Tech moves forward apace. Processors that used to cost thousands and require large rack housings are now miniaturised. Valeton is an offshoot of Hotone, which whose gear I have pretty good experience so when this product launched at a very low price, I thought I’d have a bit of fun. And I’m always looking to miniaturise my fly rig…
Once you get past the terrible pre-loaded sounds, balance your volume levels and create some clean patches of your own, it’s very impressive. It’s so small that controls and display are necessarily sparse – the two knobs control parameter and output volume, the latter of which is very useful for balancing patches on the fly.
Its compactness is offset by the need for a power source and most control would require an external, probably bluetooth or midi, pedal.
The footswitch can be programmed several ways, including a basic mute / tuner. The tuner is ok, not the best but will doubtless improve with firmware updates.
The time-based sounds are excellent in mono and stereo from the same dual purpose output jack. Overdrives and distortions are ok but need careful tweaking. Fuzzes are, as usual for digital, pretty ordinary.
It can be powered from a 9v pedalboard feed or a 5v usb. Handy, though lots of power supplies are noisy and there unit is very sensitive to this.
All programming is done on an easily connected phone or tablet app. Amp and cab sims are loaded via a laptop app.
It has a drum machine and also works as a recording interface – direct into GarageBand, its sounds are pretty good.
An awful lot of stuff crammed into something that can go in your pocket to jams.