Launched with the Ampero II Stage and Ampero II at the end of 2024, Hotone’s capture technology was also made available at the end of the year on the Ampero II Stomp, the most compact device in this Ampero II series (the Stomp having been on the market since November 2021). I invite you to discover the capture process and my first results with the Tone Catch tech in this short blog post.

The Ampero II range

Three devices currently make up this range:

  • The Ampero II Stomp, the smallest and the most compact, launched in 2021, with a 4-inch color touch screen.
  • The Ampero II Stage, launched at the end of 2023, with a slightly larger screen, an extensive connectivity and offering control via a smartphone application (in addition to the application available for Mac/PC). It also has more footswitches.
  • The Ampero II, launched at the end of 2024, with a screen and connectivity similar to the Stage, but which trades the adjustment knobs of the Stage and the Stomp in favor of an expression pedal embedded on the device, like the Ampero One or many other multi-effects. Smartphone app support is also not available on this version.

Under the hood, these three devices share the same architecture and the same DSPs, and therefore offer the same palette of amps, cabs and other effects. They display the same number of blocks that can be used simultaneously (12) and offer the same rendering.

Tone Catch

Hotone’s capture technology was introduced last year on the Stage and Ampero II models, then made available -in player mode only- at the end of the year for the Stomp model. More recently, a firmware update has also made it possible to capture from the Stomp. There are differences in the connection scenarios supported between the different devices: the Stomp does not have an XLR input – unlike the Stage and the “II” model – so it will be necessary to systematically use a sound card between the captured gear and the small Ampero II Stomp model.

Tone Catch allows you to capture amps output (DI) and amp-cab-microphone chains, whether in clean or saturated sound mode. The approach and procedure are very similar to those offered on Kemper equipment: the process begins by selecting clean or saturated mode, by selecting with or without cab and the capture procedure is launched from the device. A “fine tune” phase can be used after the automatic capture procedure, a phase that is very similar to the Kemper “refining” procedure. The capture process lasts 2 to 3 minutes, about half of which seems to be devoted to analysis and model construction. It is therefore very fast and does not require long machine learning phases, as is the case with Tonex or NAM approaches.

At the end of the process, the user can go back and forth between the source system and the captured tone, and can restart the “fine tune” phase if necessary.

Here are some pictures taken during the capture process:

First part of capture : automatic part

Audition of source gear / captured Tone Catch

Fine tuning

The captured model can then be used with the new Tone Catch block : simply drop the block in the signal chain, as if it was an amp block, and then selecting the Tone Catch among the models available from your device (there are 10 tone catch slots –only– for the moment) :

Tone Catch block


You can use models that you capture but you can also download them and upload them on your Ampero II device. You can download models from Hotone community website, for example, or from 3rd parties.

In the case of a Tone Catch without the cab-mic part (amp DI only), you will need to associate a cab or an IR to your Tone Catch block, as in the example below:

Use an IR block with a DI tone catch

I found the results to be convincing and the captures sound quite close to the original gear. This feature adds a new dimension to the Ampero II, offering a successful capture technology in addition to the range of modeled amps and pedals already available on these systems as standard.

Demos

Here is a first demo playlist that I created using my first Tone Catch models, captured using my Ampero II Stomp: these are captures of my P.V. 6505 amp with 3 complete models -2 crunch and 1 clean- with a cab equipped with P50 speakers as well as a tone catch DI (crunch channel). The system supports tone stacking quite well: the preset 7606 SP-3 DRIVE is an example of Tone Catch used as a pedal platform with two Ampero overdrives upstream to obtain crunch/mid-gain tones.

Clean tone catch with 2 overdrives stacked

In the playlist below, the examples are based on the following elements:

  • 01 and 02: Lasse Lammert’s MagoDI reamping with a full tone catch (crunch + P50 cab) and the tone catch DI (with overdriven IR G12-65)
  • 03 and 04: B tuning riff, Fishman Fluence 7 strings, Tone Catch DI and Tone Catch clean with stacked overdrives
  • 05 and 06: example with Strandberg 8 coil split pickup with tone catch clean + starking then tone catch clean.

Conclusion

We didn’t necessarily expected Hotone to jump in the capture arena and it’s a very pleasant surprise for Ampero II owners to see a feature of this type – and of this level of quality – to just land on their equipment.… And let’s note that Hotone is also making efforts by developing its community site for sharing presets and captures and by simplifying access by direct download from the management application associated with the Ampero II.

You can find the download links and more information on a new page dedicated to the Ampero II Tone Catch on this blog: https://overdriven.fr/overdriven/index.php/ampero-ii-tone-catch/#7606_Pack-1 .