Victor demos the Tonewood Amp, a small magnetic unit that attaches to the back of an acoustic-electric guitar and uses the guitar’s own soundbox to project effects like reverb, delay, chorus/phaser, and tremolo—no external amp or headphones required.
He also explores the Tonewood Amp Remote app, which is now fully accessible with VoiceOver thanks to his direct collaboration with the developers. The app lets you chain up to four effects, adjust routing (series or parallel), fine-tune EQ and compression, save presets, and control feedback with the “Feedback Assassin.”
Key Highlights
- Magnetic X-bracket mount allows quick, damage-free attachment.
- Requires an acoustic-electric guitar for the pickup signal.
- Accessible app on iOS and Android for screen reader users.
- Up to four effects in chain; choose series or parallel routing.
- Guitar profiles for different instruments; saves EQ, dynamics, and feedback settings.
- DI mode for connecting to amps or recording interfaces.
- Built-in presets and fully customizable effect chains.
Gear & App Mentioned
- Tonewood Amp hardware
- X-Bracket (magnetic mount)
- Acoustic-electric guitar
- Tonewood Amp Remote – iOS App Store
Accessibility Notes
- VoiceOver-friendly controls for effects, routing, and settings.
- All effect modules have accessible faders and toggles.
- Descriptive help sections explain series vs. parallel routing.
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.
Victor: This is Victor and today I'm going to show you a very cool product which just has become accessible. But let me maybe start from the basics. What I'm talking about is the Tonewood amp. That's a little amplifier that clips to the back of your guitar and then it uses a built-in speaker to produce some effects through your guitar's sound box. So I'm going to explain this in some more detail how this works but this is the basic idea. So where do we start? We start with the fact that this amplifier is in fact a rectangular device. If you can imagine you have a guitar relatively middle size, it definitely will occupy a very tiny space on the back of your guitar. The way this works is that with the device, when it ships, you get something called an X-bracket and this X-bracket has some adhesive tape that you use to attach the bracket itself to the guitar from the inside. Now I just wanted to let you know that this does not in any way damage the wood of your guitar. They usually advise that you try the amplifier first before you attach it, but, you know, that's already sort of for the manual. I'm not going to go into these details here. So let's say you know the place where you want to attach the amplifier. From the inside you find a similar space where you can attach the X bracket, you attach it, it sort of sticks and stays there. And then what happens after that, you've got this device, like I mentioned, a rectangular kind of amplifier, it's got a built-in speaker, and so what happens when you attach it to the back of your guitar it will snap because it finds that X bracket that is attached from the inside. Now this bracket, as you may have guessed already, has magnets and the amplifier itself also has either magnets or something made of metal that basically attracts to the bracket so that that's how the whole mechanism stays together. The device itself, the Tonewood amp, has a few controls on it — on-off button, a way to turn on and off three effects, the ability to change parameters for each of the effects, a little display for those who can see, and the home button that switches between the home screen and some extra input settings. As I mentioned, you attach the Tonewood amp to the back of your guitar. Technically you could just turn it on and if there's an effect or a chain of effects loaded on the unit then you'll actually hear the sound. Now one important thing I did forget: how does it get the sound from the guitar? There's a short cable that attaches your guitar — it obviously needs to be an electric acoustic guitar — to the amplifier. One end goes into the side of the guitar and the other end goes into the amplifier itself. When you turn on the amp and raise the volume of your guitar, it sends the output from your pickup to the amplifier, which drives the speaker, and the speaker then drives the sound box. I'm just going to actually show you how this sounds before we get into the second part, which is really cool and the reason why I started this podcast in the first place. So I just loaded the effect, which is one of the default ones. This is reverb with the phaser. All right, so that's basically how it works. Initially, when the device came out, the first generation of it, about two years ago, was just an amplifier and nothing else. However, the second version also introduced an app, which is really cool because it allows you to do many more things than you could ever do with the first unit — like building a chain of effects, running them serially or in parallel, and loading up to four effects. The effects are reverb, chorus, phaser, tremolo and delay. Phaser and chorus share a module, so that’s why it’s four. The app also includes an equalizer, compressor, and input settings. This also can be run directly through a DI. When the app was introduced, I wrote to the developers suggesting accessibility because it initially wasn’t accessible. At first I didn’t get an answer, but a week later the company reached out saying they’d like to make it work for VoiceOver users and asked for my help. That began a two-to-three week collaboration, going through several iterations until they got it right. Every effect has its own settings, plus DI settings, input settings, and guitar profiles you can save. There’s more than we can cover in this short podcast. I’m going to start the app, called Tonewood Amp Remote.
VoiceOver: Reverb fader, enable 80, adjustable. Menu, button, Bluetooth, button.
Victor: The very first thing we need to do is connect through Bluetooth. Right now it’s looking for devices, but there are none. I’m going to turn on the amp, which is already attached to the back of my guitar. You actually heard the sound. It seems like the device is already connected. For the purpose of this podcast, I won’t go through all the settings, but I’ll give you an idea of what’s available.
VoiceOver: Tutorial button, delay fader enabled 70, reverb fader, tremolo fader enabled, FX dynamics fader enabled, chorus pedal disabled, delay pedal enabled, reverb pedal enabled, adjustable.
Victor: As you can hear, these are adjustable faders. To turn on each module, you either double-tap or swipe up or down. Just swipe with one finger up or down. As I mentioned, you can set some of the effect modules to run in parallel.
VoiceOver: Series. Parallel. Delay series/parallel toggle. Parallel. Series. Series and parallel routing explanation, button.
Victor: The app provides information explaining the differences between parallel and series and more.
VoiceOver: Input settings, button. FX dynamic. Input settings, button.
Victor: There are input settings because different guitar bodies produce different sounds, which can lead to feedback since this is a speaker driving the sound box. Sometimes you need to cut down some frequencies. You can set different guitar profiles. I have several guitars, so I bought multiple X brackets. I just carry the amplifier from one guitar to another and switch profiles so I don’t have to readjust settings — the profile already knows which guitar I’m using. Anyway, you get the point. Limiters are all you possibly want to do, even the feedback assassin, which is really nice. When the guitar misbehaves and produces feedback, you can engage the feedback assassin to scan the offending frequencies and reduce them. That’s what input settings do. You’ve also got equalizer, FX dynamics, compressor, and direct input DI, which lets you use the effect unit when running through an external amplifier.
VoiceOver: Refresh. Ready to sync. Battery one percent...
Victor: I know it says the battery is one percent, I hope it’s not that bad.
VoiceOver: Menu button, Bluetooth, FX setting, save FX, tutorial, FX settings selector currently selected acoustic and space stock.
Victor: There are some stock presets in the app, and you can also create your own and save them. To finish off this presentation…
VoiceOver: Save. FX setting. Examples. Heading. FX setting. Chorus with reverb. Stock. Default setting. Alert: confirm action to load saved settings. Cancel. OK. Reverb fader enabled 67 adjustable. Slapback on.
Victor: Anyway, that’s the Tonewood amp. If you’re looking for a really cool gadget, I highly recommend it. It lets you enjoy your guitar so much more without headphones, just using your guitar’s body, and the app is accessible. If you get one, let the team know you appreciate their work. They made it accessible for iOS and also for Android. Once they figured out how to implement accessibility, the rest was easy. What I liked most is that they were proud of their work. They emailed me saying they were happy to announce their product is now accessible to more people. Well, this is Tonewood Amp and I hope you enjoyed this presentation.