The Hotone Ampero Mini is brilliant, given its price and super-compact size. But are there any issues you need to know before you buy one?
I’ve owned the Hotone Ampero Mini for a few months now, and here are the issues I’ve discovered in that time:
1. Tuner
This will get the job done, but it seems to have a life of its own from time to time, so it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. I would also have loved to have seen a polyphonic tuner (present on the BOSS GX-10) to determine from a single strum if my tuning needed adjustment.
2. Single Output Jack
Although it is possible (via an additional Y-Cable) to run the Hotone Ampero Mini to your monitor (or guitar amp) and directly to PA simultaneously, this splits the single stereo output to left and right mono, meaning stereo FX from the PA are impossible with this configuration, so more outputs would be a major upgrade and something worth upgrading to the Ampero II Stomp for. It’s also worth mentioning the position of the input jack, which inconveniently sits between the external and output jacks.
3. No Global EQ
Another feature present on the Ampero II Stomp and missing here. Without global EQ, if you are going direct into the power amp of your guitar amp, you will effectively have no simple means of Global EQ adjustment, if, for example, the room that night is particularly bassy. With the Hotone Ampero Mini you will have no choice but to adjust your AMP settings for every patch!
4. Single CTRL
Out of the box, the Hotone Ampero Mini gives you access to CTRL1 only (the left footswitch), with the right footswitch used for either patch up or hold for tap tempo. This is a significant drawback and can only be solved with either an external footswitch (giving you access to CTRL2 and CTRL3) or by patch changes mid-song (see the video below for a closer example). A simple software update would solve this. Hotone, PLEASE give us access to CTRL2 from the right footswitch!
5. Slider Controls.
Although the UI is simple, bright, and for the most part, very intuitive, the slider controls, particularly on FX parameters with a wide range (e.g. delay time), are very frustrating to use accurately. You can either tap to the left or right in 1-ms increments (which are boring to tap through) or slide from left to right (or vice versa), and completely miss your target. In the next software upgrade, Hotone need to provide a hold gesture which gradually increases the speed of adjustment.
Please check out the video below for more details and demonstrations of the above issues.
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