Ibanez: PENTATONE PREAMP
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- www.ibanez.com...
Ibanez are punching their way into 2023 with their new Pentatone Preamp, a distortion-based preamp with 5-Band EQ, Pre and Post Boost (all switchable) and a very handy and non-intrusive Gate. The sounds are all geared towards the tougher end of the tone spectrum however I was pleasantly surprised by how the Pentatone also reacted with a simple Telecaster (I'll upload that video in the next day or so). I think the Pentatone Preamp will be very welcome on many pedalboards and studio desks alike. Good stuff, Ibanez!
From their site:
"Extraordinary tone shaping control, dynamic arrays of distortion and exceptional amounts of EQ are all laid out at your feet. The Pentatone preamp from Ibanez affords the perfect blend of features all wrapped up in an intuitive, all-analog platform. This preamp brings together five individual tone shaping sections in the form of a pre boost, distortion with two band EQ, a noise gate, 5-band parametric EQ, and post boost. The pedal also includes a bright switch, which enhances treble response by boosting the high frequency range. The two integrated footswitches control the preamp bypass and post boost functions, while adding an Ibanez IFS2L external foot-switch enhances the player’s control even further by also making the pre-boost and 5-band parametric EQ foot-switchable. From simple tone shaping, to crunchy overdrive and even the most crushing distortion, the Pentatone preamp covers it all."
Today's tools:
Guitar: PRS SE Mark Holcomb Signature. Stock
Amp: Axe-FX III MKII running Cygnus X-2 FW 21.01 Various amp models as per the demonstration
Cables: Fender and Providence
Strings: Ernie Ball
Mic: DPA 4166-OC-F-F00-ME Headset Mic (www.dpamicroph...) with Sennheiser EWD Transmitter/Receiver (en-us.sennheis...)
Camera: GoPro HERO10 Black and Canon D60
Soundcard: PreSonus Quantum & Fractal Audio Systems Axe-FX III MKII (guitar, mixing and bouncing).
Desktop Monitors: PreSonus R80 R-Series Active AMT Studio Monitors (www.presonus.com)
Computer: 2017 Apple iMac Pro, 2.5 GHz 14-Core Intel Xeon W, 64 GB 2666 MHz DDR4, Radeon Pro Vega 64X 16 GB
If you're interested to see/hear how the Pentatone gets on with single coil equipped guitars, there's a Tele-based demo at th-cam.com/video/225Tk4ZSCBQ/w-d-xo.html
I LOVE my Ibanez Pentatone 5 band Parametric EQ, it’s incredible and has a range between 30k & 14,000k, it’s extremely powerful!
Face melting Burgs! It’s ferocious 🔥
Happy New Years🎉
Excellent demo…I wasn’t expecting this to sound this good…great sounding distortion!!!!
My Pentatone just arrived in the mail. I had watched this video before I was actually able to find it in stock in the states. I looked at the owner manual that came with it and was unimpressed with the technical writing. It left me asking “what?” I really appreciated being able to refer back to your video. The split screen that shows what affect each of the adjustments you are making has on the overall tone is a brilliant instructive production tool. Thank you
Technical writing is a lost art.
Been in the market for a distortion pedal. I’m sold.
Oh man this is great! Killer demo Brett, love seeing Ibanez do pedals again.
What an incredible and versatile pedal, mate. Absolutely loving it and so I do the video which sounds terrific, as usual. When seeing it I was immediately a bit reminded of the old Ibanez TK999 Tube King pedal which was a great one as well, with inbuilt 12AX7 valve, and which is now mostly forgotten nowadays. It had an inbuilt Noisegate as well. There is a great Behringer clone called VT999 though. I have both and they are amazing. And this PENTATONE Preamp sounds truly awesome and it is even more versatile, especially with the graphic EQ addition. Depending on the speaker IR and setting you can cover a lot from nasty blues rock to even djenty metal. Cheers, Brett!
The frequency knobs make the graphic EQ even a bit of a parametric EQ as well, as I can see now. What an amazing concept.
I love the old Tube King. I use a Maxon clone - ROD-881
@@mattgilbert7347 A great one as well!
Happy New year my friend.. sounds absolutely brutal man..killer rig and the noise gate really cleans it up
This reminds me of the Boogie mark series in a pedal.
Should I get this or the mesa throttle? Wife is telling me to stop buying more drives pedal. 😅
Excellent demo. Thank you!😎👍💯
That’s pretty bad ass !!!! What a thick killer sound !!!! You play incredibly through that!!! Happy New year from Seattle !!!
Thanks Derek. Happy New Year to you too. I hope it's not too chilly up there! Complete opposite here today. 35C right now.
That's a pretty cool device for doing some tone sculpting!!! Cheers!!! 👍🏻
That's a crazy precise EQ. Wish Ibanez made that as a standalone EQ pedal without the gain or the boost side. Sounds killer though!
A real light gain version would be pretty useful too. Ranging from sparkly clean to a mild drive and then the extra boost..., I think I'd be really tempted. They're cheap too!
@@mariodriessen9740 I'd immediatly buy a low gain version of this
@@mariodriessen9740 Yeah totally. I imagine they'd make a killing just by throwing in their TS9 or 808 circuit and painting it a green sparkle. I know I would buy one in two seconds.
@@LeviBulger : Hahaha…, I’m not a huge fan of the Tubescreamer, but yeah, something like that. 😊
@@LeviBulger the folks at Ibanez wanna know your location lol
Very Cool Pedal. Sounds Amazing. Cheers
Thick wall of incredible sounding gain, Gain, GAIN, G A I N. Sounds absolutely Brutal. I love this one.
All the gain, yet never too compressed.
@@rickc2102 Why isn't his unit more Well-known ???
Happy New Year!😀
Thank you. Happy New Year to you too. :D
Wow. I'm not easily impressed with new gear all that much anymore, but this is quite interesting. Great concept and layout!
Just got one. Pedal of the year, if not decade for me! Starts there, where my PlexiTone ends.
No clean or crunch tones, not even vintage overdrive, but excellent, widely adjustable modern high-gain tones in top notch quality.
The sound quality you hardly can get better with real tubes, so Ibanez really did a good job. Plus, for the gain range this pedal really works very silent and if not, the built-in noise gate does a good job, but the secret weapons are pre-boost, which also can reduce input level and the parametric eq.
Sounds good even standalone, but even much better in combination with a tube (power) amp. But also some other tube gear or a cheap budget tube amp makes a difference.
Also interesting, how different the pedal with the same settings sounds in combination with EL34 or 6L6 tubes. The 6L6 give you nice Rectifier / MK.V sounds, while the EL34 alter the sound to an even more aggresssive Diezel, SLO, Engl, 5150 sound.
Treble sounds beautiful, especially in comparison with some other tubeless pedal preamps. No harsh, shrill, scratchy tones, nevertheless you can adjust excellent razor-sharp Metal treble too, but also a very sweet Petrucci-like one easily.
A bargain for the price!
Happy New Year Brent! A ripper pedal!
Cheers, Greg. Same to you. Thanks for watching.
Happy New Year, Burgs, to you and your fam! This is the first TH-cam clip I'm watching this year. (WooHoo? Maybe yes!)) Cheers! The Ibanez sounds wicked btw! A nice little high gain beast.
At 4:04...the sound that launched Boston!
Happy New Year to you and yours. Thanks for the near constant stream of excellent reviews over the years!
that sounds great!
Merry Christmas everyone. My brother just gave me one of these today and I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet so came to have a little look. He’s great he got me a Kirk Hammett cry baby wah a few months back too. Sick pedal this one looks tbf, I was going to get separate equaliser and noise gate pedals and my distortion is really cheap make so this is a few things in one and sounds great
I play mostly metal and have a ESP with EMG active pickups which either goes through my little blackstar amp or my laptop interface so I’m hoping it’s a good addition to my rig
Amazing playing, as ever, and a great sounding product.
Didn’t expect this from Ibanez worth checking out!🙂🎸👍
Heavy New Year!😊
0 gain is still incredibly ballsy I love it!
That's true. It almost looks at me like I'm an idiot: "There's no WAY you're going to get a polite drive out of me, mister. What were you thinking?" 😅
I myself just purchased a more obscure distortion generator from Japan, the Rancher GOAT Generator. It’s bent is to emulate the Tom Scholz Rockman Distortion module (but in a pedal). Some of the tones you generated while demonstrating this Ibanez model definitely do the same thing, but dialing them in is a different matter.
Excellent.
Phil. 👍🎶
Happy New Year Brett!
Great demo great product as always Brett.Happy New Year’s 🤟🏻
Thanks, Mark. Happy New Year to you too. All the best.
Extreme nice!
Happy New Year Brett😎👍
😎👍❤🖖
That's some Sholz love 💕. Happy new year Brett!!
pretty dam good sound
Hi Burgs! Shit that sounds ballz!!! 😎🤘
5 band parametric! Impressive and useful.
Great demo . That thing looks and sounds great . I like the design integration of important features like that super powerful tone shaping EQ , and the noise gate is a must . Someone intelligent designed this thing . Only thing that comes to mind is that maybe they re-packaged the tone of their SS Toneblaster amp into this small box ? Even if so ... its a very nice unit . But def not for me at over 400 bucks .
Great review Brett, that is definitely a puddle I got a look into for those moments when I need a metal sound The pedal nails it
Pedal of No Mud
Hot in Langwarrin too!
sounds really great.
Sounds good.
New Year, New Solo Album?
Well, we're waiting. HNY 🎉
Cheers 🍻
❤️
Tom Scholz would like this.
Yeah, I imagine he would. Turn on, push 800Hz up by 6dB, done.
@@BrettKingman Tom made a great living off upping 800Hz 😃 My first thought on hearing this was a Rockman.
Thought so. Tom scholz should release a pedal himself with ibanez collaboration 🔥
@@Bilsuburbians that is serious a good idea. My fist product that made distortion was a Scholtz Rockman and it actually sounded descent.
Needs compression and chorus.
Damn... i need this
That's a pretty nice pedal.
How would you compare this to say, a Solar Chug or KSR Ceres?
Btw, glad to see a fellow Brett that spells our name correctly 🤠
cool pedal
Hi. Can you do a bass demo? I stopped playing guitar for now. ;)
I'm a pretty crap bass player but I like the idea and will find some time to do this.
I see one eq, compressor, overdrive pedals removed from from my board already.
Hey Brett when this bad boy available in Australia
Shouldn't be too long, Michael. It was only 'formally' announced today but I imagine stock will be available here from the usual dealers before the end of the month.
Thanks mate appreciate it. Sound nuts
I wonder is the EQ after or before the clipping stages?
Is this the Ultimate Metal Pedal? I think it just might be. I'd love to hear a lower gain version of this, though. The versatility is pretty amazong.
Seriously, I'm gonna have to get one of these, and also one of the standalone EQs to put in front of all my regular drives.
Just got mine! For me, it's overkill but I love it!
Does the eq work while on a clean channel or using an amp sim into cabinet?
.... !!! ay just heard the mother of al...metal pedals.!!! just need to buyet...
Sounds great. Whats the difference between a preamp and a just another pedal?
Preamps stabilize the signal at the beginning of your chain.
😃👍👍
a hm-2 copy again?
No.
This vs the Apex Preamp vs ChopperZ
I just bought the Pentatone and a Seymour Duncan Powerstage 170. I ran it into my early 1980's Marshall JCM 800 4x12. This combo sounds like shit. I couldn't get a decent tone. Do you need to run the Pentatone into a tube head or an actual guitar amp to get a good tone ?
In my experiences the power stage isn’t going to shape a tone like you are hoping it will. I don’t use the power stage regularly, but i recall it being a bit more flat response. You have a ton of tonal options on the pentatone itself, but you are going to find a lot more result out of front loading it into an amp. I have seen people who swear by loading the pentatone into their effects loops, and some who swear by front loading it - it’s all preference. I have found that a lower gain threshold on the preamp - and then using the pre and post on your head makes great results. It’s a really versatile pedal, so try using it into a Marshall head, and you are going to see a difference in the tone that you achieve.
I use mine for extreme metal and punk rock - and it delivers, at least for me. Hope you find the tone you’re looking for.
Meaty
It's a mesa boogie mark 4 in a box
🦧
Open and loose sounding...big, thick, might tighten up with a pre overdrive.
The sea of too-similar-sounding overdrives, distortions and fuzzes presently available prove that it's the song, not the gear. Without an original and creative song - lyrics, rhythm, melody, dynamics, instrumentation - all you get is one wall of grind indistinguishable from the next....
Do you know what the cost is ? Thanks
It will vary around the world, Dave. Sweetwater have them on preorder in the US, Thomann are carrying them in Europe, I believe. Major Australian retailers will be carrying them too. Australian RRP is $469 but you can bet there'll be a street price.
Tube screamer