Our pick of the month’s most delectable and wallet-bothering new gear
Fender Tone Master Pro £1,649
CONTACT Fender Musical Instruments EMEA PHONE 0333 200 8765 WEB www.fender.com
It’s a bit different from Fender’s usual offerings.
Fender’s Tone Master line-up is the brand’s answer to high-end digital modelling, taking the form of classic combos but without the valves (or weight).We’ve reviewed Tone Master versions of the Twin Reverb, Deluxe Reverb and, most recently, the Princeton. But now Fender has revealed its newest addition, the Tone Master Pro.
It doesn’t look like an amp…
That’s because it takes the Tone Master concept way past the softly, softly approach of digital guts inside an ‘analogue’ skin. Fender describes the Tone Master Pro as a “no-compromise multi-effects guitar workstation”; this is the company’s response to the likes of Fractal’s Axe-Fx, Line 6’s Helix, the Neural Quad Cortex et al.
So, what’s it got?
What hasn’t it got? Starting with sounds, there are over 100 amp models and effects inside, including all of the current Tone Master models, plus an EVH 5150 III Stealth model (the first official approximation). It’s loaded with over 6,000 speaker cab impulse responses, all of which can be mixed-and-matched with any of the unit’s amp models, and, of course, there are options for microphone type and placement, too.
I’ve got plug-ins that do that – anything else?
We’re only just getting started. Fender has kitted out the Tone Master Pro with a seven-inch colour touchscreen to make navigating and tweaking your presets easy, and above each of the 10 footswitches sit the digital scribble strips. Talking of footswitches, they’re colour-coded with illuminated surrounds, but they also serve as rotary encoders. As you can see, there are no tiny switches or buttons to get lost in.
I can’t see an expression pedal, though.
Don’t worry, there’s the facility for that and a whole lot more.Take a look at the back of the unit (below left) and you’ll see it’s home to more sockets than Elon Musk’s garage. We get a mic/line combi XLR/jack input, a regular ‘instrument’ input, two pairs of stereo outputs (with options for jacks or XLR on the first pair). There are no fewer than four hardware effects loops for integrating your other pedals, twoexpression pedal inputs (compatible with the Mission SP1-TMP Expression Pedal, £159) and two further foot controllers, plus MIDI in and out/thru, and SD card slot and USB C.
What’s the USB for?
That’ll be the 4x4 channel audio interface.You can also hook up the Tone Master Pro to your computer for editing via Fender’s Tone Master Pro Control desktop app.
Is it designed to be used through a PA or something?
You certainly can, or as a recording interface in the studio. But Fender has also a
