Fulltone Distortion Pro

It has six knobs and for a distortion pedal which at first can be daunting. But regardless its very simple to get an amazing tone. The manual is great and offers up some starting points with it sample settings.

Simply the best distortion pedal by far that i have ever played and i have owned them all. In fact when i first got this pedal i was expecting the holy grail considering how hard it is to get one, and was initially dissapointed.But that was because i was expecting angels to fly out my butt or something. But when it came down to it and I a/b ed this with tons of great distortion pedals that i own this thing blew every single one away. Usually pedals of these variety sound great at bedroom levels and terribly middy and bright when you get into a practice situation at loud levels. This thing sounded exactly the same, full of body and reacts so well to pickup changes and turns on your volume knob. I tested it thru my Tone King comet 40b which is very much like a blackface fender. I used a custom warmoth i have w/ humbuckers and a 335 with p-94s in it. Sounded great through both. Thank you Fulltone for giving my dirty tones life again.

built like a tank

Once again i cannot hold this pedal in higher esteem, a true tone machine.

Ease of use is subjective...dependent on your gear. In my particular case, I'm still tweaking the pedal to find my sound. Different guitars demand different settings...but I'm having a heckuva time finding a middle ground...

For the price & amount of time it took to get my hands on one, it should have knocked my socks off outta the box. It didn't. It's not bad...as a matter of fact it's quite good, but not exceptional to my ears. Not the be-all, holy grail of distortion pedals by a long shot. I can actually dial in the same tones with older cheaper pedals I already have.

Definitely built well.

Never had to deal with Fulltone. Hope I never have to.

I play Teles, Strats & Ernie Balls...with an assortment of pickup configurations (everything from stock singles to high output humbuckers), through Fender amps (Vibrolux Reverb) mostly; on occasion I'll whip out the Riveras (Jake Combo, Quiana). Been gigging regularly almost every weekend since '72. The pedal does what it's supposed to do...that is, it's a good distortion pedal. But there's a lot of 'em out there, & the DP blends into the crowd, sound-wise. I could make it work in my rig...and probably be happy with it, but I could do the same with a much less expensive unit. Overall, nothing really negative...but definitely not the standout I hoped it would be.

Took some getting used too. I think I've got the hang of it now, it came with a 3 page instruction manual with 1 of the 3 settings sounding good with my set up. You have numerous to choose from with the voicing, highs, saturation and other knobs I can't remember, but so far I've only found one that works really well for me.

Okay I got this pedal 8 days after I ordered it from fulltone, I was extremely pleased with the rapid delivery, and having never heard it I was going on the assumption it was going to kick ass. I play it through a 71 deluxe that has been blackfaced, and a crybaby with my clapton strat. For giggles I tried the high gain setting and was rewarded with massive clipping and all out noise. I was surprised but not disappointed since I don't play in that style anymore. Okay, next I tried a lighter gain setting kind of early rush. Once again, clipping was still noticeable and it sounded thin. Now, keep in mind that I use single coils and am using a very low distortion amp so I'm not expecting miracles. After two weeks I finally found a setting that suits me fine, a srv type lead tone that ventures into voodoo child slight return territory. Very cool, but not nearly as versatile as I hoped. I plugged in my friends les paul(I sold it to him) and got that thick distortion sound minus the clipping. Hmmph. Not my style anyway(sour grapes approach).

Seems to be built like a tank, superb design.

Never tried to contact them. I feel the pedal does what it said just not what I wanted it to do....exactly.

I've played 8 years and recently started into the blues. I love the sounds I get with my guitar and amp, but wanted a good distortion tone to boot. I can't say that it's important enough for me to buy another les paul, or another amp, but it'd be cool. I like the tone I get with the pedal, I just wonder if I could've gotten a cheaper pedal and gotten the same sound(Like a 69' or 70' fulltone). I will definitely try out other fulltone products, I can tell by the detail of their work that they put alot of pride into it. I'm keeping the pedal for those reasons.

The Fulltone distortion Pro is extremely user friendly.
Several Tone shaping features and the give this unit a vast array
of tonal possiablitiy's.

The pro is capable of FAT NASTY RAW TONE>:~)

WITHOUT A DOUBT(BUILT LIKE A MINNY TANK)

I've only met a few people that take the kind of pride in their work
that Mike Fuller does. A true genious and verry down to earth.

Currently running: Custom Shop fender>PE vibe>Teese Rmc3>Distorion pro
Analogman Clone>Mesa Nomad>Fender blues Deville
This pedal is amazing in any setup

Had a lot of noise at first but after adjusting the trimmers, now sounds very good. I lean more to overdrive than hard distortion, pedal will do both.

Useing this with Fender amps mainly. When I got the pedal, I set it up like the samples in the manual and was disappointed. The background noise was awful, tried other settings and was about to be sick. I remembered the bad review here and was thinking maybe I agree more with this guy but also thinking about the other good reviews I thought I'd give it another try. I looked at the manual and found the info on the trimmers (that are supposed to be left alone) and since they are marked thought I could try other settings and always return it to "stock settings". High settings of the 2nd trimmer effects the noise level and mine was set allmost on full, I backed it down almost a quater and the hum was gone. I also backed the 1st trimmer down like the manual suggested for hot pickups. For me this works very well now. I have a Fulldrive II, the Dist. Pro has a fuller sound. (no pun intended) Sounds good turned down, good turned up, I am as pleased as I was at first disappointed. In the event I find latter I was just not ready for the pedal I can allways change it back.

New but like other Fulltone stuff, dont expect anything but satiafaction.

Never needed it before but would like to talk to him about the trimmer adjustment.

Sounds good but had to "mess" with it. Expect Mike would't approve but this things on my amp and I think it sounds better than when it came. Like I said, I lean more to overdrive and this thing sounds more full and alive than the Fulldrive but I am not planning to give it up. Also the Dist. Pro sounds better than a Rat and I really like a Rat, not going to get rid of it either.

a little to tough to dial in the tone, but worth it... the manual is good. i set it to the brown sound, but since mike fuller uses this on his strat's bridge p/up, and i use the neck/middle combination, i had to adjust the tone so it was bright enough for me.

the sound quality is excellent. i have 7 fulltone pedals--fatboost, preflat mids FD2, suptrem, '70, soulbender, choral flange and the distortion pro. i think this one is my favorite. i set it as follows: vol.: 12 o'clock, dist.: 12-2 o'clock, res.: 10 o'clock, voicing: 12 o'clock, highs: 2-3 o'clock, and saturation : 5 o'clock. with my lindy fralin loaded custom relic strat into my top hat club deluxe this gives me plenty of distortion, sustain and saturation. my board now has an analogman orange juicer compressor>fulltone distortion pro>bareber elctronics tonepump w/out internal bass trimmer>barber electronics burn unit 2 set to british drive settings (one channel w/ burn at 12 o'clock and the other with burn at 5 o'clock)>voodoolab analog chorus set to fast leslie>analog chorus set to slow leslie> boss tu-2 tuner>ibanez ad-9 analog delay.
this is the sound i have been looking for all long. the only thing missing from my set up was a hot, fat, complex distorted tone. i tried a rat, bixonic, tube drive, my FD2 with the boost control on 5 o'clock and i wasn't happy with any of them. the distortion pro sounds like a jcm 900--ballsy, fat, defined, tight, complex and sustained. my friend used it on with his tele with barden's into a allen flame amp and the amp sounded like a great old marshall--only not at ear splitting volume!! Mike, you did it. the wait was worth it! so was the price!!

yes, this looks like the best built fulltone yet. the battery compartment is so trick!! 1 thumbscrew and the door is revolving and holds the battery secure and takes up very little space. the next best thing about this pedal after the tone is the size...for those of us with cramped pedal boards, a tiny pedal with giant tone is a G-d send. If this wasn;t so expensive, i would put 2-3 of them in my board!!

mike has always answered all my emails very promptly and replaced parts that were faulty.

i play blues and classic rock. been playing for 28 years. i mostly use a lindy fralin loaded custom relic strat> into a top hat club deluxe > my pedalboard now has an analogman orange juicer compressor>fulltone distortion pro>bareber elctronics tonepump w/out internal bass trimmer>barber electronics burn unit 2 set to british drive settings (one channel w/ burn at 12 o'clock and the other with burn at 5 o'clock)>voodoolab analog chorus set to fast leslie>analog chorus set to slow leslie> boss tu-2 tuner>ibanez ad-9 analog delay.

the only thing holding this back is the price...

Having 6 knobs adds a little effort to the necessary tweaking. However, it does not take long to dial in several good sounds.

I give this pedal a 9 for TONE. Great vintage sounds. Very quiet. PERFECT fade outs - no breakup at all when the volume dies away. Very sensative to guitar volume knob and pick attack.

Set up: G&L Legacy Special-->Line6 MM4-->MXR Dynacomp-->Ernie Ball Volume Pedal-->Fulltone Distortion Pro-->Switchbox (looped into Mesa DC3)-->Line6 DL4-->BOSS Chorus-->'68 Fender Bassman

Putting the DP in front of my modified Mesa DC3 produced an AWESOME tone. By itself, the DP gives serveral great tones.

I am not wild about the actual distortion and sustain of the DP. But the TONE makes this pedal a keeper.

Only had it 1 month. No trouble yet.

I give Mike Fuller a "10" for quick response. He has answered every e-mail I've sent him within 5 minutes.

I've been playing since 1969. I'm a serious guitarist - played for a living for many years & studied guitar at North Texas State. I could not get this pedal to produce the tones described at the Fulltone web page, however, I am very happy with this pedal and plan to keep it. One more thing - many distortion pedals make your guitar sound smaller, this one makes your guitar sound really BIG. I do wish the pedal produced better sustain.

It's easy to use. It's a distortion pedal. Any distortion pedal is easy to use and understand. Very cool layout and look to it. Cool color too. Getting a good sound was a different story. I'm not giving a rating here, because it's easy to use, but the sound ain't so hot, and mom always said if you can't say something nice.....

I mostly use a '66 strat all original and various amps Marshall and Budda. This pedal is advertised as a distortion pedal, but to me sounds more like a fuzz pedal. It's got that super loose fat bass sound that most fuzzes exhibit, and it's also got that thing where one note will lose out to another. In other words, the notes don't bleed together well. Sometimes one note will get chopped off because of another stronger signal. I hate that in a gain pedal. It IS extremely smooth as advertised. I guess a fuzz is a distortion pedal, technically. I think of them as different effects. I was expecting something like a Brian May or a Marshall kinda tone. Some old EVH style would be nice. The website says high gain sounds ala Boston. Well, there ain't no Boston or EVH or Queen stuff in that pedal. I don't know who's listening or defining those tones at Fulltone but they need to learn to hear differences in tones especially when trying to describe them.
It's misleading to call this a "distortion pro", it's border line fuzz with a hollow smooth sound and farty cardboard bass. It has a lot of nice controls and it looked like I could get a lot out of it, but it retained that farty bass no matter what the knobs were at. I was quite excited about this pedal for a long time comin' and this is what took years of refining?!! I have always hated fuzz pedal tone. I love old Marshall type tones like Michael Shenker, Gary Moore, Brian May and old VH, and old ACDC. So that is where I'm coming from. I was looking for a pedal to help get those tones when using clean amps like Fender twins. This pedal is a fuzz. If you like that fuzz thing, you might love this pedal. Low rating for misleading ad. I didn't want a sloppy fuzz.

Sent it back

I emailed the guy about a defect on the Fulldrive II switches and he sent new ones out. Very short and too the point when talking on the phone. Made it seem like I was wasting his time. So he's busy, so was the guy at Budda or at VHT but they were very helpful and polite. I called them several times.

I decided to give a review because I hate when I'm looking for honest opinions and find something with mostly all "10s". I guess I'm more critical on gear. I rarely if ever find anything that deserves a 10.
I wanted to give a little balance to the reviews here. I know that this being a LONG awaited hot distortion box, people are going to rave on it. This is my view. Because imo, it's advertising is misleading, I'm givin' it a low rate.

IMO very easy to use. So it's got a lot of knobs-did you get perfect tone out of your guitar amp the first time you turned it on or did you tweak it some? We're guitarists, which by default makes us tweakers. We're all looking for perfect tone or you wouldn't be reading this.
The controls are interactive so it does require some adjustment to bring out the best distortion for your amp/ guitar setup. With a little use, it's easy to figure out. The instruction sheet has some suggested settings which are all good and a great place to start.I haven't heard a bad tone yet, some are just better than others.

Using this with a Hamer Artist and Studio. Both have "traditional" PAF pickups - Seth Lovers in the Artist and Al II Pro and Pearly Gates in the Studio. Main amp is a Mesa Boogie Mark-IIC. Since it has true bypass, there is absolutely no signal loss when the pedal is off. The pedal gets slightly noisy when the distortion is maxed. There are two trimmers on the inside which allow for more gain, but also makes it noisier so I haven't messed with them. These are preset by Mike and crew and mine sounded fine without further adjustment.
Pure distortion tones from this baby. MUCH thicker and meatier than a DS-1, which was my old reliable until I got the DP-1. Somewhat reminiscent of an MXR Distortion plus, but much better. I've heard it compared to a Rat - never had one so I can't comment. Very crunchy and Marshallesque. I've seen people ask over and over "What's the best Marshall in a box pedal?". Well, here it is. Great for AC/DC rhythm, Rush-style riffs (nails Limelight), Free, you get the picture. To me the best feature is that the pedal has great sustain without any fizz. The note retains it's clarity and isn't masked by the effect. I've never heard an effect do this and I've owned 40+ pedals through the years.

It's brand new, but since it's Fulltone, I know it's reliable. My FullDrive had a switch go out after a year, which was fixed free of charge by Fulltone. IMO switches are the weak spot on any pedal. Anyone with the most basic soldering abilities can easily replace one on Fulltone pedals - a plus in my book.

Haven't dealt with them on this pedal, but have had nothing but the best experiences in the past. I have spoke with Mike over the phone on several occasions as well as many e-mails and while his replies are sometimes short, he has always replied personally. A couple of years ago I ordered a '69 pedal from Fat Sound (great on-line dealer,BTW). They were out of stock at the time and when my pedal was ready, Mike called me personally so he could send it directly to me instead of having it go to Fat Sound, then to me. That's exceptional service in my book.

I play mostly classic rock / blues rock. For pure distortion, this is the pedal for me. For smoother OD, I prefer the FullDrive and for the occasional fuzz, I like the PE Experience. I'll keep my DS-1 as it does have it's place and sentimental value.
I would replace the DP-1 if it were lost or stolen.
Mike kept us waiting a while for this one, but I think the wait was worth it.

It was easy to use, like a ham sandwich. There's that footswitch thing, and when I stepped on it, I was playing guitar! I did find that some of the complexities came from the sheer number of footswitches and knobs and what they did, but once I realized that I could turn them both ways, it was exciting, and relieved myself.

It sounds so freaking good. That's what's exciting.....the pure pleasure of playing it and feeling the totally stoked vibe of being jimmy page or mike fuller or brian may or even the captain. I own and play 27 guitars, most of them lunking specimens of 1970s living room history. Each has its purpose. So far, I've already plugged a couple into the DP, but I'm still looking forward to getting my hofner plastic strats into it but that'll be good, I know two of the presets will work well with those old 60s pickups. Forgive my excitement, I am just learning how to play the blues. Not that I haven't read manuals. It's taken a bit of time to figure out what each knob does to the tone. Marshall JTM-45, Fender Deluxe, Fender Twin, a few Ampegs I love, oh you know.

I have no idea. It's pretty new, right?

So super. Thanks bunches.

I play funk to flower, chunk to power, have been at it a while. Most musicians have experienced envy and compromise. Maybe now they can instantly plug into something that delivers like a nutritious meal. Distortion Pro is pretty special. Even though I'm not a "rock musician" per se, I do dig what it does to my signal before I run it to either of three amps I use during weekly gigs begging. Double Nickels fans rejoice! I can't support it any better than that. My stable of cheap junkers are so happy to be plugged into something that costs more than any of them. So super.