ToneX - Anyone mess around with capturing your own amps? Works very well and I'm not using their capture box

[Rev2010]

So luckily since my Mesa Triple Rec's slave out signal is tapped from the speaker jack (meaning it's *post* power tubes so you get the whole amp head tone) I don't need to use the ToneX Capture hardware to capture the full sound of the amp head. I have the RME BabyFace Pro FS interface and I used the 2nd XLR out, which is usually connected to my right studio monitor, with an XLR to unbalanced 1/4" cable that goes into the guitar input on the amp. I then simply run the slave out to a 1/4" input on the Babyface as the input for capture.

What I've found is this: For best results you really need to get your levels correct, and just following the ToneX software isn't really giving you the correct levels needed. I did a few captures following the ToneX prompts and level meters and originally they came out lower gain than expected. I then decided to try matching the levels properly. I plugged straight into the amp and played my guitar, then I plugged my guitar into my interface and ran the XLR to 1/4" cable to my amp's input and tweaked out the levels until it sounded exactly the same. It wasn't at first, I had to tweak the gain in the RME TotalMix mixer and run it higher than I would've expected to get the input gain into the amp the same as going straight in. But once I did match the input gain what a difference in my captures! I also run the gain coming into the interface from the amp's slave out so that it typically rides two orange dots short of max with the highest peaks sometimes very briefly flicking the red dot - it doesn't cause any clipping however. I'd also like to profile my Bugera Trirec but it has a line out which I believe is pre power stage as most "line out's" are as opposed to most "slave out's" which usually tend to be post power stage. I'll have to see if changing the amp volume changes the level at the line out, if it does than it's probably a post power stage output.

Next few capture experiments I want to do is to do a capture with the amp cranked higher, like halfway or a little more but I have to find the right time to do that lol. Also plan to do a capture with my Randall Diavlo V30's 2x12 cabinet with sE Electronics X1 R Ribbon Mic. When I first got the ToneX plugin I downloaded the Mesa Single Rectifier with Maxon OD808 profile from a user on ToneNet and it's still the profile to beat. WIth my Ownhammer Mesa V30 + DZL IR it's just amazing, sounds just like a real mic'd Rectifier. Also glad I got the software for $99 when it was on sale, what a value!!

So, anyone else spent any time playing around with capturing your own amps with ToneX?

 

[Rev2010]

Would've thought more people would've tried out ToneX. Oh well. I captured my Bugera TriRec today using my sE Electronics X1 R Ribbon mic on my Randall Diavlo 2x12 with Celestion V30's and holy shit it's now my favorite capture even above the Mesa Single Rec I downloaded on ToneNet that I thought was the holy grail.Anyhow, that capture along with several others I uploaded such as another capture of the Bugera TriRec (with the master volume cranked to 65% and using the varipower to keep levels within some reason at home lol) are available to download. Some captures of my Mesa Triple Rectifier both clean and high gain and an Advanced profile capture as well that took 4.5 hours. When I get back from a week long vacation starting this weekend I'll do some captures with a boost and upload those as well.

One thing I'll say.... it's a shame that the models are at default settings when downloaded. Would be really really helpful if one can set the controls and have them save with the model. Most sound like shit with everything at 50% or at whatever settings you've tweaked before loading - ie. if you change the knob settings those changes will stay set while loading new/different models. There's no way I can find to share *presets* (which contain all your settings tweaks) within ToneX like you can with Amplitube. I tweaked out fantastic tones with most of my profiles, again the best being the Bugera TriRec non-cranked IMO, but I can't share it with my knob tweaks. Anyhow, you can find and download them to try if you're a ToneX user. Below are two screenshots, one showing the profiles I uploiaded so you can find them and the other the knob settings for my Bugera TriRec profile that I tweaked out. Only other thing to change would be the treble frequency under advanced parameters, change it to 1700hz instead of 2000hz.