Radial
Tonebone
By Mats
Nermark
There are
pedals that do overdrive. There are also pedals for distortion. Then
there are fuzzes. There are also a lot of them out there. I get the
impression that every time I visit a guitar oriented site on the Internet
I see new pedals in these categories. There seems to be a never ending
demand for newer, better or just different ways to mangle your tone.
Tonbone
is a new acquaintance to me but as I consider myself open minded I open
the boxes with eagerness and curiosity. I pull out two heavy and well
built pedals. Bent heavy steel casings lend a solid impression. The
knobs feel like they will last a long time with their almost sensuous
smoothness. From a purely aesthetical point of view they look a bit
unexciting in their workmanlike exterior but as that is secondary I
immediately hook up to my rig.
Tonebone
Classic
The first three things that hit me on an intellectual level were the
switches offered by the Classic. Top End, Mid Boost and Drive Gain.
I personally like playing Strat style guitars and problems associated
with overdriving a Strat style guitar are a shrill and sharp treble,
a slight weakness in the mids and not enough drive. To my pleasure the
Classic fixes these problems with aplomb with said switches. Furthermore,
it does so without making my single coils sound like humbuckers or lose
too much of their dynamics. They just get fatter and more defined. To
the player that prefers a Les Paul, a PRS or another guitar with humbuckers
I can happily report that it works very well with that type of guitar
as well. According to Radial, the reasons behind the good sound quality
are a good tube, a 15 volts power supply and a technical design allowing
them to feed the tube a higher voltage. With the switches and knobs
High, Low and Filter (high frequency roll off) as my tools I had good
time creating a wide assortment of sounds, mainly American in character.
To check
the versatility of the Classic I put it in front of a Boss GS-10. I
listened through headphones and it sounded equally good in this scenario.
Then the Classic went through the worst-case recording scenario. Straight
into the mixing desk via a Hughes & Kettner Red Box Pro. I was surprised
by the quality of the result. According to my experience the attack
portion of the sound usually suffers by this hook up. Both with chordal
playing as well as with single notes. Here I have to award Tonebone
Classic top marks for versatility while preserving tonal integrity.
Tonebone
Hot British
This red dressed power machine is equally loaded with tube as its blue
brother. The design brief for the Classic was to give American character
with medium gain while this Hot British should provide real raw power
of a British type.
Here we
don’t find the knob for Drive Gain as the purpose of this unit
is to give lots of gain, even more gain or close to ridiculous amounts
of gain. You set the amount with the Drive knob. The Hot British retains
the switches for Mid Boost and Top End for your use and pleasure. Unique
to the Hot British is a switch for Voicing and a knob marked Contour.
These latter two controls work together in the way that what you choose
with Voicing you then fine tune with Contour. Set Voicing to Out and
the Hot British actually acts like a good high gain amplifier. With
Voicing set to Fat, the mid is focused in a very smooth manner without
being robbed of personality and then you balance the lows and highs
versus the mids with the Contour knob. When I choose Notch, Mr. Hyde
took over from Dr Jekyll. Now the Hot British is really hot. Set like
this you get a very authoritarian soundscape with decidedly scooped
mids. Never before have I so envied the guys who play tuned down with
attitude. The Hot British lured me to excess in the lower registers
and the riffs I do know sounded fabulous.
What seems
to be the hardest thing for a pedal generating lots of distortion is
to let the intrinsic qualities of the guitar shine through. This is
something both these Tonebones handles with excellence. I tried with
a good Stratocaster and then with a cheap Chinese Squier Strat with
cheap pickups. The Chinese Strat sounded considerably cheaper. The good
Strat on the other hand, sounded really expensive.
The Hot
British also fared well with the Red Box Pro straight into the mixing
desk. A little dose of short reverb and it sounded better than what
I’ve heard on many professional productions.
Conclusion
Tonebone is a positive addition to the growing pedal market. They belong
to the pricier end of the spectrum but are, without doubt, at the top
end of the value for money scale. Most overdrive/distortion pedals are
unfortunately focused on one type of sounds. Thus it makes me very happy
when pedals like these Tonebones come along with a vast soundscape and
I get enticed into growing as a guitarist.
FACT:
Radial Tonebone pedals
Price: SEK 3 495:-
Distributor: Musikpartner
http://www.musikpartner.dk
http://www.tonebone.com
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