I’ve caved and bought the TONEX Rig. I like the idea, and I like the fact that I can now drive amps with stomps all within the same interface. However, this split personality further exposes a contradiction at the heart of TONEX - “presets” vs “tone models”, because a “rig” is the basic unit I am operating with.
The basic idea is that a “tone model” is just a naked capture - DI amp, DI stomp, or a full rig of some sort. However, in practice, very few people use DI tone models on their own (I certainly don’t), so ideally for me a third concept would’ve been a “rig”, whether it’s a TONEX model if it has a cab), or DI model + impulse of my choice if it doesn’t.
In the past, this was kinda handled by presets - if I liked a “rig”, I saved it as preset. It was annoying, but it kinda worked because I couldn’t load stomps anyway.
However, with Rig engine, if I select a preset then I don’t just replace the amp + cab, I replace the entire chain including any stomps that I had. So, if I want to audition how a stomp capture sounds into a particular rig, I have to load the rig and then re-add the stomp.