IK Multimedia shipped the TONEX ONE+ on May 7. It is the same physical pedal as the original TONEX ONE — 48 mm wide, 94 mm deep, 160 grams, the aluminum brick that fits in a jacket pocket — with three things added to the inside of the case: Bluetooth, MIDI over TRS and USB, and 20 preset slots that a footswitch or external controller can actually reach.
The price did not change. It is $249.99, same as the original ONE. That is the most important number in this announcement, and it is what makes the rest of it worth thinking about.
What Actually Got Added
The original TONEX ONE has been on the market for about two years. The complaint that came back from the forum threads and the YouTube reviews was always the same: the sound is excellent, the machine-learning amp captures are competitive with anything in the price range, but the workflow falls apart the second you want to do more than toggle between two presets with a single footswitch.
The TONEX ONE+ addresses that complaint in three specific ways.
The first is Bluetooth pairing with the TONEX Control app on iOS and Android. You can sit on a hotel bed, browse the 60,000-plus tone models on ToneNET, audition them, and push them to the pedal without opening a laptop. The original ONE required a USB cable and a computer to do any of that. The plus version does not.
The second is MIDI. Real MIDI — TRS Type A on a 1/8" jack and USB MIDI through the same USB-C port that handles audio. That means a Morningstar MC6 or a Disaster Area DPC can address all 20 preset slots, change parameters in real time, and integrate the TONEX ONE+ into a pedalboard the way any modern device should integrate. The original ONE could change patches with a USB connection only. The plus version handles it the way you would expect.
The third is the slot count itself. The original ONE had three slots on a single bank. The plus has 20, all addressable via MIDI. That is the difference between "this is a two-sound pedal for the gig I am playing tonight" and "this is the only modeler in my live rig, and I have a slot for every song in the set."
What Did Not Change
The DSP did not change. The audio is still 24-bit, 44.1 kHz. The amp modeling engine is still IK's AI Machine Modeling, which is what made the original ONE worth buying in the first place. The onboard effects — reverb, compressor, noise gate, three-band EQ — are the same set you had before. Modulation and delay still live in the TONEX software side and have to be baked into the tone model before it ships to the pedal.
This matters because it tells you what the plus is, and what it is not. It is not a sound upgrade. The frequency response, the dynamic response, the way the amp models handle pick attack — all of that is the same as the ONE. If you already own a ONE and you like the sound, you do not need to buy the plus for the sound.
What the plus is, is a workflow upgrade. The hardware was always good. The connectivity is what was holding it back from being a serious live rig component for anyone who plays more than two songs in a row.
The Bedroom-to-Stage Question
The way I think about this pedal is in terms of what fits in a backpack. My own rig is a Squier with modified pickups into a Focusrite into Ableton, and I never plug into an amp. For people like me, the original TONEX ONE was already a reasonable answer to "what do I take when I am playing at a friend's house and there is no computer." You plug it in, you have a sound, you can record into anything with a 1/4" input.
The plus does not change that use case much. The Bluetooth editing is a nice quality-of-life thing for browsing ToneNET on a phone, but if you are already at your desk with the laptop open, USB-C is faster.
Where the plus changes the calculation is the player who has a small pedalboard, who plays live, and who has been looking at the Stomp XL or the HX One and trying to decide whether the cost of either of those is worth it. The TONEX ONE+ is $249.99 with 20 MIDI-addressable slots and onboard amp modeling that is genuinely competitive. The Stomp XL is $750, the HX One is $400, and neither of them does amp modeling at this size or this price. The ONE+ does, and now it talks to a switcher.
It also does not have the screen, the multi-block routing, or the deep effects of either Helix product. So this is not a comparison where TONEX ONE+ wins on features. It is a comparison where TONEX ONE+ wins on the specific axis of "I want a pocketable amp model that integrates with my MIDI pedalboard," and that axis is the one that did not have a great answer before.
The Signature+ Collection
The plus ships with the Signature+ Collection — 100 premium tone models from IK, 20 of which come preloaded. The collection is sold separately for $99.99, so the value math on the bundle is reasonable if you would have bought the collection anyway.
The models themselves are the same kind of thing that has been on ToneNET for the last two years: captures of specific amps and pedals, varying in quality from "this is exactly the sound" to "this is approximately the sound." The 20 preloaded ones are picked to give you a usable spread out of the box — cleans, low-gain drives, mid-gain crunch, high-gain leads, and a few cab-only models for running into an external amp.
If you already have a TONEX library you have curated, you can ignore the preloaded set and push your own models over. The point of the preload is to make the pedal usable on the first power-on, not to define what you are going to play.
Who Should Buy It
If you do not own a TONEX ONE: the plus is the version to buy. The price is the same and the connectivity is materially better. There is no scenario in which the original ONE is the right purchase at the same price.
If you own a TONEX ONE and your workflow has been fine: do not buy this. The sound is the same. You have what you have.
If you own a TONEX ONE and you have been frustrated by the lack of MIDI: the plus solves your specific problem for $249.99. Whether that is worth it depends on what your alternative is, but the alternatives that do amp modeling and MIDI in this form factor are all more expensive and most of them are bigger.
The Bluetooth editing is the headline IK is leading with, and it is nice, but it is not the reason to buy this pedal. MIDI and 20 slots are the reason. The wireless control is the convenience that gets people to upgrade who would not have upgraded for the connectivity alone.
