Fulltone Distortion Pro

6 knobs and two trim potis are not easy to ajust. After a longer time of tweaking you'll get it and you will know how it works.

I played it through a 73 Twin Reverb, a Blues Junior with V30, a 2554 Marshall and a JCM800 with Strats and Teles and it didn't sound good. I got a better result with my H&K 100W Tube Head. The H&K has much gain of of its own and the pedal worked best just to give that little bit of extra gain. But that's not what a high gain pedal ist meant for. The sound reminds me of that old Distortion+ from MXR that I don't like. I am shure after opening up this pedal that it is basicly a hot rodded Dist.+. It has also the same problem that after 3 a clock the distortion gets very muddy.

This ist where the pedal shines. Only made of the best parts and a very good metal box. I think it will last for ever

Never dealt with them.

This is a pedal that the world doesn't need. There are much better high gain pedals out there for a much better price. OK I bought it on Ebay for 135,00$ and sold it a few weeks later for 200,00$. That was the best experience I have made with the Distortion Pro. I wonder why there are so much people out there who pay such a high price fore a useless toy. I play guitar for 32 years. I tried a lot of pedals but I was rarely so disapointed. The problem is that Fulltone has no stomp box design of their own. They take old boxes and try some hodrodding. Mostly it works but not in this case.

2003 model. Very easy to use. Manual tone tweaking common sense knobs. True Bypass...awesome. Very easy to make this pedal sing.

This pedal sounds very good and specializes in big fat tone. Fulltone uses quality parts and construction. Out of the box and plugged into an amps clean channel, this pedal gives you open and dynamic distortion. Not modern compressed sounds. If you like the modern compressed hi-gain amps believe me, after you hear this pedal in action it is likely you'll realize how bad those compressed modern amps really are. This pedal will give you aggressively raunchy to smooth rock and roll tones, a huge pallet from which to select. Think vintage to 'hot rodded' Marshall's. Also, this pedal is gives great harmonic. True bypass is a must, pure guitar signal in and out. The above comments are based on running it thru your amp set on a clean sound. Basically, it will get you pretty close to any marshall type sound from the 60's, 70's, up to and including VH1.
If you use it with the GAIN channel of your amp or with a booster like the Fulldrive II (highly recommended), then you can get just about any sound from the past 35-40 yrs...add a good Keeley compressor (or similiar) to capture just about any rock sound currently out there.

As good as it gets. Outstanding warranty for pedasl that gets stomped on, daily!

Excellent, pretty quick with emails and very cool to speak with on the phone.

This pedal is an outstanding value given the range of sounds possible, hand-made tough construction, 5 year warranty, and don't forget TRUE Bypass (it makes all the difference). Also, unlike other pedals, the Fulltones seem to retain their value.

the distortion pro has a fairly steep learning curve,you don"t just plug and play.as mike fuller states the controls are very interactive in a sneaky sort of way.I think 1 or 2 weeks of experience with the unit will deliver amazing tones,although shit in, shit out....

this is my chain vox wah-distortion pro-experience pedal-deja vibe2-ADA tube preamp[modified by me from a marshall style cathode follower circuit courtesy mark howell and ADA DEPOT.COM]--Alesis midi verb2-2 marshall slp plexi reissue 100 watt heads-2 marshall 4\12 cabs with 25 watt greenbacks .

I have owned 2 distortion pros the first one a piece of stem on a pot fell off misterously.I superglued it back in place,other than that there have been no problems at all

have not had to use it yet...

I am able to get any distortion/overdrive tone short of full out fuzz with it particularly good is a van halen 1-2 slightly sqished sound setting with my rig level 2 o"clock,distortion-0,res-9 o:clock,voicing4 o:clock,highs -off, sat-4-5 o"clock also can cop joe satriani live tone dead on.also,the unit prefers single coil and normal gibson humbuckers paf reissue are good unit did mud up with real hot pickups[over 12 k]I adjust the internal trimmers only to put them back where mike set them.. I find the unit a bit hot but liked turning the distortion off and using the remaining controls... Its much more like a great overdrive with powerful tone shapeing than any conventional distortion box I LOVE MINE ...

N/A

This is a follow-up to an earlier review. I had the 2002 version and felt really uncomfortable with it. The pedal was very aggressive and hard to control at gig volume. It had a grainy quality to the distortion that was unpleasent to me. I saw the 2003 upgrade offer on the Fulltone website and thought "Why not." I sent it in with $10 to cover shipping. WHAT A DIFFERENCE !!! It's so much smoother and easier to control. I've had it back a week and can't stop playing with it. How's that for inspiration. My once "razorsharp lazerbeam" twin can sound like a fat warm plexi if I want it to. The tweek buttons don't seem to respond as drastically as before the upgrade. This make them much more useable and user friendly. I can play my Les Paul on 5,6 or 7 with a good rock tone then roll up to 10 and just sizzle and sustain with very ear pleasing saturation. the pedal also responds to right hand (pick hand)technique. If you dig, you hear it in the dynamics of the pedal. Sorry to go on and on, but I can't say enough about the improvements the 2003 chip upgrade made.

Best made pedals on the market.

Emailed about the upgrade. Got an answer that day.
I sent my pedal in UPS- Fulltone got it on a Friday. I got it back the following Friday. You figure 3 days shipping each way- They had it about 2 days. That is about as fast as it gets. the charged me $10 to ship it back. It cost me $7 to ship it in. No charge for upgrade.
I'd give them a 10 if they ate the shipping.

It had internal trimmers. Woohoo. I still could not get a reasonable sound out of it. This pedal is massively adjustable, but the problem is that you have to spend many hours tweaking it to get a good sound. and, if you play a 2-humbucker jobbie, just forget about it. tweaking is everything with fulltone pedals, in my experience. if you want to spend the time on it, cool. i don't.

It sounds absolutely spectacular- on the bridge pickup of a good Strat, with a good bridge pickup. I have NOT been able to make it sound good with anything else, for lead style. i think it's possible to make this pedal sound really good for a lot of styles, but after spending 6 months on it, frankly, i don't feel like tweaking anymore.
this is not for the person who likes to just plug a guitar in, and have a good distortion sound.
one thing i've noticed with Fulltone pedals- if you don't play a single-coil pickup, all bets are off. all his pedals seem to be built for single-coils. the difference in sound quality b/w my strat and 2-humbucker jobbie (both with decent seymour duncan vintage-style pickups) was immense. single coils sounded great. humbuckers sounded like crap, even after adjusting the internal gain trimmers way down. go figure.
in it's defense- if you can tweak it, when you nail the settings, it sounds totally awesome. too bad my strat died a few weeks after that :\
but do NOT think you can buy this pedal, plug it in, and expect massively good tone. you will work, very hard, for your tone. in my case, i worked, and i found the tone was not worth it.

whatever i might have to say about tone quality and ease of use, fulltone pedals are ridiculously well constructed. the box is solid steel, the LED and switch are patented top-quality. cold day in hell before you catch me complaining about build quality or reliablity in one of these pedals. these things are SOLID.
caveat: i don't play out. but i have broken a few pedals. so, my rating on this area is not really valid.

never dealt with fulltone's customer support. the manual is pretty good, tho.

i'm selling mine. might get a foxey fuzz, or a cheapie disortion, not sure. the ts-9 does well for most of my drive/distortion needs, and is easier to use. if the pedal was cheaper, i'd be more forgiving. but this is a boutique pedal that really doesn't justify it's price. this thing was being played thru a Dr Z Maz-18, and i just couldn't take the awful sound anymore, after 6 months of tweaking.

This is an update to a review from early 2002. My first DP1 really sounded awful. Could not get a useful tone out of it. Perhaps because it was one of the first hundred, perhaps for some other reason, but it was dreadful. This one is 1000% better. Giving it a 9 simply because of option anxiety due to its sensitivity and versatility.

I've used it live with a Rivera R-55 and an '88 Mesa Mark III and have been pretty happy. This pedal cleans up magnificently at the guitar, probably better than any other pedal I've ever used. Not too noisy, but so far I've used it with a PRS Standard and a Hamer Artist, both humbucker equipped. Playing with single coils or hybrids results in a little more noise and hum, but nothing outlandish. The massive improvement over the original pedal I had comes in far better sustain and far less fizz in the pedal's decay. My first pedal had a very obvious sizzle in the note's decay, similar to the awful electronic crackle that the Prescription Electronics Dual Tone possesses. This pedal sounds far darker and more natural than that one. Very fluid sustain. Very violin-y tone; Eric in a box, as others have commented. Much improved.

Nevr had any issues with Fuller's build quality at all. If this failed, I could easily default to amp channel overdrive, which is always an option for me. The DP1 gives me a fourth and sometimes fifth option for amp tone. After owning a number of Fulltone products I have no doubt that this will prove every bit as reliable as those.

Mike's Mike. Doesn't suffer fools well (so I try not to bug him too often...), but has always responded to service issues I may have had. Sent a replacement footswitch for a Fat Boost a couple years ago at no charge, and it arrived in Illinois from California in a couple of days.

Jazz fusion/funk and variety music. Playing for 30 years now. Own loads of stuff. My old mid-80s Rat is still a benchmark distortion pedal for me, but I haven't really used many outboard distortion pedals since buying the Mesa I have in '88. Other amps are a Budda SD30 and a Rivera R55, both high gain beasts that have more than enough distortion. Again, pedals like the FDII, the Banzai Fireball I, and the DP1 supply some extra distortion options for me. These all sound like very natural extensions of the amps' tones. In fact, the DP1 in its high gain mode has a very similar buttery tone to the Mark III's lead channel. This is definitely more in line with what I had in mind back in early '02.

Pretty straightforward really - anyone who can read will be able understand what the various knobs do.

I use a levinson blade R4 + KA hot rails in the bridge > MXR dynacomp > crybaby > sparkle drive > Boss SD1 > Fulltone DP1 > Tonebone Hot British > Fender Pro-Reverb with Lexicon MPXG2 in the loop for post gain FX, Rvb, delay etc.,

For the first time in my life I bought a pedal on the strength of reviews and I have to say I am disappointed in every way. I am a serious player of 25 years and however I try to use the DP-1 I just cannot get a decent sound out of it.

The DP-1 sounds brittle with a very harsh top end and little useable sustain. It sounds absolutely nothing like a valve amp! With the rig I use I can easily achieve great "just breaking up" and blues tones, I wanted the DP-1 for a much more sustainy saturated sound but it was a massive let down.

I have tweaked the internal trimmers, which do make a difference but you pay a huge price for increased sustain because what you get is a mushy bottom end, too much compression and a ton of uncontrollable feedback.

And it stinks with single coils - it breaks up all over the place and sounds more like a 100lb pile of dung than a 100lb violin.

I cannot get a single useable sound out of this thing - do yourself a favour and check out everything else on the market before you buy a DP-1.

I will never find out if it's reliable as I would never use it live and it's now for sale. Note: these things don't resell for anything like their retail price - enough said!

I emailed Mike Fuller (very politely) as I was so frustrated that I couldn't get this thing sounding decent and asked for his suiggestions / help.

That was nearly 2 months ago and neither Mike, nor anyone from his company has replied.

I have played sessions, gigs and taught guitar for 25 years, I imagine anyone stupid enough to steal one of these will probably be disappointed with it too. It's going as soon as someone offers me anything like what I paid for it.

i think its pretty eay. I set it using the EJ patch in the manual, and then tweaked alittle here and there. Greats sound.

Excellent. I got the 100lb violin thing going with single notes, but I dial in a bit more edge with the high end knob. So I sound like a violin that will kick your ass. ALso sounds very clean, what you put in is what comes out, so sharpen you chops if you dont like the pedal.

fulltone = good shit with a great service department.

see above. sent mine in for chip upgrade, $10 and a week later it was back in my hands. Cool.

if you want more out of your dist boxes , get this, and tweak.
I dig it. Also sounds great goosing an already distorted amp.
All around great value in a nice small box. Can you dig it?

Out of curiosity, I took the unit out of the box and plugged it in. It sounded great. The tone was very tube-like and organic with the controls in the neutral positions. This pedal is a tweakers wet dream. I am not a tweaker, so I was pleased to find that the setting suggetions were good starting places to find the tones you are looking for. I am giving this a nine rating because it is not a simple device. You could spend days and weeks getting to know the nuances of each of the six control parameters of this pedal.

My setup is a G&L Legacy and ASAT, a 1970s Gibson SG, and a Guild Bluesbird. I play these through a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue and a Marshall AVT 50 (a fantastic amp that has replaced my 50 watt Plexi). I play this pedal exclusively through the Marshall. I have noticed no real jump in noise through this pedal. The distortion is like my old Plexi, only you can enjoy it at much lower volume. My plexi has to be up around 8 to reach this tone. You can cop the EJ and EVH tone pretty easily. The Brian May tone is less obvious to me. I use this pedal with only a Line6 Delay Modeler and they interact very well. My tone is close to the EJ violin tone, and this pedal makes it very easy to get there. I already had great tone, and this pedal has made it even better.

No problems here. This pedal feels like a brick with some wiring inside. I no longer gig outside the studio, but I would have a backup. It is just the smart way to gig. It is probably more important to back up your power source than the pedals, in my experience.

I have emailed Mike and the sales department 3 times. I always received a reply by the time I woke up in the morning. Bravo to the operation Mike Fuller has set up. They have made a believer out of me.

I play Gilmour and Alan Parsons Project(Ian Bairnson rules all) type music, with some fusion tendencies. I own a Big Muff Pi, Boss DS-1, DOD OD250, Boss BD1, Fuzz Face, and a Chandler tube overdrive. This pedal will replace all of them, but I will keep them on my shelf to impress the youngsters. I also purchased a custom shop Fulldrive2. These two pedals together will handle all of my overdive and distrtion needs from now on. I was torn between this and a tonebone classic distortion. I am so glad I chose the Distortion Pro. The tonebone sounds great, but this sounds better. My good friend owns a tonebone and he wants to trade. If it were stolen, I would replace it immediately. I have played since the hair metal days of the late 80s(I like that era more now than I ever did then, new music is sad). I am being sincere to say this is a powerful tone generator. It is very expensive, but this is one of those rarest of instances, you get what you pay for. I am now a GOLDEN GOD.

Pedal very easy to use. Could not find a bad sound out it with my gear. Manual gives you a great start.

I play various Strats with all types of single coil pickups. My amps are a Peavey Classic 50 with 4x10's, a Fender Blues DeVille, and a Mesa Dual Recto with a 4x12 cab. and a 2x12 cab. Don't bring everything to every gig. Club or hall size determines what gear is used.

Built like a tank. All Fultone pedals are built this way.

Nothing yet but, from what I've heard, very cool.

I play in a 70's and 80's cover band. Guitar rock, no metal, like listening to a lot of the FM stations out there. It's perfect for that style. Just tweak the dials a little bit and you got the sounds you need. I don't try to sound like anyone else, never have, never will. That's why I like the Pro. It's responds so well to the volume, and dynamics of your playing, you have your own sound with it. It is a very musicial sound. The manual mentions the violin sound, it's in there.