Shadowing Practice: Tonex Plug Headphone Amp | First Impressions and Review - Learn English Speaking with Video

Do you ever feel like there's a barrier to practicing?

Like when you have a busy week and you don't have much time to practice?

If you're like me and you have too much gear, you might think, I don't feel like getting all this stuff set up just so I can practice for a few minutes.

Especially when it's late and my kids are already asleep.

I usually just end up sitting down on my couch and practicing with just my guitar.

Well what if I could practice just like that but with all of my Tonex captures?

What's up everyone?

Welcome back to Sunday Tone.

Today I have something brand new from IK Multimedia and this is their Tonex plug.

The Tonex plug is a headphone amplifier

that allows you to plug in either your guitar or your bass

and plug some headphones into it and right away be able to play through your Tonex captures and your Tonex presets.

So this allows you to go anywhere you want with your guitar and this little device, plug in and practice.

So today I'm gonna tell you some of the features that it has and I'm gonna show you how to use it.

And I'm also gonna give you some of my first impressions after using this for a couple of days.

So let's get into it.

So taking a look at the unit itself, the Tonex plug is a tiny headphone amp that you just plug straight into your guitar.

It's battery powered and you plug your headphones in and you're off and running.

You can play your Tonex captures, you can practice anywhere you go.

So this is a great tool to just have in your gig bag wherever you go.

On the front here, you have some LEDs that are used to move through the banks of presets that you have.

So there are 10 banks of presets, each with an A, B, and C preset.

So in total, you can load up to 30 presets on here,

and you use a little button on the side to be able to go up and down through those presets.

And you also have a volume up and down button on the side, as well as a power button.

Using the buttons on the side, you can also go into a tuner mode, and you can also use those for Bluetooth pairing.

The next big feature of the Tonex plug is actually how you control it, and you can do that using the new Tonex Control app.

This app, you download and connect over Bluetooth to the Tonex plug, and you're able to completely manage

and edit parameters of all of your presets on there

and you have an entire signal chain that you can scroll through and edit with effects,

with your cab, with your tone model and you can edit all the parameters there.

And you can connect to ToneX, download other presets, other captures and load them right up into the headphone amp from there.

So it's a really nice way to quickly edit parameters, switch out things without having to get a computer out and connect to a computer.

So another really nice feature that it has is that you can connect Bluetooth audio to it,

whether it be through your phone or a computer to stream Spotify or Apple Music Planning Center, whatever it is you're trying to learn.

You can play the song through there, play along with your guitar, and you can practice wherever you're at just with your phone, the Tonex plug in your guitar.

So the kind of last big feature of this

that I really like is it has a USB audio interface built into it.

So wherever you're at, you can plug this in your computer, USB-C, and record an idea,

record a demo, whether it be at church or you're at a gig or at your at home,

wherever you are, you can just record really quickly with this using your tone models that you already have loaded in here.

All right, so I have a preset pulled up here

that is using some delay and reverb that's all running off the Tonex plug, and I have like a Stratty sound pulled up, and this is what it sounds like.

I'm sorry.

So let's take a quick look at the Tonex control app

because this is the main way that you'll We'll be controlling the Tonex plug.

I have it connected right now over Bluetooth to the Tonex plug

and on the first tab here in the editor you can see I have an AC30 tone model pulled up

and if I scroll across here you can see the cab you can see some of these effects

and I have a reverb here that is turned on

and you you can get to all the controls in the signal chain, turn them on and off just like that.

You can change the algorithm and you can come in here and turn on individual things.

You can come in and edit the cab, whether you want to use the built-in tone model cab or you have an IR that you want to use.

You can come here and you can come in and actually change the tone model.

So So you can download tone models from ToneNet and replace them there.

And you can directly load them in here.

You can get to all of the advanced parameters if you want to check the presence control or the depth, kind of change some of those type of things,

you can do that there.

And then if we move over to the next tab, you can see all of the different slots that are loaded with presets on the ToneX plug.

And then if I go over here, these are things that I've downloaded here and

that I can choose to then move over and load into one of the preset slots.

And I can also just directly switch between presets here and just kind of demo different sounds that I have loaded.

And so the next tab is the ToneNet tab where you can log into your account

and you can search for presets for tone models.

Right here I have searched for my Sunday Tone Deluxe Reverb model.

and you can see some of the options there.

And I can directly click on one of those and load it directly into my Tonex plug.

Next, you have the tools tab where you have a tuner that you can use.

You also have a metronome that you can use

if you're trying to practice or learn a part by slowing it down and speeding it up.

And then the last tab there you have is a menu where you can get to your account info.

You can get to the user manual for the Tonex plug.

You can get to settings for the Tonex plug where you can connect and disconnect from Bluetooth.

You can access the input trim.

So if you have tone models that you like to set at a certain setting, you can get to that there and a couple of other settings for the actual unit.

So over the last couple of days, I've been playing around with this, using it to practice, bringing along with me wherever I go in my guitar case.

And honestly, I can't imagine not having it now

and I don't know how it's taken me this long to get a device like this.

I know there's a couple of other out there headphone amps like this that allow you to do this,

but honestly, none of those ecosystems have ever been something that I've used.

But being able to use my Tonex captures in the same sounds

that I use on a Sunday at a gig wherever I play with Tonex, being able to quickly just copy those over to this

and practice on the couch or wherever I'm at is super convenient and it works really well.

So just having this in my case is just a tool

that I think everyone should have if you are a Tonex user.

And if you're not, you should really check it out

because Tonex is my favorite amp modeling platform that there is out there

and I use it for everything over the last couple of years.

Another thing I've been curious about with this

that I tested out was plugging it into my pedal board

to see can I run my pedal board into it

and get sounds just like I would with the Tone X1 or the Tone X pedal.

And I've done that and it works great, sounds great, and it's just another way to be able to kind of test out your sounds,

whether you show up to rehearsal early and the sound system isn't on yet, but you wanna be able to quickly just plug in and play along with some of the stuff that you're working on.

I actually right here have the Chroma console hooked up right into this

and it's just a cool way while you're practicing to just demo different sounds in a pedal that you're working with.

And it's just been really fun to play around with this and have it with me wherever I go.

Let me know in the comments below what questions do you have about this.

Just seeing the signal chain in the app

100

and how you can quickly move through things

101

and edit things just makes me curious about the future with Tonex

102

and if they're going to release a larger unit that kind of utilizes this signal chain with more effects,

103

more algorithms, something along the lines of a Helix Stadium or a Quad Cortex because I love the Tonex ecosystem.

104

So if they did something like that, I think it would be really awesome to have an all-in-one unit that has these sounds in it.

105

Let me know what you think about a full-on Tonex all-in-one unit.

106

And if you haven't checked out a device like this, it's a really good idea to have something like this in your gig bag along with your gear,

107

no matter where you go to be able to just plug in and practice just off of a battery.

108

It's pretty cool.

109

Let me know what you think in the comments and I will see you all in the next one.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Tonex Plug Headphone Amp | First Impressions and Review - Learn English Speaking with Video

About This Lesson

What is the Shadowing Technique?