ToneWoodAmp Multieffekt for Acousticguitar

This incredible product has expanded my musical horizon.
I first saw a demo of this product on the Andertons Youtube channel in the Interview with Mike Dawes, an incredible fingerstyle player from the UK. This is not an amplifier in the usual sense, it will not make your acoustic guitar sound louder. It will add effects like delay, reverb and modulation to your acoustic guitar. It does so by vibrating the back of the guitar and the result comes out of the sound hole.
You will need a nylon or steel string acoustic guitar with some sort of element built in. The back of the guitar has to be flat. The signal goes in to the Tonewood Amp which attaches magnetically to the back of the guitar. In order to do this you will have to install a magnetic X-brace to the inside of your guitar.
The online manual will help you there and having some scotch tape ready beforehand is a good idea (the kind that does not leave residue on your guitar).
When properly installed you can explore 8 different effects anywhere you feel like, Three reverbs, Hall, Room, Plate, then Delay, Tremelo, Lesly, Autowah and Distortion. The latter works best with a soundhole pick up and sounds awful with a Piezo. Fortunately you can upgrade the firmware via micro usb from a PC or Mac and change the distortion effect to Chorus. Great improvement.
Also there is an IO cable available to send MIDI generated music from your IOS device to the Tonewood amp for extra effects or backing tracks. I have an Android phone so I did not try this. It is not supported because there is no MIDI in Android yet.
The Tonewood amp comes with one X-brace. You can order more separately but they are a bit expensive which is a downside. Also a big downside of the series I got is that it will not take common rechargeable batteries. These usually have a slightly larger diameter than regular batteries and get stuck in the housing or can damage the PCB inside. Tonewood has promised to widen the cavity in the next series but for now recommend using special brands of rechargeables or taping them together or even worse loosening the screws on the housing to release stuck batteries.
As to build quality it feels solid and the knobs have a nice feel to it when turning or pushing. The different menu-knob combinations can be a bit difficult to get at first but that is what the manual is for.
Connecting a USB cable is a bit glitchy, the connector has to have a long tip. Also do not move the amp or cable around when updating.
I have played my guitar and tonewood amp at home, outside and in bars. To much amazement and delight to the audience and of course myself. Also I have used it as a Direct In (DI) to a mixer which is a nice feature. A downside there can be the power save mode you will need to disable up front. Also it does not work on external power as far as I have found but it will work for 8 hrs with fresh AA batteries.
Every guitar and pickup is different so you can store guitar profiles with their relative gain and volume settings and every effect has ten memory slots available. Also you can filter out feedback frequencies if necessary.
Seriously, to have reverb or delay coming from your guitar is awesome. Having Autowah (frequency filtering) available when you do a Stevie Wonder or Jimmy makes everyone goes whoo. You will get it once you play with it. And you will never want to play without it.
Yeah it is exactly like a Yamaha Transacoustic but you can put it on more than one guitar. I have installed X-braces to a Yamaha AX 6 and a Yamaha AX4, A Thomann Classical Fusion 8 and a Fender DG8-S (both with a Fishman Presys built in) Have fun!

Many reviews are raving about this device, and it is quite fun and shocking to hear effects coming out of the soundhole out of your acoustic guitar. But once the surprise wears off, I feel it takes away from the natural sparkle and projection of my guitar. It ends up only really sounding great when amplified (either with a mic - which is why all the ads sound so gread - or by plugging it in), which kinda defeats the purpose of the device. Because in an amplified scenario, a pedal would be cheaper, have more functionality and could be operated by foot mid-song.

The dials are not very precise. You need to turn it several clicks to move to the next effect. Quickly moving over a few effects at once isn't possible, because it will register four quick clicks to the right as moving over one effect. Then wait a second, en then turn again for the next effect. This might get frustrating during a show.

There is a slight constant high-pitched buzz as long as the device is turned on. All the effects do have an unpleasant, high-pitched ring to it and at any volume that I was able to hear them, muddied up the natural sound of my guitar.

I've installed a TWA in my SelMac style Gitane DG320 model.

The hall verb is basically what I need (Jazz) and the guitar sounds so freaking good is hard to put it down. It really sounds as if I was in a big hall. Super Jazzy feeling for solos a-la Joe Pass.

I'm using a shadow double piezo (to the body near both sides on the bridge. These are normally very quiet and need a pre amp, the TWA certainly amplifies them enough, I don't even need to have full gain/volume.

- The build quality is great. Very solid piece of gear.

- Installation is easy and yeah, the TWA is firmly installed. No real need to glue the X brace to my guitar.

- The notch filters to deal with the main resonances do a very good job.

- I recommend to unscrew the base at the battery compartment (about half to one turn) cause indeed Li-Ion batteries have a hard time getting in and out. After unscrewing those a bit they slide out without problem.

- EBL Li-Ion Batteries last at least 4 hours or more, at least 4 or five practice sessions of about an hour average.

- The effects are great, especially the verbs. The chorus is good too. The tremolo is basically useless.

5 out of 5. This is one of the coolest guitar gear I ever owned.