HeadRush MX5 - Electric Guitar Multi Effects Pedal and Amp Modeling Processor with Touch Screen, Expression Pedal, Looper, and Audio Interface

I love the tones I hear on recordings of my favorite guitarists. THOSE are the sounds I want to hear when I’m playing. So my new ‘rig’ is a powered FRFR cabinet being fed by a digital modeler front end. I tried the $399 Tonex unit and found it mostly excellent except that it isn’t a true modeling amp but rather a unit built around specific tone samples. Some were fantastic, others much less so. The unit also had a handful of basic effects to complement those samples. In contrast, and for only $100 more, the HeadRush Flex Prime uses meticulously crafted models of LOTS and LOTS of actual popular amps, effects, cabinets and IRs too. I finally have the full spectrum of guitar tones spanning from the 50s through today, accurately and faithfully reproduced, right down to the feel of how the tones respond to my fingers, pick, dynamics and note muting techniques.I am currently feeding it into my Spark FRFR cabinet and it sounds terrific, and ay all volume levels too. Getting satisfying, album-like tones at low volume levels is one of the benefits of using a FRFR based system. A conventional tube amp has to be cranked to ear-splitting levels to get the tones we crave, but that our wives and neighbors hate to also have to listen to. This unit supposedly has the exact same technical innards and sound models as the bigger, more expensive HeadRush units, and each tonal patch allow up to fifteen ‘blocks’ including an amp and cab, and are almost endlessly tweakable, but easily and in instantly musically ways. I’ve had it now for about a month and have already created the dozen or so patches I need to cover 90% of what I need. The learning curve is about an hour, but the combinations of tonal elements near infinite, and so I’ve barely scratched the surface. But the results are accurate, satisfying and most importantly, INSPIRING! You just want to play for hours!But it doesn’t stop there. Included is their ‘Revalver 5.0’ software, a program where you can modify amp models’ internal circuitry and build rigs that can ultimately be transferred to your physical unit. There’s also their ‘Amp Cloner’ software for capturing your own amps’ tones should you have a specific amp sound you’d like to take everywhere you go without having to lug your heavy tube amp head/combo and half/full stack. I’m just getting into these so look for a follow-up review in another few months.Is the experience the same as standing in front of a raging stack blasting at 120 db while your pant legs flutter? No. But in my mind it’s better. You get to hear the tones you’re actually chasing, like you hear on the albums, at any volume you want. And they sound right because this little box has accurate models of the amps that created them, not just the one or two tones your stack provides.

I am extremely happy with this purchase and was pleasantly surprised at the build and versatility of this little tank.First and foremost, while I didn't go through all of the literally hundreds of built-in effects and amp modelers that come with the device, I played around with them enough to know that they are decent, but not mind-blowing. The good thing about that though is there are tons of resources on the web where you can download free and premium (paid) IRs (Impulse Responses) and guitar rigs to faithfully recreate the perfect tones you are wanting from top artists and songs, as well as pre-designed IRs, rigs, and tones that were curated by pros with way more time, patience, and skill than me. I ended up deleting pretty much all of the stock IRs and rigs from the device and I'm replacing them with third-party amps and effects that I use for my own style of playing. All of the ones I've put on the device sound incredible so far even through my cheap Danelectro Nifty Fifty practice amp, and I'm beyond pleased and excited to find what else is out there. The touchscreen is bright and responsive, and is pretty intuitive once you know what you're looking at. Adding new tones is a fairly simple process of plugging your MX5 into your computer, go to Global Settings -> USB Transfer and all of the effects, rigs, and IRs will then be displayed in your File Explorer. You can delete, replace, remove and upload to your heart's content using this method.Now, for the trickier part - operating the pedal has a good bit of a learning curve. I've found it to be pretty essential that, if you don't have a brain that likes playing with tech and figuring things out, a thorough reading of the manual is a must. Since there are only three stomp switches, putting together a "setlist" with multiple guitar rigs and learning how to switch between them took me about an hour or so of playing around to figure out and I still have to pause for a moment to remember how to do certain functions (although the more I use it, I'm getting faster).That aside, I am still giving this the 5-star rating it deserves due to the fact that I KNEW going into it that having only three switches would make things slightly more complicated. That is no fault of the manufacturer, but rather part of the design and the price I signed up for when buying this. I will say, however, that I plan to get the HeadRush Prime in light of the fact that it gives you much more control by having 12 switches as opposed to three (so that I can trigger and control individual effects without needing to perform complicated switching on the fly to get to a specific component). Overall, I highly recommend the MX5 for those who may not need a ton of instant versatility and dynamics and maybe only want to play with a handful of guitar tones at any given time. The pedal itself is designed well, sounds GREAT, and is more than enough for most types of guitar playing out there.