RatingsPros:Traditional optical tremolo plus cool variations. Bright, aggressive distortion. Solid build. Fair price. Cons: You can’t leap from clean tremolo to dirty tones via footswitch. Street: $179 Mattoversere TremStortion mattoverse.com | Tones:  Ease of Use: Build/Design: Value: |
Combining tremolo and distortion effects in one device may seem a bit counterintuitive. After all, tremolo modulation is more commonly applied to clean signals than distorted ones. Yet most tremolo designs include a signal-boost stage, because the effect cuts level as it pulsates, and you usually need slight downstream amplification to avoid a loss of energy when you engage the trem. Crank this tremolo, though, and voilà: tremolo plus distortion! (Mattoverse isn’t the first to play with this concept, but at least the pedal’s name is more informative than that of such predecessors as Catalinbread’s Antichthon or Walrus’ Janus.)
Middle School
The TremStortion achieves its effect with a combination of old- and new-school tech. An Electric Druid STOMPFLO microprocessor generates the eight available waveforms, selectable via the pedal’s central waveform knob. But the processor only defines the wave characteristics and rate of pulsation. The actual modulation process uses traditional optical tremolo, where an LED flashes rhythmically against an LDR (light-dependent resistor). In other words, this is a true analog effect, but with a digital helping hand. The STOMPFLO chip also permits tap-tempo. It’s all controlled by traditional rate and depth knobs. An LED above the dedicated tap-tempo switch pulses in time with the modulation.
The eight waveform types are a traditional triangle, smooth sine and sweep waves, choppier upward and downward sawtooths, a maximum-chop square wave, a chaotic and irregular sample-and-hold, and an interesting variation on the latter called “random slopes,” where the waveform transitions smoothly from cycle to cycle rather than flickering between them. Adventurous players will find good uses for all eight patterns.
Distortion Contortions
A medium-gain TL074 transistor, meanwhile, provides the crunch. The core flavor is bright and aggressive. The tone is more about punky presence than smooth overdrive. There are separate gain and output controls. High-gain settings definitely enter fuzz territory. It’s not a particularly dynamic fuzz. It doesn’t clean up much when you roll back your guitar volume. Still, I dig its tough, no-nonsense attack.
With the trem depth at zero, you get distortion without trem, as heard in my demo clip. It works the other way around, too. At low-gain settings, you get articulate, clean-toned trem. However, you must adjust knobs to go between those extremes. The two effects lack separate on/off switches. You must stoop and spin to go from dirty to clean, and vice-versa.
You hear all these options in my demo clip. The first sound is dry guitar, followed by distortion alone, and then various combinations of tremolo and distortion.
Switch Hitter
There’s another interesting wrinkle: a 3-way toggle that inverts the order of the trem and distortion. Chances are you’ll hang out most on the trem-after-drive setting. The other way around, the distortion compresses the signal, negating some or all of the trem effect. The third setting mixes signals from two different points in the audio path, as heard at 01:07 in the demo clip. In the latter two settings, the tremolo effect evaporates at high gain levels.
The TremStortion lives in a standard 125B-sized enclosure with top mounted jacks. It runs on standard 9V power supplies and has no battery compartment. The top panel also includes a ⅛" control-voltage input for tempo-synching synthesizers and such.
The Verdict
Mattoverse’s TremStortion does two tasks—tremolo and distortion—and does both well. With an assist from a modulation chip, the pedal delivers both conventional opto-trem sounds and less familiar variations. The distortion effect offers less variation, but its edgy aggression can help your parts cut through a mix. You get a useful palette of clean trem, dirty trem, and distortion-only tones, but note that you can’t leap between those states via footswitch. You must manually adjust the gain and/or depth knobs. The TremStortion’s build quality is excellent, and its price is fair.
Resistance to digital amps might just be futile at this point. Many tunes you hear—and an increasing number of live gigs—feature a bit of faux-tube tone somewhere in the mix. But while the sound of pro-level modelers can be nearly indistinguishable from their analog counterparts in a mix, the feel and simplicity of a real amplifiers remain appealing and even indispensable to many players. That said, modelers that make usability, convenience, and price priorities can convince even die-hard tube users to see what’s on the other side of the fence. IK Multimedia’s TONEX ONE is one modeling device that might make the cut. It’s likely the smallest, most portable modeler out there. And at $179, it’s easily the most affordable.
Big Tones, Tiny Controls
The TONEX ONE isn’t designed to put a million different options at your feet, and that economy may be the unit’s strongest feature. It features several different modes, but the primary operating mode allows you to either switch between two different models, or simply use the unit as a stompbox. Each model can be an amp, an amp and cab, a pedal, or a pedal driving an amp and cab. Judging by how deep the online repository tone.net is for user-created presets, the options are nearly endless, which speaks to the already sizable user base. It’s a little strange to consider a modeler in a package this small with so few controls. There’s a large main knob that controls volume and gain (when you’re in ALT mode), and above that are three illuminated mini knobs that control the 3-band EQ, gate, compression, and reverb. You can also plug your headphones directly into the pedal, which makes it a dynamite silent practice amp.
My experience with modelers is that high-gain tones and clean tones are relatively easy to achieve and typically very good. After unboxing the TONEX ONE, I loaded up a slightly dirty Vox-style amp to evaluate the edge-of-breakup tones. I paired the pedal with humbuckers (with a coil split option), Stratocaster single coils, and P-90s in a T-style solidbody. With each one, the Vox-style amp was punchy and clear but could also range to very nice higher-gain sounds. Naturally, each version of a modeled amp offers different gain structures, so it pays to experiment. Combining the humbuckers in a PRS SE DGT with a few hot-rodded Marshall emulations and the growl offered tones nearly as good as those from much more expensive modelers. In a blind test, I’m not sure I could hear—or feel—much of a difference. As I explored further and fine-tuned things a bit more, the ToneX One felt more alive in my hand,s and sounded much less shrill in the top end than other digital solutions I’ve encountered.
One of the most obvious tone fixers in a modeler—and maybe one of the most underutilized—is the EQ section, and kudos are due to IK for placing those controls at the fore. Being able to adjust the most immediate tone-shaping options without having to dig through menus or touchscreens is a pleasure.
There are many possible uses for the TONEX ONE. It can serve as a high-quality direct solution on your pedalboard, a portable recording interface, and a plug-and-play practice solution when high volume is a no-go. One handy setup I tried was disabling the cabinet emulation in the pedal and then plugging into the effects return of a combo amp, in this case, a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I immediately imagined many backline amp headaches being a thing of the past. You can always plug directly into a flat-response cabinet or PA system too.
Because it has such a small footprint and streamlined controls, harnessing the unit’s full potential, and accessing all the different modes, takes a bit of effort. You can store 20 different presets within the pedal and assign them to any of the three active slots (two for dual mode and one for stomp mode). And although doing this on the fly is handy, I found it much easier to program the presets via the easy-to-use desktop editor.
The Verdict
TONEX ONE benefits from a rather singular focus and its biggest advantage is that it’s not shrouded in unnecessary layers of tweakable options. You can simply load up a base sound or two, drop it at the end of your pedalboard, and go.The included software allows you create your own models and makes swapping presets easy. I did find the multitude of modes, and their color-coded indicators, a bit confusing at times, but IK’s documentation was very clear and got me through any trouble spots. The TONEX ONE would serve well to those who want to explore digital modeling but still hold on to their analog pedalboards, and at $179 it’s a steal.
If 3 Were 6
With six times the controls found on the 1 and 2 versions (if you discount the original’s on/off slider switch,) the LPB-3’s control complement offers pre-gain, boost, mid freq, bass, treble, and mid knobs, with a center detent on the latter three so you can find the midpoint easily. A mini-toggle labeled “max” selects between 20 dB and 33 dB of maximum gain, and another labeled “Q” flips the resonance of the mid EQ between high and low. Obviously, this represents a significant expansion of the LPB’s capabilities.
More than just a booster with a passive tone, the LPB-3 boasts a genuine active EQ stage plus parametric midrange section, comprising the two knobs with shaded legends, mid freq and mid level. The gain stages have also been reimagined to include a pre-gain stage before the EQ, which enables up to 20 dB of input gain. The boost stage that follows the EQ is essentially a level control with gain to allow for up to 33 dB of gain through the LPB-3 when the “max” mini toggle is set to 33dB
A slider switch accessible inside the pedal selects between buffered or true bypass for the hard-latch footswitch. An AC adapter is included, which supplies 200mA of DC at 9.6 volts to the center-negative power input, and EHX specifies that nothing supplying less than 120mA or more than 12 volts should be used. There’s no space for an internal battery.
Power-Boosted
The LPB-3 reveals boatloads of range that betters many linear boosts on the market. There’s lots of tone-shaping power here. Uncolored boost is available when you want it, and the preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.
“The preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.”
I found the two mid controls work best when used judiciously, and my guitars and amps preferred subtle changes pretty close to the midpoint on each. However, there are still tremendous variations in your mid boost (or scoop, for that matter) within just 15 or 20 percent range in either direction from the center detent. Pushing the boost and pre-gain too far, particularly with the 33 dB setting engaged, can lead to some harsh sounds, but they are easy to avoid and might even be desirable for some users that like to work at more creative extremes.
The Verdict
The new LPB-3 has much, much more range than its predecessors, providing flexible preamp, boost, and overdrive sounds that can be reshaped in significant ways via the powerful EQ. It gives precise tone-tuning flexibility to sticklers that like to match a guitar and amp to a song in a very precise way, but also opens up more radical paths for experimentalists. That it does all this at a $129 price is beyond reasonable.
Electro-Harmonix Lpb-3 Linear Power Booster & Eq Effect Pedal Silver And Blue
