2A leveling amplifier. That’s a big ask for a $219 stompbox. On the other hand, the Smooth Impact exhibits some appealing characteristics of studio tube compression. At lower compression levels, it works well as a thickening agent—adding mass without much additional noise. And at higher compression levels it can sound snappy, crisp, and tight without feeling like you’ve bled every trace of overtone from your signal.
The Smooth Impact’s controls aren’t totally atypical. But because it lacks some familiar features like variable attack and release, yet is more complicated than a 1-knob DynaComp, you have to trust your ear to navigate interactions among the controls. The most unfamiliar of these is the 3-way vintage/natural/sag toggle. The first two are defined by preset attack and release settings: Vintage is slow attack and long release, and natural is the opposite. The sag mode’s compression is more like what you get from tube saturation, and it’s useful for adding thickness and complexity to a thin amp tone at modest compression levels.
Though the vintage and natural modes certainly have a different feel, they don’t always sound worlds apart. And like the sag mode, the thing they have in common is the way they enrich lifeless amp output at low to medium compression, with a bit of grind from the tube gain and a little extra makeup gain from the output. At the most aggressive settings, the tube gain can get a little crispy. And really crushing the compression can flatline your tone without adding much in the way of extra sustain. These are limitations common to many compressors with similar features. But unless I was chasing very ultra-snappy Prince and Nile Rodgers fast-funk caricatures, I enjoyed the Smooth Impact most in its in-between ranges, where mass, mild, harmonious drive, and low noise showcase the pedal’s sometimes studio-like personality.
Significantly smaller and lighter than original TAE. Easy to configure and operate. Great value. Streamlined control set.
Air Feel Level control takes the place of more surgical and realistic resonance controls. Seventy watts less power in onboard power amp. No Bluetooth connectivity with desktop app.
$699
Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander Core
Boss streamlines the size, features, and price of the already excellent Waza Tube Expander with little sacrifice in functionality.
Many of our younger selves would struggle to understand the urge—indeed, the need—to play quieter. My first real confrontation with this ever-more-present reality arrived when Covid came to town. For many months, I could only sneak into my studio space late at night to jam or review anything loud. Ultimately, the thing that made it possible to create and do my job in my little apartment was a reactive load box (in this case, a Universal Audio OX). I set up a Bassman head next to my desk and, with the help of the OX, did the work of a gear editor as well as recorded several very cathartic heavy jams, with the Bassman up to 10, that left my neighbors none the wiser.
Boss’ firstWaza Tube Amp Expander, built with an integrated power amp that enables boosted signal as well as attenuated sounds, was and remains the OX’s main competition. Both products have copious merits but, at $1,299 (Boss) and $1,499 (Universal Audio), each is expensive. And while both units are relatively compact, they aren’t gear most folks casually toss in a backpack on the way out the door. The new Waza Tube Expander Core, however, just might be. And though it sacrifices some refinements for smaller size, its much-more accessible price and strong, streamlined fundamental capabilities make it a load-box alternative that could sway skeptics.
Micro Manager
The TAE Core is around 7 1/2" wide, just over 7 " long, and fewer than 4 " tall, including the rubber feet. That’s about half the width of an original TAE or OX. The practical upside of this size reduction is obvious and will probably compel a lot of players to use the unit in situations in which they’d leave a full-size TAE at home. The streamlined design is another source of comfort. With just five knobs on its face, the TAE Core has fewer controls and is easier to use than many stompboxes. In fact, the most complicated part of integrating the TAE Core to your rig might be downloading the necessary drivers and related apps.
Connectivity is straightforward, though there are some limitations. You can use TAE Core wirelessly with an iOS or Windows tablet or smartphone, as long as you have the BT-DUAL adaptor (which is not included and sets you back around 40 bucks). However, while desktop computers recognize the TAE Core as a Bluetooth-enabled device, you cannot use the unit wirelessly with those machines. Instead, you have to connect the TAE Core via USB. In a perfectly ordered world, that’s not a big problem. But if you use the TAE Core in a small studio—where one less cable is one less headache—or you prefer to interface with the TAE Core app on a desktop where you can toggle fast and easily between large, multi-track sessions and the app, the inability to work wirelessly on a desktop can be a distraction. The upside is that the TAE Core app itself is, functionally and visually, almost identical in mobile and desktop versions, enabling you to select and drag and drop virtual microphones into position, add delay, reverb, compression, and EQ effects, choose various cabinets with different speaker configurations and sizes, and introduce new rigs and impulse responses to a tone recipe in a flash. And though the TAE Core app lacks some of the photorealistic panache and configuration options in the OX app, the TAE Core’s app is just as intuitive.Less Is More
One nice thing about the TAE Core’s more approachable $699 price is that you don’t have to feel too bad on nights that you “underutilize” the unit and employ it as an attenuator alone. In this role, the TAE Core excels. Even significantly attenuated sounds retain the color and essence of the source tone. Like any attenuator-type device, you will sacrifice touch sensitivity and dynamics at a certain volume level, yielding a sense of disconnection between fingers, gut, guitar, and amp. But if you’re tracking “big” sounds in a small space, you can generate massive-sounding ones without interfacing with an amp modeler and flat-response monitors, which is a joy in my book. And again, there’s the TAE Core’s ability to “expand” as well as attenuate, which means you can use the TAE Core’s 30-watt onboard power amp to amplify the signal from, say, a 5-watt Fender Champion 600 with a 6" speaker, route it to a 2x12, 4x12, or virtual equivalent in the app, and leave your bandmate with the Twin Reverb and bad attitude utterly perplexed.
The Verdict
Opting for the simpler, thriftier TAE Core requires a few sacrifices. Power users that grew accustomed to the original TAE’s super-tunable “resonance-Z” and “presence-Z” controls, which aped signal-chain impedance relationships with sharp precision, will have to make do with the simpler but still very effective stack and combo options and the “air feel level” spatial ambience control.The DC power jack is less robust. It features only MIDI-in rather than MIDI-in/-through/-out jacks, and, significantly, 70 watts less power in the onboard power amp. But from my perspective, the Core is no less “professional” in terms of what it can achieve on a stage or in a studio of any size. Its more modest feature set and dimensions are, in my estimation, utility enhancements as much as limitations. If greater power and MIDI connectivity are essentials, then the extra 600 bones for the original TAE will be worth the price. For many of us, though, the mix of value, operational efficiencies, and the less-encumbered path to sound creation built into the TAE Core will represent a welcome sweet spot that makes dabbling in this very useful technology an appealing, practical proposition.
IK Multimedia is pleased to announce the release of new premium content for all TONEX users, available today through the IK Product Manager.
The latest TONEX Factory Content v2 expands the creative arsenal with a brand-new collection of Tone Models captured at the highest quality and presets optimized for live performance. TONEX Tone Models are unique captures of rigs dialed into a specific sweet spot. TONEX presets are used for performance and recording, combining Tone Models with added TONEX FX, EQ, and compression.
Who Gets What:
TONEX Pedal
- 150 crafted presets matched to 150 Premium Tone Models
- A/B/C layout for instant access to clean, drive, and lead tones
- 30 Banks: Amp & cab presets from classic cleans to crushing high-gain
- 5 Banks: FX-driven presets featuring the 8 new TONEX FX
- 5 Banks: Amp-only presets for integrating external IRs, VIR™, or amps
- 5 Banks: Stompbox presets of new overdrive/distortion pedals
- 5 Banks: Bass amp & pedal presets to cover and bass style
TONEX Mac/PC
- 106 new Premium Tone Models + 9 refined classics for TONEX MAX
- 20 new Premium Tone Models for TONEX and TONEX SE
TONEX ONE
- A selection of 20 expertly crafted presets from the list above
- Easy to explore and customize with the new TONEX Editor
Gig-ready Tones
For the TONEX Pedal, the first 30 banks deliver an expansive range of amp & cab tones, covering everything from dynamic cleans to brutal high-gain distortion. Each bank features legendary amplifiers paired with cabs such as a Marshall 1960, ENGL E412V, EVH 412ST and MESA Boogie 4x12 4FB, ensuring a diverse tonal palette. For some extremely high-gain tones, these amps have been boosted with classic pedals like the Ibanez TS9, MXR Timmy, ProCo RAT, and more, pushing them into new sonic territories.
Combined with New FX
The following 5 banks of 15 presets explore the depth of TONEX's latest effects. There's everything from the rich tremolo on a tweed amp to the surf tones of the new Spring 4 reverb. Users can also enjoy warm tape slapback with dotted 8th delays or push boundaries with LCR delay configurations for immersive, stereo-spanning echoes. Further, presets include iconic flanger sweeps, dynamic modulation, expansive chorus, stereo panning, and ambient reverbs to create cinematic soundscapes.
Versatile Control
The TONEX Pedal's A, B, and C footswitches make navigating these presets easy. Slot A delivers clean, smooth tones, Slot B adds crunch and drive, and Slot C pushes into high-gain or lead territory. Five dedicated amp-only banks provide a rich foundation of tones for players looking to integrate external IRs or run directly into a power amp. These amp-only captures span clean, drive, and high-gain categories, offering flexibility to sculpt the sound further with IRs or a real cab.
Must-have Stompboxes
TONEX Pedals are ideal for adding classic effects to any pedalboard. The next 5 banks focus on stompbox captures, showcasing 15 legendary overdrive, distortion, and fuzz pedals. This collection includes iconic models based on the Fulltone Full-Drive 2, Marshall DriveMaster, Maxon OD808, Klon Centaur, ProCo RAT, and more.
For Bass Players, Too
The last 5 banks are reserved for bass players, including a selection of amp & cab Tone Models alongside a few iconic pedals. Specifically, there are Tone Models based on the Ampeg SVT-2 PRO, Gallien-Krueger 800RB, and Aguilar DB750, alongside essential bass pedals based on the Tech21 SansAmp, Darkglass B7K and EHX Big Muff. Whether it's warm vintage thump, modern punch, or extreme grit, these presets ensure that bassists have the depth, clarity and power they need for any playing style.For more information and instructions on how to get the new Factory
Content v2 for TONEX, please visit:
www.ikmultimedia.com/products/tonex