Deeper Tonedexter 2 thread.

[lkingston]

Now that I have the Tonedexter 2 and am exploring the options, I am absolutely blown away by what it can do, and the care and the quality of the design and construction. This is is a new thread, not to convince anyone to get this gear, but for those of us who have it to get a bit deeper into some of features and options.

[lkingston]

One of these features is “baking EQ changes into the IR”. You can make EQ changes, then save a new WaveMap which includes an IR which has been recalculated with the EQ. This is absolutely HUGE for people who want to capture an IR with a really good mic and instrument at home, then tweak it to use with a more gig worthy stage guitar that has a completely different pickup.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by lkingston

Now that I have the Tonedexter 2 and am exploring the options, I am absolutely blown away by what it can do, and the care and the quality of the design and construction. This is is a new thread, not to convince anyone to get this gear, but for those of us who have it to get a bit deeper into some of features and options.

I'm working on shooting a demo of some of this, and yes, it's actually proving to be more challenging that I thought because there's just so much there. Even ignoring the IR/Wavemap, the feature set is mind-boggling, and I keep discovering new twists. There are a number of things that aren't even described in the manual (yet..)

[lkingston]

Another feature is the way they did the buttons with optical switches for long life and to avoid wear and tear.

[Juiced06GTO]

I used mine at a gig for the first time last night, the sound was amazing! I had set it up initially in my barn with the PA to see how it would sound, when I got to the bar, I was dealing with a little feedback, a quick touch of anti feedback and I was good to go! I can't wait to dive deeper into it.

[lkingston]

Here’s one that I love:

When you are adjusting the notch filter frequency, the display tells you the note as well as the frequency. If your A string is going wild, you aren’t guessing at the frequency. You can go right for it!

I also like that it give you the notch width in semitones.

[lkingston]

You can assign which of the two inputs you want associated with a given preset. That plus the volume for that input per preset. Let’s say you have two different guitars and want to leave them plugged in on stage. Call up the preset for that guitar, and it will include connecting the right instrument!

[CosmicOsmo]

Originally Posted by lkingston

You can assign which of the two inputs you want associated with a given preset. That plus the volume for that input per preset. Let’s say you have two different guitars and want to leave them plugged in on stage. Call up the preset for that guitar, and it will include connecting the right instrument!

I just got mine set up and this is exactly how I'll be using it. I have an orchestra pit gig later this month that calls for four guitars, including both a steel string acoustic and a flamenco guitar.

The steel string has a K&K trinity dual source pickup, and I plan to use the TD wavemap with a some mic blended on top if feedback allows (this sounded better than the crossover mode to me in my quick tests). The flamenco guitar has no pickup, and I use a Bartlett Guitar Mic clip-on for it, which requires 48v phantom power and has an XLR connection.

With the Tonedexter 2, I can plug the Bartlett into the XLR input, EQ it as desired, and save that as a preset, then just switch wavemap presets for the steel string and it'll automatically mute the Bartlett mic and select the 1/4" TRS input for the dual source pickup. Nothing needs to be plugged in and unplugged or manually muted or unmuted, which is great because there are some really quick instrument changes required for the show.

I was literally about to pull the trigger on a small pedal mixer like a Gigmix until I realized the Tonedexter could handle all this on its own! The input and routing functionality is really robust on this thing, in addition to the powerful EQ features and all the wavemap functionality.

What a great unit! I'm really looking forward to using it on the gig. I can already tell it's going to be a big upgrade in sound, functionality, and portability over my previous setup, a Rane AP-13 and a lexicon reverb in a 2-space rack!

[lkingston]

The “Spaciousness” control. If you turn it all the way down, it seems to minimize that weird phasey sound that drives me mad with IRs. I have yet to capture an IR that doesn’t sound better with that turned all the way down to zero.

[lkingston]

Another thing is that when you start with an empty preset, there actually is an IR there already. It’s just a flat IR that passes the sound through. If you apply an EQ to this empty preset, then save it so as to “bake in” the EQ, what you will end up with is an IR that applies that EQ. This can be a really handy thing.

Let’s say you don’t want to do the standard Tonedexter IR thing, but you have an instrument that needs a very particular frequency response tweaking. You can do that EQ and bake it into the preset. Now you are starting with that sound with a flat regular EQ which can be tweaked for that particular room and amplification. Very cool stuff!

[tadol]

Originally Posted by lkingston

The “Spaciousness” control. If you turn it all the way down, it seems to minimize that weird phasey sound that drives me mad with IRs. I have yet to capture an IR that doesn’t sound better with that turned all the way down to zero.

Yes - it defaults to 100, but you can turn it from 0 to 200 - I also tend to turn it down pretty far, but turning it all the way up gives a pretty interesting effect!

[guitaniac]

Originally Posted by lkingston

One of these features is “baking EQ changes into the IR”. You can make EQ changes, then save a new WaveMap which includes an IR which has been recalculated with the EQ. This is absolutely HUGE for people who want to capture an IR with a really good mic and instrument at home, then tweak it to use with a more gig worthy stage guitar that has a completely different pickup.

Your mention of a "gig worthy stage guitar" reminds me that you have (or had) the Doyle Dykes model Godin Multiac which combines their LB6 in-saddle pickup with their Lyric Tru Mic. You can also add an onboard saturation effect with the LB6 signal, if I recall correctly.

Are you using the Doyle Dykes Multiac with ToneDexter 2? If so, I'm curious as to how well the IR works with the LB6, and if you can also use some saturation and/or Lyric signal in your output signal.

[lkingston]

Yes, I still have the Doyle Dykes guitar. It is a wonderful instrument for playing live.

I’ve been playing mostly nylon strings lately due to having arthritis in my fretting hand.

My only complaint about the DD Signature model is that the output is quite low. It isn’t a problem if you are using your own amplification, but inexperienced sound guys are often afraid to crank up the gain.

The lyric mic really helps the sound, and I have some sort of mic blend on all my guitars. The problem is that a modeled mic with the ToneDexter 2 really does sound better.

[RussellHawaii]

lkingston, thank you for this thread. I’ve recently got a Tonedexter 2, and I’m trying to learn to use it effectively. So far with limited results, although I recognize it’s a well designed and incredibly innovative device. So far I’ve left it at home for gigs as I don’t find it has improved my sound. Yet.
The training has gone well, and I find blending about 25% of the dry is an improvement, tho I don’t understand why.
I agree with you about reducing the ‘spaciousness’ control. It helps a lot.
I don’t understand the ‘baking in’ idea. I’ve read the manual and your explanation above. But how is this different from just an EQ setting on a blank IR slot?

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by RussellHawaii

I don’t understand the ‘baking in’ idea. I’ve read the manual and your explanation above. But how is this different from just an EQ setting on a blank IR slot?

It's quite different from a blank IR, it's more like just saving the baseline, but with a subtle difference. You have 3 ways to "save" a sound you like:

1) any settings you make are "sticky". You can change the preset, or even shut off the unit, and it will be right where you left everything per-wavemap when you come back to it next.

2) Save to Baseline. This saves all your settings as a recallable snapshot. So say you tweak everything at home and think you've got it nailed. Save to baseline. Now you get to the gig and think it needs some tweaks. Fine, tweak away. But after the gig, maybe you think the next gig you'd prefer to once again start with what you dialed in at home as your starting place. Just "restore" from the baseline, and you're back where you started. All settings will be back to where you saved them.

3) Baking. Here, you basically take all your tweaks and save them, but as a new wavemap that has all your settings applied as a default to the actual wavemap, transparently. So if you bake a wavemap and put it in a new slot. It will have the sound of all your tweaks, but all the controls will show "flat". So for example, if you set spaciousness to 50% and baked that into a new wavemap, the spacious control will say 100%, but that's 100% of what is baked in (50%). If you wanted to get back to the true 100%, you'd have to go to 200%. It's a bit like some DAWs (if you do any recording) that let you "freeze" a track - basically applying any effects you put on the track and creating a copy with those effects included. In a DAW, this usually done to conserve CPU power. I haven't quite figured out when I would use baking vs Save to Baseline, but it seems to me that you might use it when you're 100% sure that your tweaks are correct, and you want to be able to start with all controls flat.