Hotone Ampero II Stomp

[ribbetingfrog]

My band play through our nice PA system so i've not used an amp in anger for ages.

i used a pedal board for ages with a variety of pedals and a preamp and was really happy.

 

Both guitards in my band have used line 6 Helix's for ages and they sound great but i steadfastly stuck to my analogue pedalboard.

 

I don't remember what changed, but i think I was having a mess in the studio one sunday and tried a Helix and everything changed!

I got really addicted to being able to create pedalboards with any effect i wanted at my disposal.

 

So i took the plunge and got a Hotone Ampero One.

Which i liked so much!

I made loads of virtual pedal chains and had a lot of fun creating until I narrowed it down to what I liked best.

The more i tried things out, the more I liked the sounds and the useful options but the more I became aware of the limitations of the Ampero One , with limited options for how to lay out the signal chain.

 

So in came the Ampero II. Cheaper than a line 6 helix and with moe processing power.

More great sounds but more importantly, much more processing power and complete freedom as to how to lay out the signal path.

 

The Ampero II Stomp can have up to 10 effects in the chain in any order.

You can have:

All 10 in series with mono or stereo outputs

Parralel chains to run one or two inputs into one or two outputs

Input split at any point in the chain to become parralel going to two outputs or even joined again to run one output

Effects loop at any point in the effects chain, even out at one point and back at another.

 

These are all easy to set up with factory templates for all options.

 

The unit comes with sevceral cab sims, for guitar, bass and acoustic. It also includes 20 Celestion IR's nut these are all for guitar cabs, V30s, greenbacks et al.

There are also 20 slots to put in your own IR's so I've uploaded a good few bass IRs I own from Celestion and other places.

 

There are tons of amp sims on offer, including 6 bass amps.

I usually use the Ampeg SVT sim, it's very much my go to and my favorite of the bass amps included but there are Ampeg flip, Mesa and Vox amps included as well as a bass Di sim.

The Mesa model on the Ampero 1 and 2 sounds awful to me. absolutely no low end which makes them unuseable. Shame as i like the gainy nature of the model.

 

Some of the guitar amps sound really good on bass. I love the Roland Jazz Chorus model. On the Ampero one the guitar amps had a lot of hiss when used with bass but the Ampero 2 seems to have sorted this.

You can have an amp as one effects slot, or you can split it into preamp and power amp. This allows more tone sculpting and a choice of tube types but does take up an extra slot and processor power.

 

Once the amp and cab are sorted, theres loads more to play with.

I like to set up a noise gate, and i really like the Gated Boost which really cleans up my low end to get rid of any boominess and muddiness. It's something of a magic bullet that really makes the bass tone far better.

 

There are loads of boosts, drives, modulations, choruses, delays and reverbs. Theres four detunes, ring mods, and pretty much anything you'll need. many are dedicated bass effects too with most types having at least one bass option.

 

Theres even a Darkglass B3K model in the drives, which sounds fantastic but is a little more processor intensive than the other drives.

 

 

My current set up is a bi-amped tone:

one input split into two parralel chains, each start with an eq and noise gate.

the first chain the eq is set to keep the low end, which i keep clean. gated boost, into Ampeg svt into Ampeg 810 IR.

second chain eq loses low end but keeps higher, into a Dumble sim into a Celestion v30 410 IR. This has a switchable quad detune for more atmospheric intros or outros.

It sounds sooo good, clean low end and hairy top end and i tweak it to have the darkglass mod instead of the detune for dirtier patches.

 

So no problem running dual chains , sims and IR's although this set up does pretty much max the processor.

 

Hardware wise there are balanced stereo outs (balanced jacks only but i sue xlr adaptor to connect to the mixer) and a stereo effects chain.

Aux in and headphone out. midi connections and usb to connect to computer.

 

You can do anything easily on the touchscreen but its also a little easier to do on computer and you can add IR's. 

 

There are three footpedals and each bank of patches gets three patches. I have clean dirty and really dirty set up for each of my basses.

 

I also connect an Ampero two button footswitch which you can assign functionality.

You can also assign the quick access knobs on the front to adjust whatever you want or connect an expression pedal instead.

 

 

The Ampero II is wonderful. and will my rig for ages.

It gives me the option to do whatever i want to my pedal chain and it sounds superb.

 

Bonus, I can even set up anything i want for electric or acoustic guitar too. It even functions as  a recording interface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Christophe C]

Hello ribbetingfrog, 

Would it be possible to share a patch like this you describe in your post ? I try to split high and low frequencies but it doesn't work.

thanks