Carl Martin AC-Tone

It has been said already and I will say it again, the foot switch thing is backwards... not a big deal and not hard to figure out but still I am taking away points.
Two different gain knobs, one volume, cut, and boost.

I am playing this after my Maxon 0D-9 PRO into my Fender Twin Amp with my Les Paul Classic. Much more gain than I was expecting to go with the very Voxy AC-30 chime. This pedal goes from Paul Weller's Jam era bright overdrive to Tom Gabel's newer Against Me! fuller bodied crunch. I gave this pedal a 10 in this category because this thing does exactly what it was made for and that is a overdriven Vox tube amp sound without compromising your own amp's tone. I have the gain set around 12 O' clock and the overdrive on my 0D-9 at about 2 which gives me a more modern sounding distortion with the warmth and brightness of my fender amp.

I have only had it for just under a month now, played a show and have practiced with it a bunch... so far so good.

Since it is still pretty new, I have no reason to call em.

I play punk rock and most tend to stereotype that genre with high gain Mesa Boogie/Marshall amp sounds but some of the best guitar sounds are coming from bands that are dialing down the gain for a little more character, this pedal definitely gives me a little bit of my own original sound while being influenced by bands like the Clash, The Jam, The Gaslight Anthem, Against Me, and The Swingin' Utters. I would definitely buy this pedal again, I have bought many pedals and I have been happy about the sound of most of them but this pedal gave me a feeling of comfort that this is exactly what I wanted. I will say it was rather expensive and I do wish I could combine the two gain channels but the sound I get makes up for those 2 flaws but I cannot give it a 10 but I would give it a 9.5 if I could.

I watched a YouTube video before I got the pedal. I think it would be quite confusing, and, somewhat of a pain in the *** if you didn't know what you were getting into ahead of time. Although I did not have a problem, I have to knock it a little because I kinda don't like that it is a little tricky.

My setup: PRS > Dunlop Wah > Comp 66 > AC Tone > ProCo Rat > Keeley Blues Driver > Korg Pitchblack > DL4 > Fender Champ or Super Reverb

Ok, if you want the overdrive of an AC 15, or AC 30 this is the pedal for you. It has the clipping pattern that is slightly more gritty than a tube screamer or a Fender amp. It is subtle, but if it's the tone that you like, then you will be very pleased with this pedal. In my opinion, the accuracy of this pedal in recreating the EL84 tube breakup sound combined with the fact that this particular sound is not found in most stomp boxes allowed me to justify the 10 rating for sound. The overall rating will suffer a little for some quirks that annoy me...

Seems fine and I havent had it for that long, just a few gigs. It is a little hard to get velcro to stick, but oh well.

Ok, the pedal sounds amazing, but here are the drawbacks. First, it has a separate cable for power, and, the cable is short. Second, it is a boutique price but without true bypass, that bugs me. Third, the second overdrive is the same as the first, but without a separate volume control which makes the volume louder or softer if the gain is set different from the first overdrive channel. Fourth, as I mentioned already the second overdrive is a separate but identical channel, but the pedal does not allow you to combine the first channel's gain with the second channels gain for a heavier distortion. I found a way to get more gain from the pedal, I use my comp 66 (compressor) as a boost for my signal so that I can get more oomph, otherwise the most breakup you can get is what one overdrive channel can put out.

Surprisingly, I still like this pedal even after paying a lot and all the quirks I mentioned. I guess I am a sucker for the Vox tone while using my Fender amp. It allows me more versatility and just works for my music. My music: Pop, Alternative, Brit Rock, Blues, and Worship music.

I have been playing guitar for almost ten years, and I would consider myself somewhere between a semi-pro or pro. My ear is better than my playing...

it is very easy to use. great layout. good logic.

this unit sounds awesome in an instant. I mainly use fender telecaster 52 hotrod and gretsch duo jet filtertron with this pedal. run through a mesa lonestar special 212 el84 tubes. I bought the AC tone to add some voxey sound to the mesa, since I feel the mesa matched really well with my fender startocaster sound.(fendery). With the AC tone, now it can sound british as well.
it's relatively quiet. satisfyingly emulates "the EDGE" style.
it can go from slight break up to good distortion level. warm and good articulation. I also have Fulldrive 2, Sparkle drive, Diamond J-drive mk 3, varidrive, xotic BB plus, maxon od9, ibanez ts 808, G2d classic, and a procorat deucetone. and the AC tone sound as good or better in comparisson. it has a little more head room, I guessed it came from the inbuilt power supply. 12 volt. compare to 9 volt of some others.

metal casing, sturdy, and good design. a little big tho. and the sponge base, i'm not sure i can put some velcro to it. the knobs are easily tweakable, sometimes it changed accidently when we step on the pedal.

I've been learning guitar for 9 years now. if stolen. I will try to buy one again. but it's not cheap for us here in Indonesia.

great pedal!

Very easy to use. As others have mentioned the pedal labels can initially be confusing - but you soon get over that. Good control of the drive for each channel, plus a shared EQ/Cut and a separate boost control. The in-built power supply is also great - it vastly simplified my wiring clutter, and improves the overall performance of the pedal.

I have been looking for a dual channel overdrive and boost to go with my single channel Matamp King Street (EL34) amp for some while, and have tried (and bought) many different overdrive pedals with no success until now. I think I may now have found it. I really need an easy way of switching between 3 modes: clean (ie. no effect engaged, just the amp), slightly dirty for blues, and more dirty for rock sounds. Plus have the ability to boost either sound for solos, etc. With previous pedals I always struggled to get the volume balance sorted out - so that there was no discernible (unwanted) volume boost when switching between modes. This is not a problem with the AC-TONE. Also I found that other pedals often changed the sound of my amp too much (particularly when going for heavier distortion). With the AC-Tone this works very well. Although the AC-Tone is supposed to add a strong flavour of the famous Vox sound, it still retains your amp tone underneath - which is what I wanted. It just adds a Vox flavoured overdrive, which you can tweak with the Cut control. All of this adds up to a very usable pedal which also sounds excellent. My amp tone is still maintained - with the pedal engaged it sounds like I've just added more tube amp overdrive to my amp - rather than drastically changing the sound. This is illustrated by the fact that if you have the drive on zero then you just get the natural amp sound on its own. This now gives me 3 channels on my amp. If you like Vox flavoured overdrive sounds whilst retaining your existing amp tone then this is the pedal for you. The distortion also nicely cleans up when reducing the volume on the guitar or picking more lightly. This is not a high-gain pedal so anyone interested in metal should look elsewhere. I am a Fender user so have used this with my Fender Tele and Strats. The pedal is very quiet - much quieter than my other overdrive pedal. This could be down to the inbuilt power supply. I have been trying to simplify my rig down to just the AC-Tone, a wah pedal, reverb and a tuner. So the inbuilt power is a definite plus. The boost can add a great deal of boost to your amp and can also give you a great overdriven sound on its own. I tend to use this at around 9 o'clock for a slight boost to my solos.

Built like a tank. Don't expect any problems here.

Excellent. I had a problem when I stupidly plugged my USA spec 115 volt AC-TONE into the UK power supply which is 230 volts. This blew the power supply in the AC-TONE. Carl Martin were excellent. I emailed them and they sent me a replacement power supply block which I fitted - and everything was up and running again.

I mainly play blues and classic rock. This is the pedal I have been looking for. For other styles of music I would probably use a different pedal - one that would give me more versatility in the overdrive/distortion sounds. However, if you want naturalistic and controllable tube sounding overdrive for blues, pop or rock then this is the pedal for you. I'm not a fan of the high-gain Marshall sound, so avoided the Plexi-tone model by Carl Martin. I think the AC-Tone is a much more subtle pedal and more suited to lower-gain usage. I have been playing for around 30 years. I own 6 electrics (Gretsch, Fender, Gordon Smith) and 3 amps (Matamp, Marshall JTM, Crate Powerblock). I have many other overdrive pedals (eg. H&K TubeFactor, VisualSound Jeckle and Hyde, Boss FDM-1). Overall in terms of sound and controllability the AC-TONE wins out. However, it isn't a cheap pedal, so I've just given it a 9 here.

it sounded good immediately. there really aren't too many knobs to fiddle with in order to get a tone. pretty much turn it up or turn it down. the eq "cut" knob is pretty straightforward. the pedals are a bit confusing for about 20 seconds then you get it figured out and it's all good.

i almost never review my gear here, but this is the best sounding overdrive pedal i've ever heard. i'm a beatles nut and a fan of 60s rock. i already play through a vox cambridge reverb (tube version) but i wanted to get the sound of a cranked up vox at a lower volume. this pedal is extremely convincing front end overdrive. just sounds like the amp is being pushed harder. not a heavily compressed or thick distortion. more of a natural soft to medium overdrive with that signature vox midrange. my guitars are gibson es 335, fender telesonic, gretsch nashville, danelectro 12 string. i set up one gain for a mild drive (about 9 o'clock) and the other (3 o'clock) for a heavier sound. the boost pedal is immensely helpful for kicking up solos.

i've only had the item a ew days but have already had a few rehearsals, a gig, and a session with it. it seems extremely solid. love the amp knobs.

i dunno.

i play many styles including pop, jazz, country, rock, etc but most of the music i play is influenced by the sound and tone of the 60s and 70s. i would buy another one of these if something happened to this one. i was playing with a fulltone full drive 2 for a while and it was okay, but not the sound i was looking for. the ac-tone is much more open and natural 'amp' sounding. and thank god, it's not a digital model of a great sound. it just is a great sound.

I have a Plexitone as well, same layout, drive, second drive, tone, volume, cleanboost.
A very userfriendly pedal.

I was looking for that crispy jangly spanky vox sound, that one you get from a slightly cranked vox, and I wanted to use it with my old 2204 Marshall head, it sounds great with my Plexitone, so I figured that the AC tone would be a good bet.
It gave me that Brian May sound in plenty together with my old Boss CE-2 chorus.
A very silent and wellmade pedal.
I open up the thing and found no diodes, this pedal seems to be using fets or some other kind of transitors.
It has two identical channels, so I use one for slight breakup and the other for more driven sounds, with my Tele and my LP Jr is sounds absolutly great, it is not a highgainer, around the same as most ts style overdrives, allthough with a LP guitar it really got very driven, it seems to follow along with giving up at any point, most cool!

As said above, wellmade, solid switches, nice pots, looks very clean and neat inside, I am planning on getting the usual backup for my gigging, I always have two of each pedal I have, just be sure, sometimes freak stuff happends!
It was made for the long run, so full kudos to Carl!

Just mailed them about the clipcircuit...they are fets, cool!
Nice polite swift answer!
What more can you ask??
Thanks to Soren for good service!

A instant classic, not as big and badass as the Plexitone, but that is the beauty of it, as it nailes that vox/el 84 sound!
The drive is very crisp and warm, good defenition and clarity, great midrange and an emphasis on amplike response.
Sounds good with both singlecoils and humbuckers, with a LP with humbuckers it really gives that oldschool ampdrive, that with the awesome slight breakup drive you can get is a killer combination!
If you dig el-84/vox sounds, this one will make you smile.