GEAR REVIEW
HOTONE AMPERO II GEN 2 AMP MODELER / EFFECTS PROCESSOR | Mitch Bohannon
• Small footprint
• Full-color, intuitive touchscreen
• Ready for electric, acoustic, keyboard, or vocal
• 12 simultaneous effect modules with a 460 + effect library
• Tone Catch IR capture
Modelers and multi-effects processors have become the standard on many worship platforms. That’ s all that we use at the church where I serve and we have a wide spectrum of options on campus, so I am familiar with many of them.
KEY FEATURES
From the vantage point of tech director, I believe it’ s important for a church to own gear like this Ampero II in case someone shows up to play with gear that fails or is not appropriate for worship … let’ s say a pedal board full of Metal
Zone pedals. At my church, we often have stand-in musicians. It’ s a nice option to ask them only to bring their guitar and plug into our system. So, when I see a product like this come out, it grabs my attention and after reviewing the Tuner Press last year, I’ m excited to get my hands on anything from Hotone. The Ampero II includes CDCM HD( Comprehensive Dynamic Circuit Modeling HD) which is Hotone’ s own modeling technology.
Out of the box, the pedal feels solid and simple … not too many buttons and the entire pedal is not too big to even carry in a backpack. There are four obvious stomp switches, two large rotary knobs with press options, and a smallfoot expression / volume pedal( reminiscent of the Tuner Press). A large, five-inch, full-color touchscreen is the focal point of this unit. Check out my video for my first impressions and watch me strum through some of the stock settings. The Ampero II power supply is NOT a wall-wart( thank you), and it comes with clear stomp-switch caps that accentuate the multicolor LED halos around each switch.
Feature breakdown: There are 124 presets pre-loaded with room to store a total of 300. Everything can be designed on the touchscreen which feels much like creating on a smartphone or if you choose, the full spectrum of options can be managed by downloading the free software and connecting via a USB-C cable to the computer. It comes with a variety of over 60 original Hotone effects plus hundreds of amp and pedal models and with the Tone Catch capabilities, you can capture any amplifier or pedal and even share what you’ ve captured with the Hotone community online. The Ampero II offers stereo( ¼”) or mono input( 1 / 4” and XLR) and stereo or mono output ¼” and XLR.
The Ampero II is customizable to how you like to play. You may select between Patch Mode or Stomp Mode. Using Patch Mode means you would call up bank 1 / patch 1 and play the
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