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.

I have looked at getting a Tonewood amp for a long time. Ever since they first came out and started putting professional players behind an acoustic with a Tonewood installed in it. I finally got an acoustic guitar that I wouldn't mind forever installing the X bracing mount in it. I put it in a PRS SE T-60 Tonares made of Ziricote. Stunning to look at, but with the Tonewood amp in it. It's just amazing. Magical wouldn't be too far of a stretch! Really!! There are so many videos out there now for this device. Go watch a few and you'll not believe your ears. Wear headphones! online videos are compressed, and sometimes the effect doesnt come across as well as it does in person.
Pros: for the price, you really get so very much!!! The sound coming out of the sound hole, will inspire you to pick up your acoustic so much! From 3 flavors of reverb, to various delay and other modulation effects, to even gain if you want a little growl on your melody. Its just so intense, you must hear it for yourself. This is probably the wave of the future when it comes to acoustic guitars. The sound, all the effects, everything, comes out of the sound hole. You aren't plugging into some other piece of equipment like a PA or acoustic guitar amp or anything else. It is a stand alone piece of gear that will blow your mind. But, and this is a big but, if you want to plug in, you have that option also, and all the effects that were coming from the sound hole, is now coming out of the speakers. You can even record through this beauty. And its small enough to fit in the little cargo containers in most acoustic cases.
Cons: READ the directions before you start installing the x brace. This is so important, it cannot be understated. Where that brace goes, is all dependent on what body size the guitar has. Also, this is for acoustic electrics only! If you have a straight acoustic guitar, you are going to need a pickup installed. They make a sound hole pickup you can retrofit if your guitar is not an A/E, but I don't have any experience with that. So you plug the Tonewood amp, into the jack that connects to the piezo pickup under the saddle. This is where the Tonewood gets its signal from. So you have to have that connection going on. It takes that signal, and then vibrates the back of the guitar, to produce the effects. That's why it comes out of the sound hole and not out of a speaker. The body of the guitar is the speaker. Its truly an amazing piece of equipment.
dialing in the amount of effects takes some doing. too much effect, and you get a feedback scream, just like putting a microphone in front of an amp. Balancing the amount of effect, vs the volume of the effect, is a time consuming process. But so worth it. It's simply beautiful once it's all in place...

For the fact that ToneWoodAmp is a genuine new invention that holdsup to its promises, I would definitely give it a 5 stars because of the wonderful possibility to open the doors of acoustic possibilities without even the use of external equipment. Yes, it is truly a genius idea and a pleasure to play with it. Unplugged will never be the same anymore. I am pretty sure that I will not play without the ToneWoodAmp in public if I am not using a PA / amp.
This said, is it worth the money?
I'd say yeah! And if you are a left-handed person, it would be well advised to ask the company to send you a left handed one. Because they could do it. Inverting the display so that you can use it. Otherwise, it won't do at all!
However, it will not be a truly lefty device, since the knobs will be on the other side.
Nonetheless, I am glad to have it!
Only negative point in this. The power consumption is not up to par with this device. As you may want to do ,is to use rechargeable batteries for it . However, there is two drawbacks to that.
One is that batteries will not last as long since the device use quite a lot of energy. Two, you may have a hard time removing them from the device, as they are often larger than non rechargeable alkaline batteries.
I had to use a rounded file to file the plastic in order to have the batteries fit without getting stuck . Doing so, I forfeited the warranty. So, this isn't a great thing.
I hope that in the future they may have a new model that can be USB recharged. This would do great for the future of this amp/effect device.
Other than that? Well, there are plenty of essential effects and enough tweaking to get a sound that you will be so happy to play with.
All in all! I recommend this to all acoustic guitars players out there.
Pro or not!

It is really is fun – three types of lush-sounding reverb and the delay are the first ports of call and the fact that the latter has editable speed and feedback, as well as its own reverb, means you can really tailor it.

The onboard controls and small display screen feel intuitive to use and encourage you to edit the effects to suit your tastes.

Those time-based effects would be enough on their own but there’s also Tremolo Delay, Leslie, Autowah and even Overdrive. A software update via USB can replace the latter with Chorus, which is just as well as Overdrive tends to suffer the most from feedback issues and clipping.

The sounds feel organic, even pleasingly gritty and analogue-esque at times when you play harder. Though you need to be careful with the ‘Amplitude’ volume and gain levels to avoid clipping when digging in. It’s easy to see why players like Mike Dawes love this device, and you can even use the output to gig with it too.

You can get sounds fast that wouldn’t be possible without finding your guitar lead and booting up a computer or an amp with effects.