The Verdict: Is the Hotone Ampero II Stage Worth the Weight?
Have you ever made an intercontinental move as a musician? Let me tell you, it's a stressful affair. The gear you've accumulated for years suddenly has to go through a trial by fire that takes its weight, size and usefulness into account in a test that most items fail miserably. Even guitars are tough to take nowadays without a stewardess demanding you drop another 500 euros for the privilege of not having it crushed and man-handled. It's rough.
I was lucky enough to have family storage space where I could safely leave most of my equipment for when I came back, though I did have to sell many of my things so I could source them here... But after aggressively balancing weight, usefulness and size, only one item made the cut to be brought from Europe to Vietnam, and that was my trusty (albeit heavy) Hotone Ampero II Stage.
There are a myriad of reasons as to why I chose to bring the Ampero, and I might go through them in a more in-depth review, but for now, I'll just talk about why I decided to bring it, as I find people ask me often about my multi-fx as it's one of the more uncommon ones.
Was the hassle of bringing a five kilogram unit to a different continent worth it?
Definitely. Firstly because I got an insane deal on it for Prime Day, I think I paid around 400 euros, when it's MSRP was 700 at the time, Prime deals am I right? Check out the price below, I'm not affiliated nor do I earn a commission from your visit.
But beyond just the price, one of the things I really liked was the marketing's emphasis on Impulse Responses (IRs) for acoustic guitars, and amp cabinets.
Don't know what an IR is or how to use them?
An IR is an EQ preset that shapes the tone of an instrument in a way that makes it sound like it's coming from a specific speaker, or guitar body. Think of it as a giant EQ with thousands of faders for each individual frequency.
- In the case of electric guitars, you'd use an IR of an amp cabinet after a simulated amplifier, and it gives that amp tone that we know and love.
- Piezo pickups are what you'll find in 90% of electro-acoustic guitars. Very few of them sound good right off the bat, so for most of them, an easy fix is using IRs. In this case, an IR processor takes the rubbery, shrill signal of a piezo pick up, and passes it through an EQ that accentuates certain frequencies depending on the body you've chosen. A jumbo guitar will have more low-end, a parlour guitar will have more mids, and so on and so forth.
Aside from the IRs, the Ampero has functionalities for the real, working musician that very few MultiFX pedals do, especially at that price point, which eventually swayed me to purchase the Hotone Ampero 2 Stage vs the Line6 Helix LT for instance. One of those things is being able to simultaneously plug my guitar, and microphone through the unit, create two separate signal chains, place effects independently, and then route them out of the unit any way a venue might require.
- If a venue doesn't have a mixer, they only have an active PA, and there's only one available channel, I can use one XLR cable to send both signals, and mix the blend from the unit.
- Otherwise I would just send two separate XLR signals, one with voice, and the other with guitar, and treat them as I regularly would.
- If the venue has a nice amp, I can route the XLRs to front of house, and send a dry, non IR-affected signal to the amp, creating a fuller, more "in the room" sound.
- If a mixer only has XLR or Jack inputs, the Ampero can accommodate either.
This flexibility has saved me countless times. Here in Vietnam, gigs are very unpredictable, so if I'm going to a venue for the first time, I make sure to have enough cables to deal with any situation. In fact, I use more of it's quirky functionalities here in Vietnam then I did back in Europe specifically because of the unpredictability, and I love being able to deal with them, and venue owners appreciate how easy it is to work with me because of it.
One of the obvious reasons I brought it as well, is that it's built like an absolute tank. This thing is deceptively heavy for how relatively compact it is. 5KG is no joke, especially when every kilogram is expensive on a transcontinental flight.
Overall, I'm still very happy, and thankful that I brought it, because it gives me the chance to play at venues I would have never been able to play had I left it behind.
