Neunhaber’s Iconoclast speaker emulator: A box of tricks for guitarists?
Takes your load like a pro
The Neunhaber Iconoclast pedal is a stereo effects unit that’s designed to make your guitar signal sound as though it is being fed through a real speaker. While the top of the unit has a few simple controls, there’s more to this little box than meets the eye.
Speaking the truth
Many players, myself included, use guitar preamps and effects, and record or play live using such devices. One common problem with speaker-less setups is that a guitar amp’s speaker is an intrinsic part of your guitar tone. And no amount of boutique preamps and cool pedals will fix the lack of a real speaker cone doing its thing. Thus, a product like the Neunhaber Iconoclast spealer emulator pedal has a place in many player’s rigs.
Iconoclast
Although the pedal concept is around stereo operation, it’ll do mono as well without problems. You can also listen via just the headphone output, making this unit useful for silent practice with your favourite pedals, too.
What at first appears to be a 3-band EQ marked Low, Mid and High, turns out to be a little more involved. The Low control adjusts the type and size of the virtual cabinet, while the Mid will knob affects the “interaction” of amp and speaker. High is a cut off-type control which, Neunaber say, “reproduce a wide range of speaker types”. The Noise Gate is designed to filter hum and noise from long effect chains.
Software
These days, being able to tweak controls in software is becoming more and more common. Neunaber offer a free PC and Mac editor for this porpose. Just attach the Iconoclast via the Micro-USB port to your computer. This will appeal for those of you that like to have more more than just a knob to twiddle with.
Iconoclast Software gives you the ‘full potential’ of your Iconoclast Speaker Emulator, for all you tweakers! · Source: https://neunaber.net
Using the software, you can actually delve a lot further into the Iconoclast and adapt what it’s doing to suit your taste. There are controls for the response frequencies and even the way the Gate control reacts! But, unfortunately, you cannot load your own virtual IRs (that’s Impulse Responses – or virtual speaker models) into the pedal. Yet I’m impressed you can tweak it further at all, so that’s not a deal-breaker for me.
Check out the videos I have attached below to hear what the Iconoclast can achieve. It’s easier to hear the difference this kind of effect makes than read about someone like me trying to explain how it affects your tone. The demo sounds good to my ear, and I could do with adding this to my setup! It could be a really useful little tool.
RRP USD $249
Read up on the Iconoclast pedal over on Neunaber’s product page.
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