NUX Amp Academy. Amazing sounds. Disappointing functionality. :(

Hey all

So this is my first look at the NUX amp academy. Having been soooooo impressed with the NUX Cerberus I was really excited to get the opportunity to try the amp academy. Especially since I really liked the look of it from the demos I'd seen.

In the sonic department it really doesn't disappoint. All the amp models are really great. They're responsive and detailed and the unit does clean and mid gain sounds particularly well which I find lacking in a lot of amp replacement solutions. Combine those amps wit the fantastic "Choptones" IRs and it really is a great sounding unit.

However...

I'm a player that needs things to work well as well as sound good and I'm really sorry to say this unit gave me LOADS of functionality problems. I go through them all in the video but here's a short list:
1. I had to try four different USBC cables to get it to connect to my Mac.
2.The way the Amps can be assigned is very limiting
3.The dirt pedal can only be turned on and off in the software
4. Saving and recalling saved settings is very haphazard. (Works sometimes and not other times.
5. Lastly and MOST annoyingly, it jumps from scene at random and nonsensical times.

All of these bugbears are too much for me. While I love how it sounds and I think it would work well in a "one sound at a time" studio tracking situation, I don't feel I can use it for any gigging application which is hugely disappointing. I will however be making a video where I pair it with the Cerberus so check that out.

Overall I'm pretty gutted. I love the way it sounds and also the way it looks (Which I am normally indifferent to, but I think this is a fantastic looking pedal) I feel like most of these bugs could be ironed out in a firmware update. Maybe I have a defective unit????

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[JoeBaermann]

Did you update the firmware?
I own 2 of them and have no issues saving nor recalling presets, both via PC as Mac.
They also go to the preset I set as the default preset, think that and some other added features came with a a firmware update.
Boost on via the preset button which you can limit to two instead of 3 btw.
Although, at the moment I only use a single preset and the guitars volume knob to go from cleanish to crunch to lead.
The weakest parts of the AA are it’s reverbs and the noise gate when used for high gain leads, so those I replaced with external versions for my lead guitar setup.
Don’t know what you expected, but on it’s own I could use it like a 3 channel amp, like clean, clean with boost, crunch and lead, a midi controller probably adds more options, but didn’t try that so far.
If one needs a lot of different amp sounds on stage this isn’t the right unit to use, this is more a 2 amps with boosts at max. kinda pedal, but again, midi might open up for more.

The best thing compared to some other units is the separate volume slider and high/low cut for the DI, makes it really easy to go to front of house with a sound that the engineer doesn’t need to tweak a lot on, requires ofc. to find a good IR.
The units EQ used post is also nice to separate the tone between 2 guitarists, so that both can be heard clearly.

[josephlee]

Great points throughout. I agree that it would be better if we could assign any of the amps to any channel. As for the scenes defaulting to blue, it seems like you'd have to just pick channel A or B for a song, and use the 3 scenes for your clean / hair / lead tones.

[Quetange]

Great and honest perspective review, man! Thank you a lot for sharing you just put up a great explanation on this unit right there.

[priorwitness]

Guess I'm weird but the design choices make sense to me. If I'm on channel B with a high gain tone and I have my second scene as a boost for a lead tone and then I want to switch back to clean for channel A then of course I would want my scene to default back at the same time. I wouldn't want it to stay the same when switching from channel a and b to go from high gain leads back to a clean.

[erikvonbehr]

This one or the Mooer Preamp Live 4 switches you mentioned?? Thanks!!

[xvikingkong]

I'm not sure if you already figured out the scene issue.. there's a scene set up in settings so it does not default to scene one when switching channels between a ang b..

[B_Wolfen]

So, about the critique that you can't get the same Amp model in A and B? You can do your classic Rhythm/Solo setting of one Amp in the Scene setting. Disengage then the 3rd scene and Voilá: You have your two channel set up on the right footswitch.

[BudgetPedalChap]

So this would maybe alright as an amp sim at the end of a board where the majority of the tones are coming from the pedals. It then gives you the option to switch out an amp sound at some point in the gig too. It sounded alright tbf 👍

[iansmith]

I email NUX and they said you can hold the scene setting when you use the A/B switch. Go into settings and look under scene setup. There is a toggle for S3 Sticky. Choose that and the scenes will hold when you A/B the channels.

[MoonWalkersbin]

this is when someone does not read the manual, and expects functionality of an expensive modeler into a cheap one.

[andrewinconspicuous]

Your conplaint about the scene always resetting when you switch between A and B can be remedied by enabling "sticky scenes" in the pedal amp's software.

[nedim_guitar]

Great review! I totally get what you mean about the things that don't work for you. I have the Boss IR-200, and I like it, but I have had difficulties to find and tweak sounds that I like. How does the Amp Academy sound compare to the sound of the IR-200? I ask that knowing that sound is subjective.

[heymcfly]

I own this pedal and its phenomenal, i think the design is fantastic and have used it live on many occasions

[davidgreer]

It would be great if a future firmware version would allow the assignment of any amp to any channel location. That is the one true design flaw of the pedal. Outside of that, this is an excellent ampless solution & modeler.

[gregfarrell]

Thanks for the review, it was very helpful. The pedal sounds great and your description and the comments have convinced me that it'll be ok for me. I'm going to get one. I could really feel your pain though. This was definitely not the pedal for you 😁

[malcolmevans]

I’ve had none of the software problems saving presets etc. I do think having complete choice over where to put amps would be a great idea. As mentioned by someone else, latest update included a Vox emulation. Regarding scenes, I change it to two instead of 3 for rhythm and lead - works best for me

[billyman]

In spite of its drawbacks I think I could make this work for me.

The function I can't find anything about is a bypass. I need something that can live on my pedal board and be bypassed when I'm using a proper amp then flicked in when I need to use headphones late at night. Can this do that?

[samb]

Under the following circumstances would you say this is a great option:

You're using pedals before it, so you just need one amp you like dialed in as a pedal platform.
You want to use it for nighttime practice with the headphone out and also, use it as an audio interface for recording.

I think so?
Also, what's the riff at 13.25 it's driving me mad?!

[VenialZeus]

Echoing the other comments here. Love the intention behind this, design could've been better. One thing I think would help is using MIDI to control. Still experimenting with my pedal here. Thanks for the honest review!

[jonschwieb]

I appreciate the honest review here. For me, I don’t know if I could live without a Vox option. Their website says there are additional amps somewhere that could be loaded to the pedal, but I can’t figure out what they would be. I would also be using this in musical theater, where you need to make quick changes, so any bugs in the interface are enough to remove it from consideration. You probably just saved me a huge headache, so thanks!