“Creativity meets amazing tone”. That`s the tagline Line 6 are giving this interesting little beast. The Line 6 AMPLIFi FX100 is the newest of the Amplifi line delivered to us by Line 6. Over the last 5 years or so multi FX units have been going down an ever more complex and irresistible route. Gone are the days of cheap plastic pedals giving us a horrible fizzy amp tone, and weak FXs that sound worse than a fingernail on a blackboard. Here are the days of the brilliant Digitech RP1000, the sublime Fractal Audio Axe FX II, and more.
The Line 6 AMPLIFi FX100 continues in the vein of these pedals giving us the usual powerhouse combination of multi FX, amp simulation and now the ability to wirelessly control every detail of your guitar rig with the iOS App as well as store and share your own tones.
Line 6 aren`t the only ones doing this, DigiTech have the iPB-10 Programmable Pedalboard
This is pretty perfect if you`re are struggling to match `that killer tone` and can`t quite get it. Just let the software do its business and you are away. Imagine wanting to emulate the likes of John petrucci, Adam Jones or Jimi Hendrix – by using this simple feature, you can sound like the great guitarists themselves with ease. Talk about technology doing all the work!
Line 6`s marketing team did seem to get a bit over zealous with the product launch, throwing words around such as `reinventing` this and that out there. The technoloy really is pretty simple, but don`t let that put you off. At first, I thought maybe the software analyzes the frequency of the guitar and gives you a tone as like for like as possible, but no, it`s a little more simple.
The app searches the metadata of the song you are trying to emulate via title, artist, and genre and gives you back particaular tones that might work. As far as where the tones came from, it seems it’s probably a combination of tones Line 6 had as factory settings from various products such as the PODxt, Flextone III, Guitarport Online, and POD X3 t reformatted to fit the AMPLIFi structure. There is currently no way to “publicly” translate tones, but something that could go into idea scale for future consideration.
Some of the core features of the FX unit include:
- Use of upto 8 simultaneous effects
- Over 200 amps, effects and speaker cabinets
- Access 100 onboard presets—and unlimited presets via AMPLIFi app*
- Change presets and switch banks using 4 high quality, backlit footswitches
- Bluetooth streaming audio for playing along with your music library (compatible with iOS, Android™, Mac and PC)*
- Rugged construction with bent metal chassis
- 1/4” Headphone output, 1/4” stereo full-range balanced outputs and 1/4” Amp output
- Tap tempo and built in tuner
With the Remote app for IOS you can remotely control your amp and effects parameters to dial in the perfect tone. You can also access, share and rate thousands of tones online in the cloud, as well as back up and store unlimited presets in the cloud. You can also share tones via Twitter and Facebook .
It is compatible with iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5, iPhone 4s, iPhone 4, iPad (3rd and 4th generation), iPad 2, iPad mini and iPod touch (5th generation).
How does it sound?
Well, tone is subjective and it really is a bit unfair to tell you whether it sounds good or not. You are best to make up your own mind. Check out the video below and try one if you can. The tones in videos below are pretty good to be honest. Lots of punch and clarity on a high gain setting. That as many of you who have played FX units in the past is pretty unusual; so thats certainly a good thing already. .
Is it coming out for Android users?
We should hope so. Line 6 would be mad to make such a cool product and not be able to sell it to a huge amount of guitarists out there. We will have to wait and see, but for you iPhone users, give it a look. The Line 6 AMPLIFi FX100 looks like it is here to stay. Try it, you may well love it.