Danelectro DD-1 Fab Tone

Just posting to re-affirm the mods below are ESSENTIAL!. I have just brought this thing off ebay and thought it was the biggest pile of KAK i'd ever heard.I was going to put it back on ebay and let some other poor fool make the mistake i made (immoral i'm sure, but we've all been there)... hovever now it's a keeper.

Before the mod the tone comming out of this thing sounded like someone had stuck a wah wah in the loop and left it on in it's toe down position... absolutely unuseable. When you take C5 out, you can hear your guitars tone again... i havent tried removing the clipping diodes yet as i can control the distorton by turning my guitar volume pot down.

Well i own some of the plastic danelectro pedals, and i thoiught this pedal would feel more sturdy as it's made of metal. However, the pots feel HORRIBLE, they feel cheap and liable to break. But as i diddn't take out a mortgage to buy it i i'm not too fussed.

Nope.

I play rock, and some blues... before the mod i'd say the pedal was only usefull if you wanted to record the equivalent sound of hooking your guitar up to a transistor radio and putting the mike up your butt. I know my pedals, and this with the mods is a 9... so get your soldering irons out and start de-soldering!.

This is a note to show you how to make your Fabtone go from a fizzy noisy useless lump to a decent distortion pedal with balls!

I have two Fabtones (thats what happens when you go on ebay drunk and forget you already bid on one...) and I've just modded the scruffier pedal of the two. Its tricky to get these open and closed as theres two circuit boards tightly hooked up, so be careful if you want to do this mod:

On the larger circuit board all the components have codes next to them. Get a good soldering iron and some desoldering wick (costs a couple of quid from Maplin/Dollars from Radio Shack). After removing each of the following components test the pedal with a guitar and amp to check a: it still works, and b: theres no dodgy noise other than the normal howl you get from these.

You may find it useful to use the chassis of the pedal as a jig to hold the circuitboard in place while you work on it - just feed the pot shafts through the front of the chassis, back to front as it were.

Remove D4, D5 (two clipping diodes - responsible for the OTT fizz) and C5 to reduce the midrange honk. You can remove C8 too but that gave me a high pitched whine for some reason, so I put it back.

You dont need to install a jumper over the gap you made.

Theres a ton of other stuff you can do to tweak the EQ, reduce the gain further, less noise etc, but after removing just D4, D5 and C5 my Fabtone sounded insanely good! So I stopped while things were still functioning...

Compared to the unmodded Fabtone, the original is fizzy, indistinct, too much midrange and noise. The modded version has more bottom end, no honk and a gain pot thats actually useful. I had a Boss DS-1 hooked up too and the Fabtone gives a similar 'brown' sound but far more gain and a more lively low end.

The big test is to put it through a loud valve amp (was using a little Orange amp to test it) but that'll have to wait.

I might actually be able to use this live now!

As these have plastic components around the in/out/power section I wouldn't gig with this unless is was tied down onto a pedalboard.

original - useless
modded - sounds great!

So if you can pick one of these up for a low price and know how to desolder something thats about as big as a grain of rice you can get yourself a decent sounding dirtbox.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any luck trying this mod - but don't blaim me if you destroy your pedal in the process. Hey - this is the first time I've picked up a soldering iron without seriously burning myself/the carpet/causing a fire! what do I know?

Here's the thing; its not easy to use; it should come with a manual that would be short, but with out it you will spend days, or think its sucks, but its a great pedal, its just hard and not intuitive at all.

Is this the best fuzzbox ever, no! Is it close? no! But its damn good if you follow my advice right here.

level/volume knob- 12:00
bass knob 3:00
treble- all the way left(off)
"fabtone" all the way left (off)

YEs! two of the knobs are useless- but set it like I did and it turns your POS crate or peavey into a mesa boogie demon, huge low end and ludicrous nu-metal rhythm guitar goodness. Since that may not be exactly why you bought the pedal, it only gets an eight, but the sound is a ten.

solid as a rock

who needs it?

Yes, the sound this makes is huge; it seems to have a name like a "beatles" pedal or something like that but it is a snarly, ludicrous fuzzbox. There is no better pedal for $20.

Seems easy to use, with a manual that has suggestions on settings that you can use to imitate other setups (Marshall stack, etc.). The suggestions sucked, however.

Should be called the Crap Tone. I can't find any sound that is usable. It resembles a chainsaw cutting into a hornets' nest, next to a 2-cycle dirtbike running at full throttle. Waste of money.
I have a Jackson Dinky and an American Strat, which I use through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I get very usable sounds using a Tubescreamer, or just driving the crap out of the amp and using an attenuator to manage the volume. I have no idea why I thought this pedal could do any better.

Well built. It could be used as a weapon inside a pillowcase. Or, if my 747 kept rolling away, I could use it as a chock. I won't wear it out, since I don't use it.

Haven't dealt with them. Afraid that what I might say to them could be construed as terrorism.

I have been playing for over 35 years, and like most guitarists, I have had my really good deals and purchases that were merely pissing money away. This was the single worst purchase I have made.

Not much to say here, it's a stompbox.

I run a Gibson Explorer with DiMarzio Virtual PAF's through a Traynor YGM mk iii. I was given this pedal a few years ago and kept it in my pedal lineup for the odd times when I wanted a really heavy aggressive sound. For that it's alright but it does have a very cold harsh sound, unlike some other fuzz pedals like fuzz-face, etc. It also sounds quite thin, lacking some bass and mid frequencies. I took this thing out of my pedal lineup yesterday and noticed an immediate increase in my tone. I hadn't realized until this point how much this pedal, lacking true-bypass, sucks high end frequencies when it is not engaged.

The power input jack on this pedal has a loose connection causing it to power off if it is bumped, shutting off my guitar. Giving it a quick nudge with my foot would always get it to come back though. I would never gig with this pedal.

Never dealt with them.

The only reason I'm giving this pedal a 4 is because it's cheap. I'm getting rid of this and replacing it with a Euthymia ICBM.

Four simple straight-forward knobs: simple

Used this with a Yamaha strat copy through a Yamaha solid-state amp
zero hum, just delicious fuzzy distortion... until it broke

It's made of weapons-grade metals and could be used to build a house instead of using a hammer.
The plastic connections however seem to dislodge themselves quite easily.
Had it about 1.5 years and then it only worked if the cable was sitting *just* right.. for a week. then nothing ever again.

I would love to have it serviced and in working order again... ever go to Danelectro's website? I think a bra with a Rubiks' cube latch would be easier to get off than to find Customer Support information.
I read on here someone actually got ahold of them and replaced it for free... which would be nice if anyone else had their address and/or phone number!!

Awesome pedal while it worked.
Little steep on the price to replace outright, as I wouldn't expect a second one to have longevity either

The Fab Tone is extremely easy to use. Take five minutes, and you'll have it down.

I read some of the reviews of this pedal and other Dano pedals here, and all I can say is, some of you wouldn't know tone if it bit you in the ass. And a lot of you need to go back to school and learn proper English, punctuation, spelling and grammar. This pedal is meant to replicate the sound of sixties fuzztones, plain and simple. That's all it's supposed to do-nothing else. It is not an overdrive! It's a fuzzbox. Taken for what it is, the Fab Tone does what it does quite well. Maybe too well. It's a very "fuzzy" pedal, with one of the nastiest sounds I have ever heard. I use mine sparingly at best. It's not transparent, it's not well mannered or well behaved. It's a fire-breathing fuzz dragon. Take it for what it is, not what it isn't.

It's totally dependable.

No opinion.

I'm sure it's not the best fuzztone out there, but it's not the worst either. Like a lot of Dano effects, it's a one-trick pony. It only does one thing, but it basically does it quite well.

Level, gain, bass, treble knobs; one in, one out, and a footswitch. 10/10 on ease of use, whatever you think of its sound quality. If you can't figure out at least how everything works and what everything does, you might be better off getting a Valve Junior - one knob to glory!

I prefer the tone-shaping ;)

The difficulty of assessing this pedal's sound quality arises primarily from the simple fact that, unlike many distortion pedals, this one is NOT a chameleon. It will NOT sound good with every amp, every guitar, and no amount of knob turning on the pedal or the amp will fix that. It likes bassier amps, and it hates trebly amps. That is the most important thing to keep in mind.

This pedal is very intrinsically bright, and as such if you feed it into a bright amp, it will claw out your ears with screechy, fizzy treble distortion. If that's your setup, this is an easy ZERO out of 10 for sound quality.

However, if you have a warm amp with a lot of midbass and midrange, and a more relaxed treble, you might find this pedal to be an awesome little unit, well worth the money and more.

To illustrate the difference, examine the Fender Supersonic 1x12 combo. It's a relatively recent 60W all tube combo amp with two channels, clean and dirty. The clean is neat because it has two circuits, switchable between a Vibrolux preamp or a Bassman preamp. This is a switch that immediately moves between a very bright, glassy tone to a much warmer, midbass-heavy tone. Hitting that switch IS the difference between the Fab Tone sounding awful (Vibrolux) and awesome (Bassman).

On the right amp, this pedal absolutely screams. It's like a super high gain blues pedal! It's got "that" sound, the dirty blues taken to the limits. If you've heard George Lynch's band Wicked Sensation's debut album, it will get that sound. That is its home, playing blues as metal, metal as blues.

The first ten times I tried this pedal, I hated it. I thought it was tinny, buzzy crap, useful only as a paperweight or perhaps to make an otherwise good amp sound like a practice amp. My eyes have been opened to its excellent tonal possibilities, and it has made its way forever into my dirt section.

I'm not giving it a rating, because it's entirely dependent on those factors over which it has no control. If your setup is one way, it sounds like garbage coated garbage with a garbage filling... but if it's the "right" way for this curious little monster, it sounds like high gain bliss. Dirty and raunchy, but focused, tight in all the right places and loose in all the right ways.

I've had excellent luck with all Danelectro pedals I've ever owned. I have six or so on my board now, from the little plastic units to their Wasabi line (shame they're being discontinued, some underappreciated gems in that group!). Though I would prefer metal, housing-mounted input jacks, a modicum of care and sense means you shouldn't ever have any problem with the plastic ones they insist on using. Either stick it down to a pedalboard and leave it there, or just be careful not to jerk it around while it's plugged in. I've owned my Dan-o's for a long time without problems, and I don't baby my gear, but I do take the kind of care of it that ensures it will be with me for a long time yet.

If Dan-o has customer support, I don't know it. Thankfully I've never needed it, but I have heard only horror stories.

For me, this pedal's a 10/10. For you, who knows? I recommend you try it out with a setup close enough to yours to really wrap your head around what it can do. In the wrong outfit, it can make a mess of the best tone, but if its electronic environment is friendly to its way of life, it will flourish in a fantastic way.

I'm throwing a 10/10 on it because this is all about my opinion, but keep everything I've said in mind. Use your own head and your own ears, first, always.

Read a lot. Realy read a lot. I've printed the first 40 pages of comments and read all of them. A lot of crap 'n' bull****. How a 4 knobs pedal can be not easy to use? The rank in this question is not about the "tone" or the "quality" of this stompbox. For that answers there is the box bellow. This stompbox is realy easy to use. Just 4 knobs and many possibilities. Bass and Treble knobs to equalize your sound. The volume knob is very agressive so turn it with care otherwise you're going to crack your amp speaker. The "fab" knob doesn't change the soun to much, but increases a bit of sustain and a very ligth upgrade in distortion level. AS OTHER PEOPLE SAID, THIS IS NOT AN OVERDRIVE UNIT. THIS THING IS MADE FOR DISTORTION!!!

Guitar: Fender American Highway 1 with Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups and a DiMarzio Tone Zone in the bridge position. 20 watt Onerr Block amp. and 6 other stompboxes, including Planet Waves Chromatic Tuner, MXR DynaComp, Ibanez TS-808, Marshall Jackhammer Distortion, Boss Chorus and Boss Reverb Delay. "Is it noisy?" Of course it is noisy, but it is a distortion pedal. THIS IS NOT AN OVERDRIVE PEDAL. Don't compare this unit with other overdrives like Tubescreamer's TS, DOD 250, MXR ZW-44, Boss OD's, MXR GT-OD's, Maxon's and other lite units. AS I SAID BEFORE, THIS IS NOT AN OVERDRIVE PEDAL. THIS IS A DISTORTION STOMPBOX.

Another important thing!!! What stompbox can you buy with 40 bucks? Come on!!! Are you trying to compare this 40 bucks unit against your 300 dollars power-valve machine? Give me a break!!! This is the best you can get with only 40 dollars. There are a hundred other better equipments to buy and spend at about 100 or more. But this is the best unit that US$40.00 can buy. That's a fact. Period!!!

This question can only be answered with 8, 9 or 10. People who give 7 or less in this question, realy doesn't know what are doing. This pedal is solid like a stone. That's OK if you think the knobs are a bit plastic, but they are strong too.

That's another problematic question, because this question cannot be answered with more than 4 or 5 points. There is NO customer support and NO deal with Danelectro. The website is poor.

For all the good and bad, I give this pedal 8 points in overall rating.

Easy to use. 4 knobs. Volume, bass, treble, and gain. I always have more bass mixed in and low on the treble. the gain/distortion knob stays in lowest setting. You step on the button to activate. If you can't get a good sound, then you either don't know what your doing or you have the wrong pedal for your musical tastes.

Great sound quality. I really don't notice a change is sound when pedal is off and this is not true bypass. No noise when activated and not playing other than normal amp noise. I play Les Pauls and Strats and Teles into a Fender Twin Reissue w/15" speaker.

I got my first one in 1996 or 1997 and am still using it. I have 3 others for backup I bought on eBay just in case b/c I love this pedal, and have only used them to make sure they work.

Never need them.

I love blues mostly and generally fall into that groove when writing, but I have used it for everything. If this pedal would respond to rolling off the volume knob like my boutique fuzz pedal, I would probably use this pedal exclusively. I love the smooth distortion this pedal offers. I have 4 of these total, 3 for backup and haven't needed. All my effects are true bypass except this one and my Dan Echo delay but that doesn't seem to affect my sound.