NEW SHORT TUTORIAL ADAPTED TO TRANSFERS FROM COMPLETE DBs :

COMPLETE TUTORIAL WITH IN DEPTH EXPLANATIONS :

COMPLETE TUTORIAL WITH SQLITESTUDIO ONLY, GOOD FOR MAC USERS :

The overwhelming number of ToneX profiles available is a problem that needed to split them into several huge databases. Otherwise, starting ToneX takes ages. Plus, problems like quality gap between profiles, choice paralysis and irrelevant profiles types are discouraging. It’s absolutely mandatory to sort and clean your database to have a good experience with ToneX

But wait, there's more. The database will grow again and again, how will you keep up and include the next big profiles that will be released in the future ?

That's where users get 2 free softwares to maximize the ToneX experience :

• ToneXdb Explorer : https://www.codefn42.com/tonexdbexplorer/index.html , easy to use and super useful (not available for Mac unfortunately)
  
• SQLiteStudio : https://sqlitestudio.pl/ , for optimization after working with DB Explorer (available for Mac as well, everything you can do with DBex you can do with SQLite, it's just a bit more tedious)

Important notes before starting the tutorial :

- Don’t be scared. It’s a long tutorial, but it’s really nothing terrible to do, the result is very worth the work. Bare with me throughout the whole process
- Remember that you will find your profiles database in
C:\Users\[you]\Documents\IK Multimedia\TONE
- Before starting to work on a DB, please always do a backup (a simple CTRL+C/+V in the folder). Better safe than sorry
- ToneX and ToneXdb Explorer read the Library.db file in that folder. So you will have to rename the database you wish to work on « Library.db »
- Make sure you keep track of which database is which, rename them properly when not used in Tone
- It's often a good idea to make several databases to suite multiple needs, or to sort by profile families, or whatever. Just think this through and be aware of how your needs can change in the future
- The evergrowing number of profiles lead to the necessity to do multiple complete databases by periods. Once too much profiles are released, a new complete database is created and the previous ones won’t move ever again. Easiest way to make your life easier
- If you plan to use ToneX with external IRs, use them ONLY with cabless profiles (amp only or stomp+amp). So please keep cabless profiles in your database if it's the case. Because de-activating the cab of a complete rig does not result in a good amp capture.

Tutorial chapters :
1 - ToneXdbExplorer
2 - SQLiteStudio
3 - Adding new profiles to your database (or profiles you previously deleted, from a backup)
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1 - ToneXdb Explorer :

With this (free) tool, you can really trim your database BEFORE trying 1000s of profiles, thus starting with a list containing only profile types/characters you want. You can sort the list by basically any criteria you could think of just by clicking on the desired column to delete whole batches in no time. You can also choose to only display profiles corresponding to a particular criteria, and then sort the results within this selection.



First thing first, you want to go to the "Presets" tab and delete everything. That's because you cannot delete a Tone Model if it's part of a preset. Afterwards, you'll be ready to clean the mess.

Go back to the Tone Models tab and sort your database the way you like. That way, the huge quantity of models you don’t want will be together as well. Select multiple profiles by clicking on one, hold Ctrl or Shift (or both ! Ctrl+Shift to select multiple separated sets is supported). Then right click, delete, and boom they're gone.

Something very clever about DB Explorer : you cannot delete the Black Angus profile. Why is that ? Because when starting ToneX, it's the default profile that is loaded. If it's gone, ToneX will not start. So it's a nice added security !

For example, in my case, I'm a high-gain-only guitar player and distorted bass player. I can :

• Sort by Character, and ruthlessly delete every single Clean preset
• Then choose to only display High-gain profiles only and sort by Amps to keep bass amps only
• Then display everything, sort by Type and remove single stomps and cabless heads
• [then whatever suits my needs]

Once the big cleanup has been done, you will still have many many profiles to dig through in ToneX with your guitar.

ADVICE : At this stage, you may want to open SQLiteStudio to do a VACUUM request. Head to the last part of chapter 2 to see how. It will delete the invisible empty lines that resulted from your trim, thus shrinking massively your database size and making ToneX start WAY faster.

Then, if you're brave enough to try every single profile remaining, you can proceed and mark as favorites the ones you like in ToneX (by clicking on the star icon, rightmost of the profile’s line). After 46 hours of testing and favoriting, you can then open DB Explorer again, sort by Fav, and delete the ones you didn't mark. You’re now left with only profiles you like ! And your ToneX already starts faster if you did a first VACUUM.

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2 - SQLiteStudio :

Congratulations, you now only have 200 profiles left out of the 14000 available ! WOW ! But... ToneX still takes forever to load, even with barely 2% of the initial database deleted. And worse ! You just spent 10h testing every single profiles, and BOOM another update is released with 500 new profiles to try. How will you deal with this ?

Let's go a bit more geeky with SQLiteStudio. A true and harsh database editor, but oh boy is it mandatory to enjoy ToneX. On the menu today : 2s load time and easy updates over time. Open your brain cells for 5mn, I'll try to make it very simple for you.

I just won't detail the installation process. I assume that if you wander around here, you already know how to install a software !


(woops sorry yes I'm french...)

Oof. Yup, this is a ToneX database. Don't be scared, we did every over-tedious thing in DB Explorer already. Still some fairly tedious things to do if you wanna update your database, but nothing too complicated, just a bit time consuming.

First thing after installing, make sure .db files are associated with SQLiteStudio. Quickly, go into your Documents\IK Multimedia\TONEX folder, then double click on your Library.db file. If SQLiteStudio opens, great. If Windows asks you to associate a software with .db files, know that the installation folder is C:\Program Files\SQLiteStudio\SQLiteStudio.exe. Now, you're good to go.

Double click on your Library.db file to open SQLStudioLite. First thing (easy thing) you want to do is cleaning the database after you deleted your thousands of profiles with DB Explorer. Select the ToneModels table by double-clicking on it, then click on the "Data" tab, then open SQL Editor like this :



In the Request tab, just simply type VACUUM, click the play button. Takes less than 1 second.



Now, your database size went down dramatically. In my exemple, with 200 profiles out of like 8000 total, my 200MB or so database shrinked to 2.5MB ! And ToneX starts in approx. 2 whole seconds instead of minutes. That's why SQLiteStudio is a very important tool to use.

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3 - Adding new profiles to your database :

You could stop there enjoy enjoy ToneX as is for the rest of your life. But deep down, you know you will want to check these new fire profiles that someone kindly grabbed for you. Or simply add a profile you first deleted (see ? I told you to backup your database before working on it !). So let's see how you can add new profiles to this database.

a) New profiles you just downloaded

You made your first sorting and have a good Library.db. You're playing with ToneX, which reads this file every time you're using it. Now you want to add new profiles from another database you grabbed. First and foremost, you will have to rename your current Library.db file to something of your choice, like the infamous "zhefiohzioehf.db". Please consider instead something like "MAIN LIBRARY.db", just to understand yourself later and not lose your previous work.

Now make a copy of the new library you want to work on and rename it into "Library.db". At this point, if you open ToneX or ToneXdb Explorer, this new database will be read instead of your main one. So now, open ToneXdbExplorer. First, delete every Presets if there are some. Then, I suggest sorting the list by Date, to simply delete every Tone Model that was already part of the database you spent hours cleaning. You will get an error saying 1 profile could not be deleted. Guess which one ? YAY, BLACK ANGUS ! So you don't have to worry about that.

Now you can start this tutorial all over again to select the new profiles to add to your collection. When you're done with ToneXDbExplorer, I suggest doing a backup of your current Library.db before opening SQLiteStudio, in case something goes wrong (highly unlikely).

Then, double-click on Library.db to open SQLiteStudio. First, you'll have to locate the Black Angus line and delete it (see next screenshot). There is a search bar to help you out if you don't feel like eyescanning 1000s of lines. Click on "Black Angus" (1) then on the "minus" symbol (2). Then head to the SQL Editor and do a VACUUM (see previous screenshot).



You will then have a small database with a small number of profiles, ready to be transferred to your main database. It's important to only have new profiles left, that aren't already part of the main database ! (Or else, when clicking on the green check button at the very last step below, some lines will be highlited in red. You'll have to delete these conflicting lines before validating the changes again).

You can open multiple databases simultaneously in SQLite. Remember, at this point, Library.db is your "new" database containing the profiles you want to add, and you renamed your main own database earlier. With SQLite still open, double click on your renamed main database and now they'll both appear on the left panel of the software



The number of rows in Library.db indicates the number of profiles you're about to transfer to your mail database. Remember this number, you'll see why shortly. Remember as well that SQLiteStudio displays 1000 lines per page. If multiple pages, proceed as follows for each page.

Select them all with the good ol' CTRL+A and hit CTRL+C to copy everything. Then head on to your "MAIN LIBRARY.db" (double click on the ToneModels table in "MAIN LIBRARY.db" list) and add as much lines as the amount of profiles you want to add (1000 if it’s a whole page). Here's how :



Click on the arrow (1), check "Place new rows at the end" (2). Arrow (1) again, "Insert multiple lines" (3), enter the number of lines you want to add (= number of profiles you want to add). The greyed out V (4) will be clicked later, it will become green. You will have this now :



Left click on the first cell of the new lines, hit Ctrl+V, and BOOM your new profiles are pasted to your main database !!11!11!!!!!1!!

If there are multiple pages on your Library.db, when you’re done with the first 1000, go back to Library.db’s ToneModels tab and select these 1000 lines again with CTRL+A. Then click the red "minus" button. These lines will be empty. Finally, click the green check button to delete the lines. You’re now ready for the next 1000 lines, rince and repeat.

Then make sure the columns are in the exact same order in both databases. If it's not the case, it will jump on your eyes because the datas of the last line you just pasted will not be consistent with what's above. In my case when I did this, the last 3 columns were misplaced (Favorite, VisibleInCS and DateAdded).



The solution simple : just select the wrongly placed dates with a simply click-and-drag, hit CTRL+C, click on the first new line's DateAdded cell, hit CTRL+V and you're done.


copied


pasted

Then finally fill each cell of the Favorite column with 0 or 1 (0 = no star in ToneX for this profile, 1 = yellow star) and of the VisibleInCS with 1. Don't ask why, just do it ffs. (I don't know what VisibleInCS is lmao, and 99% of the profiles are 1 in this column)

Last step : click on the green check button (step 4, 5 screenshots ago) to validate your work, and BOOM your database is finally updated with new profiles !

Close SQLiteStudio, delete Library.db, rename MAIN LIBRARY.db into Library.db, Open ToneX and see for yourself GOOD JOB BRO'/SIS'/SIB'

b) Adding back profiles deleted from a previous version of your main database

Because you smartly did a backup before the first time you edited your database, you will never lose anything permanently. It's basically the exact same process as with a new database. Rename your main database to free the "Library.db" name, then rename your backup to "Library.db". You can now browse it in ToneX or DB Explorer to select profiles you want to bring to your main database. Then just follow the same process described above with SQLiteStudio, and you're good to go !

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After 3h of writing (EDIT : +3h in edits afterwards lmao) I'm finally done. It's a bit complex to grasp. Like I said in the beginning, it’s scary, but once you've done the work, it will be a piece of cake the next time. And most importantly, you will have a working and optimized ToneX that suits your needs ! With only profiles that please your ears, and with a decent loading time.

If you have questions, or if you see missing or false informations, please comment to make this tutorial affordable for everyone !

I don't usually ask for this, but please put a thumbs up on this message if it helped you or simply if you found it useful. My humble reward for working this out :')

And thanks for the amazing people of the ToneX Discussion topic who have put much energy and effort into gradually finding ways to make ToneX work with a full set of tone.net profiles and the tools I just explained. I didn't find anything myself, I just gathered everything in one post and filled the holes. Thanks guys, my guitaristic experience changed forever thanks to you, ToneX is amazing.

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Specific questions :

EASY. Everything is done inside SQLiteStudio this time. You just follow this tutorial, but instead of working with the ToneModels table of your libraries, your work with the Presets tables

 

Last edited: Oct 8, 2023

OUTSTANDING !!!
Great work. Many thanks.

 

This is brilliant. Thank you!

any chance you could share your library.db? Conisdering how much time you've put, id love to try your library. Eitherway, thank you : )

 

Thanks for the feedback guy ! My library as of now : http://peeplink.in/83bb029c2b0d . It's high-gain profiles only with some bass profiles as well. Some of them are not good I know, but going through 3000 profiles alters judgment

 

its all appreciated

 

Outstanding! Any way to do this type of editing on the Mac side?

 

Lo and behold, SQLiteStudio is available for Mac ! But unfortunately DB Explorer is not, and as far as I know it's the only software of his kind. Everything you can do with DB Explorer you can do with SQLiteStudio though. It's just long, tedious and not user-friendly :/

You'll need to find a way to write down the profiles you wanna keep, and manually delete all the profiles you don't want. It's just a matter of clicking on the Delete line button (next to the Add lines button) and then validating the modifications with the green check button

 

Updated the tutorial ("Note 2" in the introduction) regarding the use of an external IR with ToneX

 

Has been added in the latest release.

 

Cool! Anyone with clean only instead of high-gain only?

 

Merci Max, superbe travail !

 

Fantastic job i will surely try it some rainy day.

 

Oh cool I didn't know ! I'll do the update and correct the tutorial. Thx for the info

 

Thank you, and thank you again. Such a tutorial was needed long before but I know it is not easy to put all this together. Thanks for the time and effort

 

You're welcome :D please note that I just edited the tutorial (forgot to do it earlier) because ToneX DB Explorer got an update enabling us to delete presets. That was not the case before, so you had to delete them in ToneX directly or in SQLite for the brave. So the whole thing has less step !

 

This is nice work. Thanks. Any suggestions for Mac OS?

 

SQLiteStudio is available for Mac. It's way more laggy, tedious and visually bloated than DB Explorer but you can do everything with it. In the end, it's all about sorting columns and then deleting lines

 

Okay thanks.

 

Since updating to Tonex v1.1.7 I am getting an error message with some of the models I edited. Specifically, I profiled some rack gear that I wanted to use either as an amp or as a pedal, so I duplicated the models and edited the lines referring to amp/stomp and it all worked correctly until the update. Now I get a message saying that the model is restricted to Tonex max. Looking at the details on the right hand pane in Tonex, it does say that the problematic models show as premium models.
To add interest to this, I am actually running Tonex Max...

 

Hello, does anyone know how I can copy / duplicate an existing tone model in my library.db file? For example, let's say I have a tone model that I have captured and created in Tonex and then uploaded to Tone.net. I want to make a copy of that tone model to keep just for myself and not upload to Tone.net. Since the library.db is Sqlite, I essentially want to create a new record in the database by copying a tonemodel that I captured and create a second instance / record of it and give it a different name. Does anyone know how to do this?