I recently added his pedal to my Tonex One rig. Very affordable (especially at black friday/holiday rates when I picked it up) and a lot of added funcionality to the Tonex One for playing live and when not plugged into a computer.
My main attraction was the ability to use it live for toggling on/off of compressor, modulation and delay in the Tonex One. I also love the ‘scroll through’ modulation function. This has made it possible to build a small Nano board with a couple drive/ods and the Tonex for a backup rig to my FM3 or quick DI gigs. I still have easily controllable chorus, flanger, tremelo, phaser, and delay with tap on a tiny footprint. The app was the icing on the cake that turned into a whole other cake once I dug into it.
It has changed my workflow into two parts. I’ll use IK software and laptop at home to pick amps and rough in settings. I typically don’t change amps during performance and prefer to build off one clean sound and occasionally use a driven model to stack onto for classic rock tones. At home I can load up the 20 presets with my favorite clean platforms, mostly Boogie Marks (which I own and have used for years, Dumbles (which I don’t own!), and JC120 and some other odds and ends for overdrives.
At the gig, I love having the app to load and fine tune my sound in the actual performance room. During soundcheck the softare/app gets a workout. I’ll pick an amp rig or two out of the 20 I have chosen to ‘carry’ with me. The app helps dial in eq, delay and reverb settings easily and provides much more control than the Tonex One hardware alone. It’s more convenient than breaking out the laptop with the downside being locked into the 20 loaded amp/cab models. There is some tweaking available on the ‘custom’ cab model mic s and placement if you want to dig in. A nice note is that it saves the modulation settings when toggling through. So, if I swap from chorus to tremolo, the tempo, rhythm, and depth I used earlier will still be there.
During performance the hardware/pedal shines. With the pedal I can toggle effects in and out, swap modulations on the fly, and switch between amp rigs. Again, I tend to switch amp models very sparingly. This philosophy is probably a whole other discussion, but imagine you’re an A1, you finish soundchecking a band but then during performance the guitarist dips out and brings a whole other amp on stage, repeatedly!
The Airstep and Tonex One also make a great standalone practice rig. With a Tonex One and the Airstep powering it, all you need is a guitar, a cable, and headphones to be able to sit anywhere (without ac power) and play through great amps and effects.
Summing up, I love both the hardware and app functions of this device and the rechargeable battery power is a nice bonus.
More information available on the XSONIC website