Bad Cat Two Tone

5 knobs, no menus... about as simple as it gets.

Amazing sounds from this beast! While my live rig i play through a Mesa Boogie, i plug this baby into my cheap-ass roland 15 watt cube amp, turn that on to a little dirt and boy does the Cat light that thing up! Channel one can turn it to a sweet crunch, but can also just add tube color to a bland transistor channel. Channel 2 is mind blowing. At first its possible to think it has too much gain, but if you dial that in around 9-10 o clock, you get some usuable higher gain rhythm sounds. This channel is a knob tweakers delight, as you can coax some very cool compressed sounds. Not all of these sounds are great for chords, but single note lines are lovely. I used this pedal in front of Fender Bassman and Prosonic amps to record some album tracks, and ended up using it on most the album, as the variety of tones you can get are just inspiring.

No problems except for when its time to swap tubes :)

Haven't needed 'em yet.

I've been playing rock music for 17+ years and played with all sorts of OD/distortion boxes. I have to admit i like this pedal pushing my amp more than the dirty channels on the amp itself(Mesa Mark IV). It makes practicing on my bedroom solid state amp inspiring. You can get a wide variety of tonal pallets from this monster if you know how to find them. And searching is half the fun, right?

Not a plug&play pedal. Two channels with 3 different control options that change overall volume exiting the pedal. One must keep very careful watch over gain structure here, especially if blending the pedal with amp side distortion. The manuel was non-existent as far as tweaking goes, but was very informative technically. The pedal must be carefully managed and misuse will lead to bad sounds.

Dead quite, true bypass and the way the switching works is excellent, if a bit un-standard. No noise at all on either channel with volume/distortion at a high setting. The single volume channel adds smooth class A type distortion when properly pushing the front end of an amp. Pedal sounds the best used as a front end pedal and not through an effects loop. The distortion is full-bodied, warm, and also a very transparent sound. Both channels have the classic matchless and bad cat clean, rich, and harmonically complex sound. Does not have a great sound through something with a solid state rectifier, or multiple rectifiers. Sounds fantastic through an ac30, ad30 and others. I actually used this at a small showcase gig with a Fender blues jr. with nos tubes and sounded unreal. Made that cheap practice amp sound like a cranked boutique amp. Transparent, complex, and versatile. Fantastic sound!

I do use this at at shows without a backup. Its only part of the setup, but built like a tank. I have had no problems with any of the switches, pots, or cables. Jacks are solid, went onto a newly constructed board and will stay there. The only bummer of course is that the finish is chrome, which scratches, smudges, and is otherwise nice to look at for a while, but is like pearls before swine. I mean, its getting stepped on regularly...

I have not dealt with the company except to get a copy of the manuel. (Bought the pedal on ebay) Quick response, and very agreeable for a small request.

I use komets and trainwrecks in the studio. They are the beginning and end of tone as for as i'm concerned. with respect to the late Ken Fisher, chances are this pedal will never see the front end of one of those amps. I bought the pedal to use on the road and at small showcase type venues; AC-30's go on the road, and the Blues Jr. goes to the small gigs. Fantastic pedal for a rig with multiple volume controls and blendable pre's. I idid get it used for only $250; this probably makes me, well, the tour manager then me, look more favorably upon it because of the cost;)

The output of this effect is way too high. The Master-knob is barely at 08:00 and the gain as well

Again... I'm going to correct my oppinion of this pedal:

The output of this effect is way too high. The "master" knob is barely at 08:00 and the "gain" knob as well and I cannot get a smooth distortion out of it. I replaced both tubes with a 12AU7 (with less gain) instead of a 12AX7 but it is still not a great success. I guess that the dimensioning of the resistors are not made for a smooth distortion. Since I use a pretty cheap VOX VR30 at home, I learned, that a softer tube distortion could be reached and sounds very cool. This is probably because VOX is simulating the power-stage of a real tube amp rather than an overdriven preamp stage but that is just guessing.

First of all: After using this pedal now for about 2.5 years it is still working and this means a lot to me! The MXR-Style knobs have worked but I'm still not very content with the quality of the potentiometers. Despite of that, the case is a bit too big to fit next to my other pedals and quite heavy for my oppinion.

This is not a disadvantage if you'll use this for a single effect or in studio...

I guess I give it a try and will contact them by email...

Very easy to use. This is basically a tube preamp in a box with a real transformer and tubes running at REAL tube voltages. As such it does NOT use a battery and will NOT plug right into your 300mA pedalboard. It requires a plug into a wall outlet. It's worth it though. But I'm going to give it an 8 for two reasons: the plug and the knobs can be easily moved underfoot. These really can't be helped though and like I said the sound it worth the inconvenience.

It basically adds gain stages to your tube amp. There are two channels: The "clean" channel adds one half of a 12AX7 tube (one triode) to your signal with a simple tone control. It just adds a little presence and sparkle to your sound but cranked all the way gives a little breakup. The drive channel adds the other 3 triodes (it has 2 12AX7 preamp tubes in there) AND a separate bass and treble control. Now the sound is AWESOME but you might find that it adds too much gain in front of your amp. I've found it's really great to change the SECOND TUBE to a lower gain tube. I personally use a 12AV7. This does 3 things to make this pedal more versatile:
1. You can get a wider range of distortion sounds playing with the gain and master volume that are usable
2. It won't force you to leave your amp volume on "1" before things are too loud. Let's your amp get into the tone equation more.
3. Allows the gain stage to more easily match the clean stage in volume over more useful range.

I should mention something else. The bass and treble controls seem interactive. You need to play with them a bit to get your tone...this is especially true if you change the second "drive" tube to a lower gain setting. Be prepared to play with them both to get the best tones.

It's point to point wired in there! I don't know how they do it for the price. I've had mine 2 years and no problems. Very sturdy metal container. Wanna see it's insides? Check out:

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa205/guitarcapo/DSC04689.jpg

and

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa205/guitarcapo/DSC04693.jpg

and for you technical types the schematic can be found at:

http://www.aznaur.spb.ru/schemes/hotbox.gif

N/A Never used them....

This is quite simply the best overdrive pedal you can buy. Real tubes. Real voltages. Simple circuit.

After using this pedal now since about 4 month I have to correct the reliability topic a little bit.

Well after a month of use, the LEDs did not work properly and felt almost in the inside of the case. So I opened it to remount and to my surprise i found out that it's fixed behind the frontplate with rubber only! I also noticed that the soldering was not done by an expert and resoldered quite a few pots before closing it again.

After closing the box again the frontcover let go. I had no access to fix this with rubber. I have to fix it in some mechanical way...

By the way. The pots itself are too cheap for an effect of that value! The main-volume readjusts itself by every touch of a cable or whatelse. I think about to replace them and replace the chickenhead knobs with round ones (e.g. like MXRs)

Despite this disappointment, I'm still using this pedal because it's sound is great fun. I just think about taking in my Ibanez TS9 in the effect-chain again because of the different sound.

I like the shape of the knobs pretty much and it's quit easy to use as soon as one has got the idea of switching between source-direct, channel one and channel two.
I just wonder why they forgot to label the Input and the Output?

I'll give it a 10 because it's sounding reeeallly great with my old VOX AC30 in the bandroom (and also did so with the AC30 reissue in the shop!)

I even won't miss this pedal at home with my very cheap practising-amp from Laney. I'm quite surprised how to get such a nice tubesound out of a transistor-amp!

It's really heavy built so I guess if you don't throw it around (because of the tubes) it almost cannot get broken.

I had not the bad luck in needing customer support

This pedal is really what I was looking for since years and I think that I get rid of my (also cool) Ibanez TS9 to get some money back because of the high price of the 2-Tone Bad Cat.

All in all it's one of a few rolls royce of guitar-effects!!!

I don't know how more straight foreward it could be.

Just for a goof I plugged this pedal into a pretty okay sounding Peavey Bandit II. You would not believe your ears! The clean channel had the swirling, dimensional sparkle to it. The second channel made the Santana tone so easy to get it was ridiculous. This was all played on my Washburn WI 66 Pro (excellent, versatile guitar),thru the clean channel of the amp. The pedal really tied the ensemble together.

Can't say but believe it to be extremely well built.

The Peavey Bandit alone is about as good as an SS amp can sound IMO. The whole point to this exercise was to see what the 2Tone would do when mated to a SS amp.(Perhaps a true test) If this pedal can make the Bandit sound that good it kind of speaks volumes for the 2Tone, yes? It's hands down the best sounding pedal I've heard comparing it to the Ibanez Tube King and the Mesa V twin. I have not had the opportunity to try others. Bare in mind the pedal usually finds it's home connected to a boutique (Mission) tube amp. Bo knows tone......

I can't believe anyone would have a tough time figuring the knobs on this thing out....I will not give it a 10 though...Because the sound changes a lot with small adjustments to the knobs. Also if God forbid you should kick this pedal accidently and one of the knobs happens to turn CLOCKWISE...You amp might explode in volume....I'd prefer it if the knobs clicked so that would be less likely.

The sound quality is extremely nice. I had a Mesa V-Twin I was using and changed it to this one because it seemed to do the cleans to slightly breaking up sounds better. It seems to have the same tone as the Mesa when you get into high gain, but at the lower gain levels it beats out the Mesa. It does seem to be noisy when you get to the higher gain settings but I don't think that can be avoided if you add an extra gain stage to any amp.

It's built very sturdy. I opened it up and it all seems to look PTP wired. A lot of the capacitors were labeled "Matchless" in there. I've heard that this was a similar circuit to the Matchless Hotbox and that there might be some carryover of components. The transormer in there is huge which I believe is a good thing.

No opinion but I bought it used (5 years old) and it works great

So far this is quite simply the best "tube in a pedal" drive box I've played. And that list includes:
Mesa V-Twin
Mesa Bottle Rocket
Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor
George Dennis "The Tube"
Ibanez Tube King
Butler Tube Driver
And some others I forgot the name of.
This pedal has a different kind of distortion than a Tube Screamer "diode distortion" and I won't be getting rid of my Keely modded TS-9 anytime soon. I use that more when I want a warmer buttery sounding overdrive. This one is more for Rockabilly snarling lead. I wish it had more tone control on the clean channel...and maybe a mid and presence control like a Mesa...But what it does do is nicer sounding.

Simplistic design (which I like) and very easy to "better" your current sound. Just plug it in and whatever set up you have should immediately sound twice as good - this is it's big appeal to me really. The manual is virtually non-existant but who really needs a manual for something this basic. I have not done any modifications to this pedal and don't intend to- it has perfectly good tubes in it and they warm up nicely the longer you have it turned on - sounds great as it is.

I use a Gibson Double cut (faded TV yellow) with 2 P90's. The amp I use is a Hotrod Deville with 2X12 speakers. The amp is the noisiest part of the set up, along with the P90 pick ups, the bad cat pedal is a gain beast so yeah, it's gonna be a bit rowdy but that's rock'n'roll to me. I can emulate a lot of "american" sounding artists such as Mike Campbell (Tom Petty), Mallencamp, Matchbox 20, this thing is a great guitar pedal - full stop. Best distortion I've heard yet. The best feature of this pedal is the distortion sound and the variation in tones you can obtain. The pedal has more treble and bass spectrum than my amp. In fact you can pretty much run your amp's eq flat and just use the tone of this pedal and with the pedal right in front of you you can change the tone settings a lot easier than going back to your amp to do it.

Here is where I have an issue, the kettle cord plug it came with does not fit tightly enough in the power socket. If I move the cord with my foot whilst playing, the power cuts out from the pedal, it may be a simple solution of getting a different kettle cord so I won't give it too bad a rap but I did feel a little bit annoyed at this. Apart from that, very reliable.

Haven't dealt with them.

I play everything from funk, rock, blues, pop & country. I have been playing for 20 years and this is without question the best pedal I've ever bought as far as sound quality goes. If you want to get the Bad Cat sound but like me can't afford the absurd and ridiculous prices for their combos and heads etc, get one of these and you won't be disappointed. The only thing that would impact on my buying a replacement one of these is if Bad Cat brought out one with a master volume on the clean side of it aswell. That's the only thing I wish it had, a master volume on the clean channel aswell as the gain channel.

Two channels-- clean and overdrive. The clean channel has a volume and tone knobs. The overdrive channel has gain, bass, treble, and master knobs. There is 2 footswitchs (one for clean and other one for overdrive) and 3 leds to know in which channel you are (Normal, Overdrive or true bypass).

First, I agree with other comments. Indeed, this pedal accentuates the sound of your guitars (For best results, plug a good sounding guitar). If you have several guitars you will be amazed to hear the difference between.
But the most important for this pedal are :
1) The Tubes inside (change them and put Groove Tube inside to have better sound)
2) Your Amps. You must try this pedal with your amps before buying it or you can have bad surprise. For example, the 2 Tone doesn?t sound well with this combination : Strat 1965 + 2 Tone + Twin Reverb Silverface a You?ll prefer Fulltone TopBoost + Fulldrive 2 certainly.
But as Fulltone sound the best in fender amps, Bad Cat 2 Tone is (according to my taste) marvellous in Class A amps (Vox AC30, Matchless, Bad Cat, T-Rex Amps?). A very very good combination is Trussart SteelCaster in AC30 with 2 Tone between ( killer sound)

The active tone controls make a huge difference with smallest movement. And in the Overdrive channel, bass and treble are interactive. I found this pedal a little bit too bright for my tastes and the Tone knob of the clean channel is in 9 o?clock position, 11 o?clock for Bass and 12 o?clock for Treble

But remember :
Try it before with your own amp
Change the Valves (very easy - no biasing)
2 Tone prefer Class A amps.

I ll give a ?10? because when you use it with the right amp, you have a hudge sound, exactly an Incredible Wall of sound when you play loudly.
This pedal is dead quiet on all settings.

The build quality is very good. I don't expect any problems according to his weight.