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Want to get the most from your TONEX? Check this out! In this video, we test out the TONEX in combination with IK's lesser-known Z-TONE pedal. IK Multimedia built this unit as the perfect analog frontend for their digital amp modeling products. It's a preamp, boost, EQ, and DI box—all rolled into one! So does this little box of tone deserve a bit more popularity? You decide. Let's check it out! Products FeaturedIK Z-TONE: https://amzn.to/47LljeG IK TONEX: https://amzn.to/3u0BIOy Keeley Halo: https://amzn.to/3OcR49D GTRS S900: https://amzn.to/48EDiVl Video TranscriptHere's a handy, little device by IK Multimedia that I've heard almost everybody talking about over the last 12 months. And here's a handy, little device by IK Multimedia that I've heard almost nobody talking about over the last 12 months. But here's the thing… This guy makes this guy even better. So if you own one of these, you might just want to check out one of these. Let’s take a look!
[Music] Howdy friend, you're here in the studio with Luke from GuitarIQ.com. You can see, in this video, I’ve built this lovely little pedalboard in front of you featuring three different pedals. Two of which are arguably some of the most popular pedal releases we've seen in the last few years. And one is, perhaps, something that you don't know all that much about. So why, when we have a pedal board with two very popular pedals like these, are we going to spend most of our time looking at this thing? Well, this is the Z-TONE pedal by IK Multimedia. And you can essentially think of this as IK Multimedia's solution for the perfect analog frontend for all of their digital amp modeling products. In fact, these two pedals are really a fantastic combo. And I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen more people using them together! So what exactly is the Z-TONE pedal? And how can it make our TONEX pedal even better? Well, essentially you can think of the Z-TONE pedal as a bunch of things rolled into one. It’s an analog guitar preamp. It's a boost pedal. It’s a tone-shaping tool. And, if all of that wasn't enough, it's also a fully functional DI box. Now, I’ve left time stamps for everything in the description. So, if you just want to hear these two pedals together, feel free to jump around. But first up, I thought it might be useful to just chat through the controls on the top panel of the Z-TONE pedal. Just so you have some kind of context for what you're looking at. Okay, first up, this dip switch here on the left allows us to optimize the Z-TONE pedal depending on whether we're using passive or active pickups. When it's set to passive mode it engages the internal preamp circuitry. And that then gives us the option of switching in an extra JFET component over here to add a bit of extra color and character to the sound. Now, keep in mind this is extremely subtle—you might not even notice that it's switched on. But I think it does do something pleasing to the sound. So most of the time, if you're using passive pickups, you’re just going to leave both dip switches set to the up position. And then probably never think about it again. Up here we have a global gain control which allows us to attenuate the signal by -8dB or boost the signal by +8dB. Now, this is incredibly useful when we're using it with something like the TONEX platform. As you know, the TONEX Tone Models are designed to mimic the behavior of real world amplifiers. Which means they're incredibly sensitive to input gain. In fact, one of the biggest kind of talking points around TONEX when it first released was: How do we set the input trim on the unit to get the best performance from the different Tone Models? Because, if we're not driving things hard enough, the amp models can sound a little bit thin and lifeless. But on the flip side, if we're driving things too hard, we end up getting a lot more gain and saturation out of the different Tone Models than what was perhaps intended. The beauty of having a global gain control over here is that it means we can set the input trim on the TONEX pedal itself to 0dB, and then we never have to think about it. We don't need to go menu diving or saving different presets every time we use a different guitar. We can just plug straight into the Z-TONE pedal, dial things into taste, and then off we go! Now, up here we also have the option of dialing in an extra +10dB of boost. The beauty of this feature, is that it's selectable via this footswitch down here. Now, that gives us the option of having different gain settings for different guitars that have different outputs, for example. Or it gives us the option of having a pseudo second channel that we can switch in to drive whatever Tone Model we're using a little bit harder. And finally we have this central “Z” control in the middle. Which is really what the pedal is named after. You can think of this just as a global tone control. But it works slightly differently to a standard EQ filter. This controls the impedance relationship between your guitar and the amplifier, or in this case, our TONEX pedal. When we dial this all the way to the left we get the brightest, clearest sound—as though our guitar is plugged into the amp using say 1ft or 2ft of cable. But as we dial this all the way to the right we get a much darker, more rolled off type of sound—as though we're using say 40ft or 50ft of cable to connect our guitar to our amplifier. Now, for me, as we take this past about halfway things can certainly start to get a little bit too woolly and lo-fi sounding. But certainly, in say the first 50%, there's a whole range of sounds there which are really useful for helping to control, or tame, or dial out some of the real brittleness or high-end fizziness that we can often get from amp models that use a lot of gain, for example. Okay, so with all that in mind, let’s test out this little setup I have here. I'll just dial in the Z-TONE pedal to complement a few different sounds from the TONEX. For the Tone Models today, I’ve chosen some of my favorite sounds from the new ODS Legends pack which IK Multimedia have just released. It's a collection of beautiful, vintage dumble amplifiers. I'll showcase a few different sounds. First with the pedal completely bypassed, then with the pedal engaged, and then with the Boost switch activated. For my signal chain today, I’m using my S900 GTRS guitar that you saw at the start of this video going into the Z-TONE pedal. And on the output I'm going to pick up some lovely stereo delay courtesy of the Andy Timmons Halo pedal down here by Keeley Electronics. And from here we're plugging directly into the instrument inputs on my audio interface. As you're listening through, if you like some of the sound samples, then please click that like button to let me know and to help nudge along that all powerful YouTube algorithm. And with that let's take a listen: [Music] Okay, so there you have some sound examples. Hopefully, that was able to give you some indication of how well these pedals can work together. Certainly, some of those tonal differences can be quite subtle—depending on how we've got things set up. But, absolutely, the ability to have two independent gain stages can be a real game-changer when it comes to getting the most out of a unit like the TONEX. One feature I haven't really talked about is the XLR output on the side here. This allows us to capture a clean DI sound coming from the Z-TONE at the same time as recording the sound of our pedalboard, for example. If we want to have a clean DI to reamp later—that can be really useful. And we also have this Link output on the side over here. This gives us an additional instrument output that we can use to feed an amp on stage, for example. To be able to control our own stage volume while still running the main output of the TONEX to our front of house as our main front of house sound. So some other really super useful options there! Now, it’s worth saying, if you do have the TONEX pedal you could certainly get similar results using other devices like a preamp pedal, a boost pedal, an EQ pedal, and a DI box. But the real beauty of the Z-TONE pedal is it rolls all of those features into one unit. It's going to save a lot of real-estate on your pedalboard. And given that IK Multimedia tend to be pretty competitive with their pricing, this is likely to be a lot less expensive than having to buy all of those things independently. So if you're looking to get the most out of your TONEX pedal, and you liked some of the sound samples that you heard today, then I would absolutely recommend checking this out! And that was my look at the TONEX/Z-TONE combo by IK Multimedia. And with that we're almost at the end of this video. Thank you once again for sticking around. As always, it’s really important for me to let you know that these two pedals were sent to me by IK Multimedia to check out and to feature in some video content. But this was not a paid promotion or a sponsored advertisement. No money has changed hands. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. If you are interested in checking out any of these pedals, I’ll be sure to leave some links in the description. If you like this video and you want to see more content like this, then please be sure to subscribe to the channel for future content. And finally, before you go, I warmly invite you to check out the website GuitarIQ.com to take a look at some of the learning resources we have waiting for you over there. Covering everything from fretboard memorization, to chord theory, to warm-ups and workouts, and a whole lot more! That is GuitarIQ.com. Well, that's it from me. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video! Comments are closed.
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