Tube power and digital cab sims add up to a formidable compact hybrid amplification solution.
Analog tube power meets Wall of Sound DynIR Software in a compact package. Takes pedals well. Easy to use.
Bypass doesn’t have dedicated switch. Single cabinet sim in hardware.
$399
Two Notes ReVolt Guitar
two-notes.com
Two Notes Audio Engineering is best known for their digital DynIR cabinet modeling technology. This tech is the backbone of the company’s Torpedo load boxes and cabinet simulators, as well as cab simulations used by Mesa, Victory, and others. But the new ReVolt Guitar amp simulator pedal is a departure. It’s a tube-driven, 3-channel preamp with analog cabinet emulation that comes in a solid, compact 7" x 4.5" x 3" stompbox. The ReVolt is intuitive, too. If you know how to twist the knobs on your amp to get a sound you like, you’ll fare well with the ReVolt Guitar. There’s no menu diving or secondary footswitches or knob functions. It’s a true WYSIWYG device.
The ReVolt Guitar uses a 12AX7/ECC83 preamp tube in triode mode running at 200 volts as an output-stage cathode follower—a tried and true amp design that adds some of the warmth and compression digital amp modelers can miss. With a built-in cabinet emulation and balanced XLR line output, it’s a powerful, economical, and very space-efficient solution for the stage and studio.
California Cleans and Metal Means
Each of ReVolt’s three channels—clean, crunch, and lead—feature independent gain and volume controls. For EQ, the clean channel has bass and treble controls, while the crunch and lead channels share a 3-band EQ with mid control. A single boost output level knob rounds out the upper panel controls. Each channel is activated by a footswitch, and the unit is bypassed by pressing the clean and crunch channel footswitches simultaneously.
The clean channel, modeled on a Bassman 100, is classic Fender stuff—glassy top end, scooped mids, and round lows. It has headroom for days—maybe even too much for some players. It doesn’t break up at high gain, but imparts mild compression that feels like tube rectifier sag. With the tone controls at noon, it’s boomy and bright, and, generally, I needed to run those controls at more modest levels to get the right balance of warmth and sparkle.
The crunch channel offers a broad drive range. Below 11 o’clock, the sounds are old-school plexi, complete with grinding and chunky Super Lead-style tones. Beyond the halfway mark on the gain control, you’ll start to hear hot-rodded Marshall tones with husky midrange and tight distortion. Some preamps miss the mark when approximating the toothy upper mids that are a Marshall signature. But Two Notes approximated this characteristic well. Paired with a low-gain drive pedal, the output takes on an intensity and warm thickness that avoids being shrill. And it’s reassuring to know you can drive the ReVolt’s front end aggressively without sacrificing sweetness.The 3-band EQ, with crossover at 100 Hz, 750 Hz and 1.5 kHz, makes it easy to fine tune as you move between screaming and merely heavy.
The lead channel is inspired by the Soldano SLO-100, and it has much of the heavy low end, scooped midrange, and rich high harmonics that are Soldano hallmarks. Lower gain settings (below 10 o’clock) yield tight, responsive overdrive. Like the crunch channel, the lead channel is reactive to gain pedals, and placing a low gain overdrive or boost before the input adds similar thickness. It also sounds articulate through its gain range and almost never muddled or fizzy.
Staying Self-Contained
Though the ReVolt Guitar responds well to drive pedals, you don’t necessarily need one. It comes with a boost that’s activated by pressing a footswitch and is shaped by the boost knob. The boost is inserted in front of the preamp.On the clean channel, it helps generate classic Tube Screamer-meets-Fender sounds and a very useful range of low- to mid-overdrive tones. But I was less impressed with how the boost paired with the crunch and lead channels. In both cases, using the boost came at the cost of the inherent warmth in both channels, lending an edgy feel. Some players may find good use for this tonality, but I found the warmer side of crunch and lead more useful. The good news is that some of this issue can be remedied with a tweak to the rangy 3-band EQ. And while I didn’t find the ReVolt’s boost a best match for crunch and lead, both channels sounded good with external drive units, including a Barber Burn Unit, Greer Lightspeed, and a good klone. I also had success using the mono effects send-and-return for time-based effects, and pedal integration via that method is a breeze.
The cab-sim mini-switch on the front panel enables an internal cabinet simulation, which can be routed via the balanced XLR output as well as the headphone output. The ReVolt Guitar is bundled with the Wall of Sound cabinet collection, which utilizes Two Notes’ DynIR algorithms. You’ll need to experiment to find out which cabinet emulations work best with each channel. But the algorithms give you a lot of tone-shaping flexibility—particularly when working in a DAW.The ReVolt Guitar is MIDI-enabled, by the way.
You can also use a 4-cable method, which is enabled by a mini-switch on the front panel, to utilize an effects loop amp and create four discrete channels. In this mode, when a ReVolt channel is activated, the signal is sent to your amplifier’s effects return, bypassing your amplifier preamp so you can pair the ReVolt directly with your amplifier’s power amp—subtracting your own preamp colors from the blend.
The Verdict
The ReVolt Guitar’s ease of use and intuitive interface make it quick and easy to integrate into a creative flow. It delivers tube-amp-like response and dynamics as well the natural compression that a tube amp gives you as you advance the gain. You sense warmth, you hear that slight buzz as the front end of the amplifier overdrives, and feel real, interactive, push and pull. And you can access all these elements while using the ReVolt at low volume with your DAW. This combination of attributes results in a lot of exciting and practical amp tones that I don’t always hear and feel in DSP-based amp sims. This well-thought-out and well-executed design makes ReVolt Guitar a great hybrid alternative to those all-DSP compact amp solutions.
For DAW recording, bedroom players, and gigging, the ReVolt is a solid choice—especially if you like a little hair and aggression in your tone. The bundled Wall of Sound software has a dizzying array of options and ups the tonal versatility. Used together, the ReVolt and Wall of Sound offer the best of analog and digital modeling.
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With authentic stage-class Katana amp sounds, wireless music streaming, and advanced spatial technology, the KATANA:GO is designed to offer a premium sound experience without the need for amps or pedals.
BOSS announces the return of KATANA:GO, an ultra-compact headphone amplifier for daily jams with a guitar or bass. KATANA:GO puts authentic sounds from the stage-class BOSS Katana amp series at the instrument’s output jack, paired with wireless music streaming, sound editing, and learning tools on the user’s smartphone. Advanced spatial technology provides a rich 3D audio experience, while BOSS Tone Exchange offers an infinite sound library to explore any musical style.
Offering all the features of the previous generation in a refreshed external design, KATANA:GO delivers premium sound for everyday playing without the hassle of amps, pedals, and computer interfaces. Users can simply plug it into their instrument, connect earbuds or headphones, call up a memory, and go. Onboard controls provide access to volume, memory selection, and other essential functions, while the built-in screen displays the tuner and current memory. The rechargeable battery offers up to five hours of continuous playing time, and the integrated 1/4-inch plug folds down to create a pocket-size package that’s ready to travel anywhere.
KATANA:GO drives sessions with genuine sounds from the best-selling Katana stage amp series. Guitar mode features 10 unique amp characters, including clean, crunch, the high-gain BOSS Brown type, two acoustic/electric guitar characters, and more. There’s also a dedicated bass mode with Vintage, Modern, and Flat types directly ported from the Katana Bass amplifiers. Each mode includes a massive library of BOSS effects to explore, with deep sound customization available in the companion BOSS Tone Studio app for iOS and Android.
The innovative Stage Feel feature in KATANA:GO provides an immersive audio experience with advanced BOSS spatial technology. Presets allow the user to position the amp sound and backing music in different places in the sound field, giving the impression of playing with a backline on stage or jamming in a room with friends.
The guitar and bass modes in KATANA:GO each feature 30 memories loaded with ready-to-play sounds. BOSS Tone Studio allows the player to tweak preset memories, create sounds from scratch, or import Tone Setting memories created with stage-class Katana guitar and bass amplifiers. The app also provides integrated access to BOSS Tone Exchange, where users can download professionally curated Livesets and share sounds with the global BOSS community.
Pairing KATANA:GO with a smartphone offers a complete mobile solution to supercharge daily practice. Players can jam along with songs from their music library and tap into BOSS Tone Studio’s Session feature to hone skills with YouTube learning content. It’s possible to build song lists, loop sections for focused study, and set timestamps to have KATANA:GO switch memories automatically while playing with YouTube backing tracks.
The versatile KATANA:GO functions as a USB audio interface for music production and online content creation on a computer or mobile device. External control of wah, volume, memory selection, and more are also supported via the optional EV-1-WL Wireless MIDI Expression Pedal and FS-1-WL Wireless Footswitch.
For more information, please visit boss.info.
We know Horsegirl as a band of musicians, but their friendships will always come before the music. From left to right: Nora Cheng, drummer Gigi Reece, and Penelope Lowenstein.
The Chicago-via-New York trio of best friends reinterpret the best bits of college-rock and ’90s indie on their new record, Phonetics On and On.
Horsegirl guitarists Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein are back in their hometown of Chicago during winter break from New York University, where they share an apartment with drummer Gigi Reece. They’re both in the middle of writing papers. Cheng is working on one about Buckminster Fuller for a city planning class, and Lowenstein is untangling Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann’s short story, “Three Paths to the Lake.”
“It was kind of life-changing, honestly. It changed how I thought about womanhood,” Lowenstein says over the call, laughing a bit at the gravitas of the statement.
But the moment of levity illuminates the fact that big things are happening in their lives. When they released their debut album, 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance, the three members of Horsegirl were still teenagers in high school. Their new, sophomore record, Phonetics On and On, arrives right in the middle of numerous first experiences—their first time living away from home, first loves, first years of their 20s, in university. Horsegirl is going through changes. Lowenstein notes how, through moving to a new city, their friendship has grown, too, into something more familial. They rely on each other more.
“If the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band, without any doubt.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“Everyone's cooking together, you take each other to the doctor,” Lowenstein says. “You rely on each other for weird things. I think transitioning from being teenage friends to suddenly working together, touring together, writing together in this really intimate creative relationship, going through sort of an unusual experience together at a young age, and then also starting school together—I just feel like it brings this insane intimacy that we work really hard to maintain. And if the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band without any doubt.”
Horsegirl recorded their sophomore LP, Phonetics On and On, at Wilco’s The Loft studio in their hometown, Chicago.
These changes also include subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in their sophisticated and artful guitar-pop. Versions of Modern Performance created a notion of the band as ’90s college-rock torchbearers, with reverb-and-distortion-drenched numbers that recalled Yo La Tengo and the Breeders. Phonetics On and On doesn’t extinguish the flame, but it’s markedly more contemporary, sacrificing none of the catchiness but opting for more space, hypnotic guitar lines, and meditative, repeated phrases. Cheng and Lowenstein credit Welsh art-pop wiz Cate Le Bon’s presence as producer in the studio as essential to the sonic direction.
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little.”–Nora Cheng
“We had never really let a fourth person into our writing process,” Cheng says. “I feel like Cate really changed the way we think about how you can compose a song, and built off ideas we were already thinking about, and just created this very comfortable space for experimentation and pushed us. There are so many weird instruments and things that aren't even instruments at [Wilco’s Chicago studio] The Loft. I feel like, definitely on our first record, we were super hesitant to go into territory that wasn't just distorted guitar, bass, and drums.”
Nora Cheng's Gear
Nora Cheng says that letting a fourth person—Welsh artist Cate Le Bon—into the trio’s songwriting changed how they thought about composition.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- TC Electronic Polytune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Phonetics On and On introduces warm synths (“Julie”), raw-sounding violin (“In Twos”), and gamelan tiles—common in traditional Indonesian music—to Horsegirl’s repertoire, and expands on their already deep quiver of guitar sounds as Cheng and Lowenstein branch into frenetic squonks, warped jangles, and jagged, bare-bones riffs. The result is a collection of songs simultaneously densely textured and spacious.
“I listen to these songs and I feel like it captures the raw, creative energy of being in the studio and being like, ‘Fuck! We just exploded the song. What is about to happen?’” Lowenstein says. “That feeling is something we didn’t have on the first record because we knew exactly what we wanted to capture and it was the songs we had written in my parents’ basement.”
Cheng was first introduced to classical guitar as a kid by her dad, who tried to teach her, and then she was subsequently drawn back to rock by bands like Cage The Elephant and Arcade Fire. Lowenstein started playing at age 6, which covers most of her life memories and comprises a large part of her identity. “It made me feel really powerful as a young girl to know that I was a very proficient guitarist,” she says. The shreddy playing of Television, Pink Floyd’s spacey guitar solos, and Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan were all integral to her as Horsegirl began.
Penelope Lowenstein's Gear
Penelope Lowenstein likes looking back at the versions of herself that made older records.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Westwood
- EarthQuaker Bellows
- TC Electronic PolyTune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex 1.0 mm
Recently, the two of them have found themselves influenced by guitarists both related and unrelated to the type of tunes they’re trading in on their new album. Lowenstein got into Brazilian guitar during the pandemic and has recently been “in a Jim O’Rourke, John Fahey zone.”
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument,” Lowenstein says. “And hearing what the bass in those guitar parts is doing—as in, the E string—is kind of mind blowing.”
“On the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giants—super minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little,” Cheng adds. “And also Lizzy Mercier [Descloux], mostly on the Rosa Yemen records. That guitar playing I feel was very inspiring for the anti-solo,[a technique] which appears on [Phonetics On and On].”This flurry of focused discovery gives the impression that Cheng and Lowenstein’s sensibilities are shifting day-to-day, buoyed by the incredible expansion of creative possibilities that setting one’s life to revolve around music can afford. And, of course, the energy and exponential growth of youth. Horsegirl has already clocked major stylistic shifts in their brief lifespan, and it’s exciting to have such a clear glimpse of evolution in artists who are, likely and hopefully, just beginning a long journey together.
“There’s something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument.”–Penelope Lowenstein
“In your 20s, life moves so fast,” Lowenstein says. “So much changes from the time of recording something to releasing something that even that process is so strange. You recognize yourself, and you also kind of sympathize with yourself. It's a really rewarding way of life, I think, for musicians, and it's cool that we have our teenage years captured like that, too—on and on until we're old women.”
YouTube It
Last summer, Horsegirl gathered at a Chicago studio space to record a sun-soaked set of new and old tunes.
The rising guitar star talks gear, labels, genre troubles, and how to network.
Grace Bowers just released her debut record, 2024’s Wine on Venus, with her band the Hodge Podge, but she’s already one the most well-known young guitarists in America. On this episode of Wong Notes, Bowers talks through the ups, downs, and detours of her whirlwind career.
Bowers started out livestreaming performances on Reddit at age 13, and came into the public eye as a performer on social media, so she’s well acquainted with the limits and benefits of being an “Instagram guitarist.” She and Cory talk about session work in Nashville (Bowers loathes it), her live performance rig, and Eddie Hazel’s influence.
Bowers plugs the importance of networking as a young musician: If you want gigs, you gotta go to gigs, and make acquaintances. But none of that elbow-rubbing will matter unless you’re solid on you’re instrument. “No one’s gonna hire you if you’re ass,” says Bowers. “Practice is important.
”Tune in to learn why Bowers is ready to move on from Wine on Venus, her takes on Nashville versus California, and why she hates “the blues-rock label.”
Jack White's 2025 No Name Tour features live tracks from his album No Name, with shows across North America, Europe, the UK, and Japan.
The EP is a 5-song collection of live tracks taken from White’s 2024 edition of the tour, which was characterized by surprise shows in historic clubs around the world to support the 2024 album No Name.
No Name is available now via Third Man Records. The acclaimed collection was recently honored with a 2025 GRAMMY® Award nomination for “Best Rock Album” – White’s 34th solo career nomination and 46th overall along with 16 total GRAMMY® Award wins. The No Name Tour began, February 6, with a sold-out show at Toronto, ON’s HISTORY and then travels North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Japan through late May. For complete details and remaining ticket availability, please visit jackwhiteiii.com/tour-dates.
White’s sixth studio album, No Name officially arrived on Friday, August 2 following its clandestine white-label appearance at Third Man Records locations that saw customers slipped, guerilla-style, free unmarked vinyl copies in their shopping bags. True to his DIY roots, the record was recorded at White’s Third Man Studio throughout 2023 and 2024, pressed to vinyl at Third Man Pressing, and released by Third Man Records.
For more information, please visit jackwhiteiii.com.
JACK WHITE - NO NAME TOUR 2025
FEBRUARY
11 – Brooklyn, NY – Kings Theatre
12 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
17 – Boston, MA – Roadrunner
18 – Boston, MA – Roadrunner
21 – Paris, France – La Cigale
22 – Paris, France – La Trianon
23 – Paris, France – La Trianon
25 – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg (Ronda)
26 – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg (Ronda)
28 – London, UK – Troxy
MARCH
1 – London, UK – Troxy
2 – Birmingham, UK – O2 Academy Birmingham
3 – Glasgow, UK – Barrowland Ballroom
10 – Hiroshima, Japan – Blue Live Hiroshima
12 – Osaka, Japan – Gorilla Hall
13 – Nagoya, Japan – Diamond Hall
15 – Tokyo, Japan – Toyosu PIT
17 – Tokyo, Japan – Toyosu PIT
APRIL
3 – St. Louis, MO – The Factory
4 – Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater
5 – Omaha, NE – Steelhouse Omaha
7 – Saint Paul, MN – Palace Theatre
8 – Saint Paul, MN – Palace Theatre
10 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed (Indoors)
11 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed (Indoors)
12 – Detroit, MI – Masonic Temple Theatre
13 – Detroit, MI – Masonic Temple Theatre
15 – Grand Rapids, MI – GLC Live at 20 Monroe
16 – Cleveland, OH – Agora Theatre
18 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
19 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
MAY
4 – Austin, TX – ACL Live at the Moody Theater
5 – Austin, TX – ACL Live at the Moody Theater
6 – Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom
8 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom
9 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom
10 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Union Event Center
12 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium
13 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium
15 – Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara Bowl
16 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
17 – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic
19 – Seattle, WA – The Paramount Theatre
20 – Seattle, WA – The Paramount Theatre
22 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
23 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
24 – Troutdale, OR – Edgefield Concerts on the Lawn