While enthusiasts are Still preoccupied with tube amps and drooling over effects pedal collections, concert musicians are in the midst of a digital revolution. Offerings from brands like Kemper, Line 6, Fractal Audio and Neural DSP allow musicians to digitally model tube amplifiers with results that are astonishingly close to the real thing.
These new digital modeling amplifiers are easy to set up, reliable, and much lighter and more compact than previous devices. The noises are also remarkable these days. Unless they’re in the studio, many modern musicians use digital options for their sounds, and many of these options find their way into hit songs.
Fender has been competing in the digital amplifier space for decades, but its new $1,700 Tone Master Pro, released late last year, is the first truly professional option we’ve seen from the brand in recent memory. It’s also one of the most intuitive I’ve ever seen. With classic models of iconic amplifiers and effects, a touchscreen, excellent onboard controls, and a shocking amount of digital processing power, it’s essentially a portable guitar studio. It also features a four-channel audio interface and hundreds of microphone and cabinet modeling options that can easily compete with the real thing, even in the studio. It’s even great for karaoke.
If I’m looking for an all-in-one guitar solution that works both in my bedroom and on stage, especially if I don’t want to spend ages fiddling with menu screens, I’d choose this one.
Photo: Parker Hall
The new black box
The Tone Master Pro looks almost identical to most other all-in-one amp/pedalboard solutions I’ve seen. Essentially, it’s a black plate that’s meant to lie in front of you as you play, either on the floor or on a desk. A 7-inch touchscreen sits between two silver buttons on the top of the device, flanked at the bottom by 10 pedal switches and associated LED screens. It’s all very clean and modern, easy to hide while playing on stage.
One quirky and familiar thing that I love is that Fender has put their classic red power light on the back of the unit so you can easily tell it’s turned on like a “normal” Fender amp. The rest of the back panel of the Tone Master is a hodgepodge of inputs and outputs the likes of which I’ve never seen on a guitar amp.
There are stereo outputs in both quarter-inch and XLR; four separate effects sends and returns (two stereo) for using external pedals and effects with the device; two expression pedal outputs; a microphone/line and instrument input; as well as footswitch control, 3.5mm aux in, headphone out, MIDI in and out, USB-C and MicroSD. And also Bluetooth. If you need more, you’ll probably need a mixer or patchbay.
Photo: Parker Hall