Tone2 Icarus 3

This under-the-radar synth has just received its biggest update ever, and if that doesn't make it 'over the radar, what will

- Andy Jones

Tone2 has been plugging away at the synth market for many years, and has scored some great reviews with synths like the Electra workstation, the unique ‘HCM-synthesis’ Gladiator and Nemesis ‘NeoFM’ digital synth among many others. Yet these synths are not as high profile as perhaps they deserve to be, but all that could change with the latest update to Tone2’s flagship wavetable synth, Icarus.

The biggest ever?

Icarus is a three-oscillator wavetable synth at its core, but it’s been branching out well beyond that over previous iterations, and the latest (version 3) promises to be the most dramatic update to the synth yet. And that means ‘big’, as version 2 didn’t exactly hold back. That added a glitch sequencer, drum machine and MSEGs to bolster the synth’s modulation capabilities, but version 3 adds a lot more; so much in fact that it’s hard to pin down exactly how to describe the synth. Perhaps Tone2’s coverall definition of ‘workstation’ is one we should stick to for now.