John Petrucci officially launches his own software brand, Tonemission – and its first drop replicates his exact signal chain

After teasing its imminent unveiling last week, John Petrucci has officially launched his own guitar software brand, Tonemission.

According to the Dream Theater virtuoso, the founding of Tonemission coincides with Trooch’s newfound affinity for digital profiling technology, whose influence and prevalence has been rapidly expanding in recent years.

In his own words, Petrucci is now “a believer and a user” of such technology, with Tonemission set to become the medium through which he continues his digital journey – or, more appropriately, his tone mission.

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Perhaps even more notably, Tonemission has been debuted with the John Petrucci IR Collection: Vol. 1 – a curated collection of impulse responses of the guitarist’s personal rig that seek to replicate his “exact signal chain”.

Specifically, the Tonemission’s flagship crop of IRs is based on the sounds heard on Petrucci’s last three records: Terminal Velocity, LTE3 and A View From The Top of The World.

The above tones were captured by Dream Theater’s longtime engineer James “Jimmy T” Meslin, who used an array of microphone types alongside Petrucci’s speaker cab to capture a full-range frequency sweep.

Tonemission’s task of precisely replicating Petrucci’s “entire signal and acoustical chain… exactly how it was configured” on the above records was, as per a statement, “deftly achieved”.

Of his new company – and his journey to the ranks of digital technology – Petrucci reflected, “I’m a tone freak. I’ve always been obsessed with guitar and amplifier tone. 

“For most of my career I’ve only known the world of physical guitar amplifiers and cabinets and admittedly, I scoffed a bit in the past at digital representations of these things,” he went on. “However, with incredible advances in capture techniques and resolution being made over the past several years, I now find myself a believer and a user.”

It looks like this is all just the start for the software brand, too. Indeed, Petrucci says this is “the first step for Tonemission”, which has been envisaged to develop into a broad community of players coming together “to discuss and share their own quest for a signature sound”.

“Music is all about sharing sound, and so am I,” concluded Petrucci. “Almost every basic music instruction book includes the proverb ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ 

“The John Petrucci IR Collection: Vol. 1 is the first step for Tonemission and me to bring what I’ve learned to the broadest user base possible. From there, they can find their own sonic visions.”

Trooch's Tonemission seemingly looks to compete with some of the biggest names in digital amp software. Petrucci is no stranger to digital software, either, and is currently an active partner and ambassador of Neural DSP, with whom he created a signature Archetype plugin.

The John Petrucci IR Collection: Vol. 1 is available now for $80.

Head over to Tonemission to find out more.