HeadRush Flex Prime - Guitar and Bass Multi Effects Pedal and Amp Modeling Processor with Touchscreen, Looper, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IR Loader, USB, Lessons

I love the tones I hear on recordings of my favorite guitarists. THOSE are the sounds I want to hear when I’m playing. So my new ‘rig’ is a powered FRFR cabinet being fed by a digital modeler front end. I tried the $399 Tonex unit and found it mostly excellent except that it isn’t a true modeling amp but rather a unit built around specific tone samples. Some were fantastic, others much less so. The unit also had a handful of basic effects to complement those samples. In contrast, and for only $100 more, the HeadRush Flex Prime uses meticulously crafted models of LOTS and LOTS of actual popular amps, effects, cabinets and IRs too. I finally have the full spectrum of guitar tones spanning from the 50s through today, accurately and faithfully reproduced, right down to the feel of how the tones respond to my fingers, pick, dynamics and note muting techniques. I am currently feeding it into my Spark FRFR cabinet and it sounds terrific, and ay all volume levels too. Getting satisfying, album-like tones at low volume levels is one of the benefits of using a FRFR based system. A conventional tube amp has to be cranked to ear-splitting levels to get the tones we crave, but that our wives and neighbors hate to also have to listen to. This unit supposedly has the exact same technical innards and sound models as the bigger, more expensive HeadRush units, and each tonal patch allow up to fifteen ‘blocks’ including an amp and cab, and are almost endlessly tweakable, but easily and in instantly musically ways. I’ve had it now for about a month and have already created the dozen or so patches I need to cover 90% of what I need. The learning curve is about an hour, but the combinations of tonal elements near infinite, and so I’ve barely scratched the surface. But the results are accurate, satisfying and most importantly, INSPIRING! You just want to play for hours! But it doesn’t stop there. Included is their ‘Revalver 5.0’ software, a program where you can modify amp models’ internal circuitry and build rigs that can ultimately be transferred to your physical unit. There’s also their ‘Amp Cloner’ software for capturing your own amps’ tones should you have a specific amp sound you’d like to take everywhere you go without having to lug your heavy tube amp head/combo and half/full stack. I’m just getting into these so look for a follow-up review in another few months. Is the experience the same as standing in front of a raging stack blasting at 120 db while your pant legs flutter? No. But in my mind it’s better. You get to hear the tones you’re actually chasing, like you hear on the albums, at any volume you want. And they sound right because this little box has accurate models of the amps that created them, not just the one or two tones your stack provides.

I am extremely happy with this purchase and was pleasantly surprised at the build and versatility of this little tank. First and foremost, while I didn't go through all of the literally hundreds of built-in effects and amp modelers that come with the device, I played around with them enough to know that they are decent, but not mind-blowing. The good thing about that though is there are tons of resources on the web where you can download free and premium (paid) IRs (Impulse Responses) and guitar rigs to faithfully recreate the perfect tones you are wanting from top artists and songs, as well as pre-designed IRs, rigs, and tones that were curated by pros with way more time, patience, and skill than me. I ended up deleting pretty much all of the stock IRs and rigs from the device and I'm replacing them with third-party amps and effects that I use for my own style of playing. All of the ones I've put on the device sound incredible so far even through my cheap Danelectro Nifty Fifty practice amp, and I'm beyond pleased and excited to find what else is out there. The touchscreen is bright and responsive, and is pretty intuitive once you know what you're looking at. Adding new tones is a fairly simple process of plugging your MX5 into your computer, go to Global Settings -> USB Transfer and all of the effects, rigs, and IRs will then be displayed in your File Explorer. You can delete, replace, remove and upload to your heart's content using this method. Now, for the trickier part - operating the pedal has a good bit of a learning curve. I've found it to be pretty essential that, if you don't have a brain that likes playing with tech and figuring things out, a thorough reading of the manual is a must. Since there are only three stomp switches, putting together a "setlist" with multiple guitar rigs and learning how to switch between them took me about an hour or so of playing around to figure out and I still have to pause for a moment to remember how to do certain functions (although the more I use it, I'm getting faster). That aside, I am still giving this the 5-star rating it deserves due to the fact that I KNEW going into it that having only three switches would make things slightly more complicated. That is no fault of the manufacturer, but rather part of the design and the price I signed up for when buying this. I will say, however, that I plan to get the HeadRush Prime in light of the fact that it gives you much more control by having 12 switches as opposed to three (so that I can trigger and control individual effects without needing to perform complicated switching on the fly to get to a specific component). Overall, I highly recommend the MX5 for those who may not need a ton of instant versatility and dynamics and maybe only want to play with a handful of guitar tones at any given time. The pedal itself is designed well, sounds GREAT, and is more than enough for most types of guitar playing out there.

VX5 Vocal Autotune pedal offers me more than others I have owned. I have owned many vocal pedals here's a few. T.C. Helicon Voicelive Play, Voicelive Play Electric, Mic Mechanic 2, FLAMMA FV01, BOSS VE-2, BOSS VE-500, and The Headrush Core. Don't misunderstand these are Excellent in many areas each a strengths and weaknesses and I'm delighted each time something new comes to the market in an attempt to provide vocalist with a useful tool. I'm sure I'll be trying new offerings in the future. So after trying the VX5 Vocal Effects Pedal for several days I'm very impressed For these 3 reasons for now it's my vocal pedal of choice. 1 Pitch correction for me is my number one priority and none of the other mentioned pedals come even close to this pedal with its Auto-Tune capability, it even exceeds my DAW Auto-tune plugins to which I have three. 2 Vocal shaping by applying the various pedals FX features in conjunction with Auto-tune I'm able to achieve quality results. 3 Harmony is important to me more for vocal shaping but as a Harmony only setting in my opinion the settings it offers are just as good if not better than other pedals. The VX5 has fewer FX categories and preset setting choices, but the most important ones are there and when combining presets setting with few exceptions it will achieve what presets settings that aren't listed. When using the FX effects in conjunction with the VX5 Vocal Autotune feature the outcome in quality has exceeded all the other pedals. for me. Is heavy (build like a tank) quality appearing to be exceptional. Updating the firmware, it's very easy and offers a path to future settings and upgrades. The only lacking thing right now is the ability to back up your created presets. When connected with USB cable the VX5 file system doesn't appear so your unable to back up any self created presets. Surely a programming oversight that will be corrected.

I am a 50 yr old guitar dork who has been playing out locally in various bands for the last 20 something yrs. Play a bunch of styles/genres. mostly standard tuning, slide and hybrid picking stuff... I ordered a few digital pedals ($400 or less range), recently for my birthday, and this was the one I didn't send back. Hard to find much to bitch about. I have had several digital boards over the years, but this is the first that isn't consumer level merch. The other boards I returned all had convincing reviews online that looked comparable but upon trying them out in real life - there was a clear winner. Cons: I guess the worst thing is just taking the time to figure out how to get the patch levels evened out. There is preamp input & output gain, rig volume in global, and a master volume, and that doesn't even get into amp and cab models which each have their own gain levels as well, so you got at least 4 volumes to deal with. Amps all respond like the original (very differently from each other), which puts another layer of gain response into the formula depending on what flavors of dirt you like. It's a deep board. A lot to learn..... A LOT. But... it sounds friggin great. The most obvious difference, I can hear and feel, is just the huge improvement of A/D & D/A conversion and overall tracking. The less expensive consumer grade stuff is sooo much less responsive. The dynamics are crazy, and a little hard to tame if you're used to a little digital compression from cheaper converters. Super touch sensitive, super dynamic, super responsive. Noise filter, and gate on input are per-patch programable and work very well to filter out hiss and get a dead quiet amp when not playing and still maintain a natural feel/sound and release. Makes my old Crate Palamino V30 (30 watt el84 driven tube amp) sound freakin' huge and dynamic before I turn anything on - just the converters sound awesome. Once I add one of the many luxurious reverbs the sound sweetens to a sumptuous clean with miles of headroom. My amps cleans have never sounded so good. Amp models are very, very good. Sound great in my amp or my headphones. I haven't gotten into using any of the amp models (through my amp with the band) yet, it's a little jaring for me... I like to stay in my comfort zone I guess. I run mine in the effects send/return, so I can still push my amp's front end with analog goodness and get the response from my amp's preamp that I am used to. Overall, the clean and dirty amp models are all very good, they are detailed and breathe with your playing dynamics. Great sounding everything. Not a ton to choose from in the dirt box category. I like to have my old analog pedals for that part of my chain anyway - so definitely not a deal breaker for me. Regardless, it covers the basic distortion bases and does it pretty convincingly for a digital board. Reverbs, modulations, delays sound really great. especially the reverbs. The tiny expression pedal is very responsive/programmable and the onboard wah sounds are really good as well. Got a few whacky effect patches I have crafted that add a nice ocean of ambience when it's called for. Looking forward to recording with this little beast. I think this pedal hit it's demographic with me... This little guy is the gateway-pedal. I already am eyeing its' big brother...

While I'm still making adjustments, it does the vocal correction quite well when you enter the key. If there is a key change, like in CCR's Lodi, you have to toggle to the correct preset while singing. You can use the chromatic setting if you want to get a less accurate key from your insrument. The special effects are ok, but you need to experiment with them to get the sounds you want for your song genre. I bought it for the auto-tune, which it does very well and I'm learning that with any vocal processor less is more.

First, this thing has amazing sounds. It may not have as many amps, cabs, and effects as others in the same price range, but its enough for bass and guitar and the implementation of what is there is spot on. The biggest usability issue is the screen is small and there is no BT app or embedded site for configuration. Also, uploading is done by hooking up to a PC/Mac and using the OS file tools. Editing the JSON files isn't bad in a code editor, but they should provide a small tweaking app at least. I started building one and it's pretty straight forward since everything is JSON based. We'll see if I continue to work on it. Anyway... overall I love this thing. Super portable. Amazing sound. Really happy with the purchase.

First off, this seems to be a very solid product from the standpoint of design and implementation. I was able to plug it in, put on some headphones and start playing my guitar through the multitude of effects and amp sims. Many of them sounded really good. The unit connected right up via WIFI and installed the latest 4.0 update from Headrush. All was good and everything seemed to be working well until I downloaded their software app. I plugged in a USB cord and made sure everything was working. I could open up my a browser and directly connect to the unit's amp and effects settings using two different Windows PC's. I could place the device into USB transfer mode and it would mount it as a drive on Windows. All seemed fine with no hardware conflicts. I then registered the Flex Prime on their website and through the Inmusic Software Center I downloaded their software to my PC. When I went to activate Revalver, the software app kept showing an error that the device wasn't connected. I installed their drivers, rebooted and reinstalled things several times on two different PC's. Still no USB connection to the software and thus I was unable to activate the software to use with the Flex Prime. I'm very tech savvy and know PC's inside and out. Been working with Windows for decades and even build my own PC's. There may have been a hardware/software conflict somewhere inside my operating system but as I previously stated, no other errors showed up and other USB transfer functions worked fine including updating firmware via USB. I spent an entire afternoon fussing with this until I said enough! I have a gut feeling that maybe this unit was previously sold, registered then returned and then resold again. I have no proof of this because the box and packaging looked fine but something was causing a registration/connection conflict with this particular unit.

I’ve had this for 6 months now. I didn’t want to review it until I messed with it for some time. I’ve been playing for 30+ months years. I’m ve owned and still own many vintage and not so vintage sets of gear. I started my venture with Headrush using a friends Pedalboard and a Frfr 112. I fell in love with it and bought one with a Frfr 112. I latter bought a Frfr 1x8. I don’t know what the big deal is about one or the other. They can both be used at any size show because of be done it. I run to the front of house anyway and use this as a monitor. With the band I have a Frfr 112. At home I have a Frfr 1x8. That’s just where they ended up they are interchangeable to me. Anyway getting off subject MX5. Like I said I’ve had it for 6 months using it extensively. I no longer need se the pedalboard. This thing was is loaded with the same rigs I used in the pedalboard. And it’s small and easy to carry with a guitar. I can see where it wouldn’t be something someone would want to use with complex songs that require several effects changes in them but I’m a simple guy. 3 chords and the truth. The smaller footprint expression pedal is something to get use to but I wear a size 11 shoe and I did it and no longer miss the full size pedal. Don’t go by the preloaded sounds to evaluate this thing. They really suck. The only IR I’ve loaded is the Celestion that comes with it. I have stored my rigs on the computer but that’s it. I erased all the factory presets and started from scratch. I mostly use Rig mode so if you need to change the sound during one song more than three times it might not be for you because then you have to use 2 pedals to switch to the next bank. I like it. It’s solid and sounds great. But you do have to put the time I. To dial the sounds you want just as you would with any setup. This one gives you one up with the touchscreen. I mean who don’t know how to use a smartphone. The 4” screen is big enough. Good luck. Remember no matter what kind of music you make it’s basically all folk music because it’s for folks.