THE ORIGINAL AND standard Torpedo Captor X came out mid-pandemic to a flurry of anticipation and excitement that was further pumped up by supply-chain issues that made examples rather thin on the ground. The Limited Run Torpedo Captor X SE — the latest rendition of Two Notes’ compact reactive load box, attenuator and IR loader — is thin on the ground by design: It’s a Special Edition made in vintage-looking, dark-brown crinkle-coat finish with beige script logos, with just 450 units available worldwide.
The Captor X SE is a descendant of the long-running Two Notes Torpedo range and the latest in a line of studio and live tools that deliver efficient and great-sounding ways of replacing cumbersome speaker cabinets with versatile digital solutions, while delivering a boatload of versatility. A rack-mounted Two Notes Torpedo Live gave me my first lasting diversion into Impulse Response (IR) cab tones, and I enjoyed that unit in the studio and occasionally live for several years.
Considerably smaller and configured as more of an amp top box, the Captor X SE holds just six DynIR presets compared to 128 in the now-discontinued Torpedo Live, although the full 128 can be accessed on the fly from the Torpedo Remote preset editing software.