The amp-in-a-box concept has been chasing the same dream for thirty years: put the soul of a great amplifier into a stompbox, without the weight, the microphone, the road cases, or the amp tech standing in the wings. Digital modeling cracked the problem for millions of players. But a small, stubborn contingent kept asking a different question — not “can software replicate a tube amp?” but “what if we just used a tube?”
That is exactly the argument Two Notes Audio Engineering made when they launched the ReVolt Guitar in 2022. Not a modeler. Not a profiler. Not a neural network trained on thousands of impulse responses. A real 12AX7 preamp tube, running at full plate voltage inside a compact stompbox, feeding three channels inspired by three of the most influential amplifiers ever built — a Fender Bassman 100, a Marshall JMP Super Lead, and a Soldano SLO-100. The result is a pedal that invites you to rebuild your entire rig around it, and for a growing number of players, that is exactly what they have done.
Two Notes Before the ReVolt: From Torpedo to Triple Threat
Two Notes Audio Engineering was founded in 2008 in Montpellier, France by Dr. Guillaume Pille, a physicist who presented his first AES paper on dynamic impulse response synthesis in 2006. The company built its early reputation on the Torpedo series — loadboxes, attenuators, and cabinet simulators that allowed players to run tube amplifiers silently and capture their tone directly to a DAW or PA. The dynIR technology at the heart of those products (covered in depth in our Torpedo Captor X feature) captured speaker behavior dynamically at multiple volume levels, creating virtual cabinets with adjustable mic positions that behaved like real ones.
By 2015, Two Notes had proven something important: they understood what a tube amplifier sounded like from the output transformer forward. The question was whether they could credibly represent what happened before it. Their first answer was the Le series — Le Clean, Le Crunch, Le Lead, and Le Bass — four single-channel tube preamp pedals, each containing a 12AX7 and targeting a specific amp character. The Le pedals were warmly received and quietly influential. But they had a structural problem: to get three channels, you needed three pedals, three power supplies, and three footswitches.
The ReVolt Guitar was the solution. Announced at NAMM 2022 in Nashville (Two Notes booth, Hall D, Booth #5239, June 2022) and officially launched May 24, 2022, the ReVolt Guitar unified all three Le guitar channels into a single enclosure, added a boost circuit, an effects loop, MIDI I/O, a balanced XLR output, and bundled the whole thing with a lifetime license to the Wall of Sound cabinet simulation software. The shipping date was September 2022. The launch price was $399 / €399 / £349 — unchanged at time of writing. Two Notes called the result the Triple Threat.
What Is the ReVolt Guitar, Exactly?
This is worth being precise about, because the ReVolt Guitar sits at an unusual intersection of categories. It is not a digital modeler: there is no DSP, no impulse response playback in hardware, and no preset memory. It is not an all-tube amplifier: there is only one tube, a PSVANE ECC83 (12AX7) running as an output-stage cathode follower at 200 volts DC. That detail matters. Many “tube” pedals use starved-plate designs where the tube runs at 9V or 12V and functions primarily as a distortion generator rather than a true amplifier stage. At 200V plate voltage, the tube in the ReVolt Guitar is operating as a real tube amplifier stage operates — with real harmonic structure, real dynamic compression, and real interaction with the signal feeding it.
What the ReVolt Guitar is: a three-channel all-analog preamp pedal with a real high-voltage tube in the signal path, a built-in analog cabinet emulation, and a software ecosystem for IR-based cab simulation. Two Notes call it a hybrid solution, and that framing is accurate. The analog tube circuit handles the dynamics, the harmonic structure, and the feel of playing. The software — or an external hardware cab sim like the Two Notes Torpedo C.A.B. M+ — handles the speaker and room character.
For players who love the interaction between a real tube and guitar pickups — the way the harmonic content shifts as you dig in harder, the compression that arrives as the tube approaches saturation, the cleaning up that happens when you roll back the guitar’s volume knob — the ReVolt Guitar delivers this in a way that pure DSP currently does not replicate with identical tactility. For players who want the deep preset library of a Kemper Profiler or the interconnected ecosystem of a Fractal Axe-FX III Mark II, the ReVolt Guitar is not that product. It is simpler, more focused, and analog from input to output.
Specifications
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Type | Three-channel analog preamp pedal with real 12AX7 tube |
| Tube | PSVANE ECC83 / 12AX7, full plate voltage at 200V DC |
| Channel 1 | American Clean — inspired by Fender Bassman 100 |
| Channel 2 | British Crunch — inspired by Marshall JMP Super Lead |
| Channel 3 | Modern Lead — inspired by Soldano SLO-100 |
| Clean EQ | 2-band: Bass, Treble (independent) |
| Crunch / Lead EQ | Shared 3-band: Bass (100 Hz), Mid (750 Hz), Treble (1.5 kHz) |
| Boost | OD-Boost, shared knob, up to +20 dB; activated by pressing active channel’s footswitch again |
| Effects Loop | Serial Send / Return (1/4″) |
| 4-Cable Method | Dedicated front-panel switch |
| Cab Simulation | Onboard analog (fixed Marshall Slash 4×12 character); Wall of Sound plugin (lifetime license) + 10 DynIR Series-G captures included |
| Outputs | 1/4″ instrument out, balanced XLR out, headphone out (6.35 mm) |
| Inputs | 1/4″ guitar in, 3.5 mm aux in |
| MIDI | TRS MIDI In / Out |
| Bypass | Press Clean + Crunch footswitches simultaneously (no dedicated bypass switch) |
| Power | 12V DC, 600 mA (center negative; included) |
| Dimensions | 192 mm × 117 mm × 70 mm (7″ × 4.5″ × 3″) |
| Weight | Approximately 1.1 kg |
| Street Price | $399 USD / €399 / £349 |
Famous Players: The Honest Position
The Two Notes ReVolt Guitar does not have a named signature artist. There is no famous player who built their stage sound around this specific pedal and told the world about it in a verified interview or rig rundown. This is not a criticism — it is a structural fact about the product category, and understanding it is part of understanding what this pedal is for.
Two Notes, as a brand, has artists affiliated with their ecosystem. Tosin Abasi of Animals As Leaders has used Two Notes equipment in his signal chain. Devin Townsend has spoken positively about the company’s cab simulation technology. Steve Stevens, Billy Idol’s guitarist, has documented Two Notes gear in his touring rig. But none of these affiliations have been confirmed via primary source — manufacturer product page with photo, verified Rig Rundown, or artist interview in their own words — as specifically involving the ReVolt Guitar pedal. They are brand-level associations, not SKU-level endorsements. Treating them as evidence that famous artists play a ReVolt Guitar would repeat exactly the brand-vs-SKU error this project documents in every resonator article from Ranks 372 onward.
The same structural logic applies here as with the Torpedo Captor X : preamp pedals that do not carry a guitarist’s name attract working professionals who care about signal chain flexibility and consistency, not marquee endorsements. A player running a ReVolt Guitar on tour is replacing something that used to require an amp head, a microphone, and a position in the monitor mix. The value of that substitution is practical, not promotional. The loudest endorsement for this pedal comes from its growing secondary market and from the professional player forums where it is discussed as a serious rig-building foundation rather than a bedroom curiosity.
Channel by Channel: What You Actually Get
American Clean — Fender Bassman 100
The Bassman 100 was Leo Fender’s attempt to build a powerful bass amplifier for the rock and roll era. History was unkind to that ambition in one direction and extraordinarily generous in another: the Bassman’s loose, wide low end and bright, shimmering top end turned out to be exactly wrong for electric bass but exactly right for electric guitar. It became the first circuit Jim Marshall reverse-engineered on his way to building the JTM45, and it defined the sound of country-twang and early rock and roll clean tones for decades.
The American Clean channel on the ReVolt Guitar captures the Bassman character faithfully — glassy top end, scooped midrange, round lows with a slight bloom, and headroom that does not break up under most pickup outputs without the boost engaged. The two-band EQ is Bass and Treble only. At noon on both controls the sound is spacious and sparkly, with a low-end fullness that most players will trim by rolling the Bass back to around 9 o’clock. The channel delivers the mild tube sag compression that is the Bassman’s tactile signature — the characteristic give in the transient that solid-state cleans do not reproduce. Premier Guitar reviewer Mike Purcell (April 2023 review) noted that the clean headroom is so high it may be “too much for some players.” This channel is a platform, not a self-compressing character amp at low volumes.
British Crunch — Marshall JMP Super Lead
The Marshall JMP Super Lead 100-watt head defined British rock from the late 1960s onward. It was the amp behind Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, Eric Clapton in the Cream years, Pete Townshend’s wall of sound, and the rhythm tracks on countless metal records before high-gain became the norm. Its character — grinding upper midrange, complex harmonic distortion that responds to pick attack, and a compressed bloom when pushed hard — remains one of the most recognizable sounds in rock guitar.
The British Crunch channel works this territory across a wide gain range. Below 11 o’clock, the sounds are old-school plexi — chunky, mid-forward, with the Super Lead’s signature upper-midrange character intact. Above the halfway mark on gain, you move into hot-rodded Marshall territory: tighter distortion, more sustain, the pushed midrange that cuts through a full band mix without becoming shrill. The 3-band EQ — shared with the Modern Lead channel — gives you meaningful control over this character. The 750 Hz mid control sits almost exactly where the Marshall upper-mid push lives. Pulling it back by 1–2 o’clock gives a noticeably more scooped American-rock character; pushing it above noon produces classic NWOBHM density.
The shared EQ between Crunch and Lead channels is the most significant design compromise in the ReVolt Guitar. The crossover points at 100 Hz, 750 Hz, and 1.5 kHz are well-chosen but fixed. This means that once you dial in an EQ setting optimized for the British Crunch, switching to the Modern Lead uses that same EQ curve — which may not be ideal for both channels simultaneously. The practical resolution, as both the Premier Guitar and MusicRadar reviews found, is to pair the Clean with one of the distortion channels for your live set structure, and use the shared EQ to serve that specific pairing.
Modern Lead — Soldano SLO-100
Mike Soldano built his Super Lead Overdrive in 1987 in Seattle, and it became the preferred professional tone tool for a generation of working rock and session guitarists who wanted Marshall-style saturation without Marshall-style unpredictability. The SLO-100 character — heavy low end, scooped midrange, rich upper harmonics with pronounced overtones, articulate even at high gain settings — is demanding to replicate because so much of its appeal lives in the touch-sensitivity of the preamp stage at moderate saturation levels.
The Modern Lead channel captures the tight, responsive quality of the original well. At low gain settings (below 10 o’clock) you get a responsive overdrive that cleans up when you roll back the guitar’s volume knob. As you increase gain, you get the full harmonic bloom of the SLO in full crunch mode. It is almost never muddy — the high-frequency content stays articulate even as distortion increases. Drive pedals placed in front of the channel add thickness and saturation rather than chaos. The MusicRadar review described the boost interaction on this channel particularly well: for higher gain territory, the Modern Lead helps the ReVolt cover an impressively wide tonal landscape that responded well to guitar volume controls.
Five Tone Recipes
1. Studio Clean Platform — Direct to DAW
Activate the analog cab sim via the front-panel mini-switch. Connect the balanced XLR output to your audio interface. American Clean channel: Bass 9 o’clock, Treble 12 o’clock, Gain 11 o’clock, Volume to match unity with your interface input. No boost. Load the Series-G DynOr Fender 2×12 capture from the bundled Wall of Sound plugin in your DAW. This gives you a controlled, warm clean that sits under vocals without fighting for space at 3–5 kHz. A small room reverb from the DAW completes it. This is the session guitarist’s midnight recording setup: no amp, no microphone, no neighbor complaints.
2. Pushed British Crunch — Classic Rock Rhythm
Run a transparent low-gain overdrive (a klone, a Timmy, or similar) into the ReVolt’s front end with the drive set low and the level boosted slightly. British Crunch channel: Gain 10 o’clock, Bass 12, Mid 1 o’clock (pulled back slightly from noon to remove boxiness), Treble 11 o’clock. Volume matched to clean. The tube stage and the overdrive interact the way a pushed amp front end interacts with a pedal — the harmonic structure shifts rather than simply stacking distortion on top of distortion. The result is an AC/DC / Whitesnake / early Van Halen rhythm tone that has genuine dynamic range: dig in harder and it opens up, back off and it cleans slightly.
3. Modern High Gain — FRFR Stage Rig
Modern Lead: Gain 1 o’clock, Bass 11, Mid 10 (scooped), Treble 12. Boost off. Connect the XLR output to an FRFR cabinet (Line 6 Powercab, Headrush FRFR-112, or similar) and load a Mesa/Boogie 4×12 IR with Celestion V30s, or use the included Series-G Mesa cab from the bundled DynIR collection. Add a noise gate in the effects loop for tight riffing. This setup gives you the Soldano SLO-100 experience on stage with no tube amplifier in the room, no microphone, and consistent tone from the front of the house to the stage monitors. The Wall of Sound plugin running on a laptop backstage can feed IRs via USB to further expand the cab selection.
4. Four-Cable Method — Amp Expansion
Activate the 4CM switch on the ReVolt’s front panel. Run: guitar → ReVolt input → ReVolt FX Send → amp’s front input → amp’s FX Send → ReVolt FX Return → amp’s FX Return. When a ReVolt channel is active, the signal routes to your amp’s power section, bypassing its preamp entirely. When no ReVolt channel is active, your amp runs normally. This gives your existing amplifier three additional preamp channels alongside its own. Using the British Crunch into a Fender combo’s power stage creates a hybrid Fender/Marshall voice that neither the ReVolt nor the Fender produces alone. The 4CM switch is front-panel accessible and clearly labeled — no menu diving required.
5. Headphone Practice — Silent Recording at Midnight
Activate the analog cab sim. Connect headphones to the 6.35 mm headphone output. Run a backing track into the 3.5 mm aux input from a phone or laptop. Modern Lead at moderate gain (noon), Boost off. On the shared 3-band EQ, cut 250 Hz slightly and add a small bump at 1.5 kHz to compensate for headphone listening (which tends to over-represent low-mid frequencies). This is the practice rig for apartment players who want real tube interaction — real compression, real harmonic content, real touch response — at zero volume. The internal cab sim is the weakest link in this chain, but it is adequate for practice and far better than no cab simulation at all.
Five Comparisons
Two Notes ReVolt Guitar vs. Line 6 Helix Floor
The Line 6 Helix Floor is a complete signal processing system: amp models, effects, complex routing, preset storage, USB audio interface, and expression pedal input. The ReVolt Guitar is a three-channel preamp with no effects and no preset memory whatsoever. They are not competing for the same player. The Helix Floor wins on versatility, depth, and the ability to recall exact settings night after night without touching a knob. The ReVolt Guitar wins on the tactile tube interaction, the simplicity of physical controls for every parameter, and the price. A player who wants a single box for everything — amp, effects, rig control — should look at the Helix Floor. A player who wants an analog tube preamp to anchor a traditional pedal-based rig should look at the ReVolt Guitar.
Two Notes ReVolt Guitar vs. Neural DSP Quad Cortex
The Neural DSP Quad Cortex uses neural network-based amp modeling to achieve some of the closest digital approximations of tube amplifier behavior available. In head-to-head blind tests, many experienced players cannot reliably distinguish the Quad Cortex from a real tube amp. The ReVolt Guitar uses a real tube. The Quad Cortex costs $1,599 and offers essentially unlimited tonal range through its capture and download ecosystem. The ReVolt Guitar costs $399 and offers three precisely defined channels. For a player who needs those three channels — American clean, British crunch, modern high gain — at a fraction of the cost, and who values analog tactility over digital flexibility, the ReVolt Guitar makes a compelling case.
Two Notes ReVolt Guitar vs. Kemper Profiler Head
The Kemper Profiler Head captures and recreates the complete electrical behavior of any amplifier you point it at, including your own. The ReVolt Guitar captures the behavior of three specific amps using analog circuitry and a real tube. The Kemper is more powerful and more flexible but requires the source amp, or access to a profile library. The ReVolt Guitar is self-contained, less expensive, and easier to integrate into a traditional pedal-based workflow. They address fundamentally different philosophies of what a “great amp in a box” should mean. Neither is wrong; they are solutions to different problems.
Two Notes ReVolt Guitar vs. Fractal Axe-FX III Mark II
The Fractal Axe-FX III Mark II is the professional standard in digital amp processing for artists who require the widest possible tonal range, deep programmability, and a consistent live/studio workflow at the highest level of demand. Its amp modeling is unmatched in depth and accuracy. The ReVolt Guitar is not a realistic alternative to the Axe-FX III — they are not in the same category. What the ReVolt Guitar offers is accessibility: three channels, physical controls for every parameter, a tube, and $399. If you do not need 300 amp models and you do need something you can plug in and gig tonight without reading a manual, the ReVolt Guitar is the answer the Axe-FX III is not.
Two Notes ReVolt Guitar vs. Fender Deluxe Reverb
The Fender Deluxe Reverb is 22 watts of hand-wired American tube amplifier that has defined studio clean tones for sixty years. It is also 42 pounds, requires a microphone and an engineer to translate its output to a recording, and sounds best at volumes that attract noise complaints in apartments and home studios. The ReVolt Guitar’s American Clean channel is not a replacement for a Deluxe Reverb — the Deluxe Reverb wins on room sound, power transformer sag, speaker interaction, and that specific low-midrange bloom that comes from a real output section and a real 12-inch speaker. But for a working session guitarist who needs to deliver a credible Bassman-style clean to a DAW at midnight without waking anyone up, the ReVolt Guitar is a realistic, practical, and economical alternative.
Buying Guide
The Two Notes ReVolt Guitar launched at $399 / €399 in September 2022 and has held that price consistently. It is available new from Sweetwater, Thomann, Andertons, and Two Notes’ own US store. The companion ReVolt Bass — same enclosure and architecture, different channel voicings (Ampeg SVT ’76, Marshall JMP Super Bass, custom modern high-gain) — is priced identically.
On the used market, the ReVolt Guitar typically appears in the $280–$320 range in excellent condition on Reverb and eBay (verified at time of writing). Given the all-analog signal path and the simplicity of the circuit, there is minimal risk in buying used — unlike a digital modeler, there are no firmware dependencies that can orphan the hardware, no cloud subscriptions required for core function, and no risk of a discontinued software ecosystem rendering the hardware less useful. The Wall of Sound software license is tied to a Two Notes account and should transfer with a used sale if you register the pedal’s serial number on the Two Notes website after purchase.
One purchasing consideration worth flagging clearly: the Wall of Sound software is where most of the cab simulation quality lives. The onboard analog cab sim — a fixed Marshall Slash 4×12 character analog emulation — is adequate for quick DI use but noticeably less impressive than the ten included DynIR captures in the bundled software. Both the Premier Guitar review (PG Premier Gear rating, April 2023) and the MusicRadar review (February 2023) note this explicitly. Budget for an audio interface and the time to set up the Wall of Sound plugin, or consider adding a hardware IR loader (the Two Notes Torpedo C.A.B. M+ is the natural companion) to your rig for stage use without a laptop.
Ownership Notes
The bypass method requires attention before your first gig. There is no dedicated bypass footswitch. To engage true bypass, press the Clean and Crunch footswitches simultaneously. This is unintuitive until it is muscle memory, and it means you cannot use the ReVolt Guitar as a switching hub in a live context where you need instant bypass without engaging a channel. Players running complex live setups often add a small external loop switcher to handle this cleanly.
The shared EQ between Crunch and Lead requires a clear setup strategy from the outset. The practical approach: decide which of the two channels is your primary live sound, optimize the EQ curve for that channel, and treat the other as a secondary color that happens to share the same EQ. Fighting this constraint by trying to make Crunch and Lead sound dramatically different from each other using a single shared EQ will frustrate you. Working within it — two voices on one EQ curve — is a coherent philosophy, not a defeat.
Power supply: the 12V DC 600mA requirement means this pedal will not run from a standard 9V output. Verify your pedalboard power supply has a 12V output with at least 600mA available before purchase. Most dedicated pedalboard supplies (Strymon Zuma, Cioks DC7, MXR DC Brick 12V outputs) can handle this. A Two Notes-supplied 12V adapter is included in the box; carry it as a backup on tour.
Tube rolling: the PSVANE ECC83 is a high-quality tube that runs correctly at 200V. The ECC83/12AX7 socket is the most common preamp tube format in existence, so alternatives are easy to source. JJ ECC83S, Tung-Sol 12AX7, Mullard reissue, and NOS European tubes all fit. At 200V plate voltage, the tonal character differences between 12AX7 variants will be more audible than in starved-plate designs — rolling from a high-gain JJ to a warm, low-gain Mullard reissue will noticeably shift the crunch and lead channel textures. This is a feature, not a risk.
MIDI integration: the TRS MIDI In and Out allow channel switching and boost activation via MIDI CC messages. The MIDI Out can control other MIDI-enabled pedals in your chain, making the ReVolt Guitar usable as a master switching controller in a smaller MIDI rig. Check the Two Notes documentation for the specific CC numbers; they are fixed, not re-assignable in hardware.
FAQ
Is the ReVolt Guitar a digital modeler or a true analog pedal?
It is a true analog pedal with a real PSVANE ECC83 (12AX7) tube running at full plate voltage — 200V DC, the same operating voltage used in real tube amplifiers. There is no DSP or digital processing in the signal path. The onboard cab sim is also analog. The Wall of Sound software bundled with it is digital, but it runs on your computer, not inside the pedal.
Do I need the Wall of Sound software to use it?
No. The ReVolt Guitar has an onboard analog cab sim activated by a mini-switch on the front panel. This lets you run directly to a PA, audio interface, or headphones without any software. The onboard sim is fixed in character (Marshall Slash 4×12 emulation) and is described by independent reviewers as adequate rather than exceptional. The Wall of Sound software significantly extends the cab simulation quality and should be considered part of the complete system for recording use.
Can I use it with my existing amplifier?
Yes, in multiple configurations. You can run it as a standard stompbox in front of your amp’s input. You can use the four-cable method to route the ReVolt’s preamp signal directly into your amp’s effects return, bypassing your amp’s preamp entirely and using only its power stage. Or you can use Hybrid mode to blend the ReVolt’s color with your amp’s existing character. All three methods are addressed by physical switches on the front panel — no menu navigation required.
What is the difference between the internal boost and an external drive pedal in front?
The internal OD-Boost is placed pre-preamp and is shaped by a single shared Boost knob. It works well with the American Clean channel for low-to-mid overdrive textures. On the British Crunch and Modern Lead channels, however, the Premier Guitar review found that the boost added “an edgy feel” that competed with the warmer qualities of those channels — some of which could be corrected with the 3-band EQ, but not entirely. External low-gain drive pedals placed in front of the ReVolt tend to interact more organically with the tube stage. A klone, transparent overdrive, or low-gain boost in front of the Crunch channel was specifically praised in the Premier Guitar review for adding warmth and thickness rather than harshness.
Is this a good pedal for metal?
The Modern Lead channel, inspired by the Soldano SLO-100, covers classic and hard rock high-gain territory convincingly. For traditional heavy metal and hard rock from the 1980s and early 1990s — the tonal range of the SLO-100 in its original context — it is excellent. For modern extreme metal requiring the tightest possible gate-ready saturation at very high gain levels, the Gain control may not reach sufficient saturation depth without a drive pedal stacked in front. A boost or low-to-mid gain overdrive at the ReVolt’s input converts it into a credible high-gain platform across a wider range of modern metal styles.
Does the bypass work as true bypass?
Two Notes describes the ReVolt as having a bypass mode rather than a labeled “true bypass.” To bypass the unit, press the Clean and Crunch footswitches simultaneously — the LED configuration indicates bypass mode. There is no dedicated bypass footswitch. Players who require a clearly dedicated bypass switch for live work often integrate the ReVolt Guitar into a loop switcher so that the bypass function is managed by a separate dedicated footswitch outside the pedal.
Can the ReVolt Guitar be used as a USB audio interface?
No. The ReVolt Guitar does not have USB audio capability. To record with it, connect the balanced XLR output to an external audio interface and use the Wall of Sound plugin in your DAW for cab simulation, or use the onboard analog cab sim and skip the plugin. The balanced XLR output is low-impedance (suitable for long cable runs to a mixing desk) and works correctly with standard microphone-level inputs on any audio interface.
How does the 4-cable method differ from Hybrid mode?
In standard 4-cable method (4CM) use, when a ReVolt channel is active, the signal bypasses your amplifier’s preamp entirely and feeds only the power amp section. Your amp’s own preamp character is completely removed from the signal chain when the ReVolt is engaged. Hybrid mode blends the ReVolt’s preamp color with your amplifier’s existing preamp signal — both preamps are active simultaneously. The front-panel switch selects 4CM optimization; Hybrid is a connectivity option rather than a separate switch position. Refer to the Two Notes manual for the specific routing diagram for your setup.