Tokai TDS-1 Distortion

It's very simple, one volume, one dist amount, and one tone knob, this last one is the key to get your sound.

No noise, very clear sound. You can play a C chord with a good amount of distorsion and it still sounds clear. Good point.
I bought it used to get a more punchy and agressive sound for my blues rock set. I love Japan oldies, so when I had the opportunity to buy a tokai, I just thought it was the right one...I'm not disappointed, but It was not exactly what I expected.
Well it seems to be almost like the disto on ...my Valvestate Marshall(1990). Quite the same texture, gain and contour control but with less feeling of life in the sound. Anyway, the tone knob allows some versatility. It has a very wide scope, from a very bassy dark sound to an electric-saw-like shredding tone, but the interesting range is too short and too fine to tune on my opinion, between 11 and 12 o'clock. It seems though you can get a rude blues disto sound and a good punk roar just with a change of the knob.
The texture is very rough and regular, without any surprise, either with a LP or a strat. The disto is on even with dist level at 0 and the amount of gain is ok at max, but not enourmous.
The sound of your guitar and your playing style will not really pass through this pedal, that seems to

built for a lifetime and more, but you need to practice to be familiar to the stomp...don't smash it too hard, you may engage and disengage in the same movement.

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As I said, it has it's own sound, a good one but not really living and quite not able to follow your personnality and guitarplay. It's not a TS9 and it has the real solid state sound and attitude. Good for punk rock though.

Three knobs, each giving a wide scope of sounds, particularly the tone control. Boss-a-like construction.

Epi Les Paul => This => Vox Wah => Ibanez DL5 delay => Crate VC20R

This wee beauty sounds great. Not as harsh as a DS1 and near perfect for what I wanted to use it for, high distortion, very low tone smooth-yet-fuzz. The business when used on single notes but also has good clarity when used with chords. Unbelievably versatile little unit can do a bluesy scream to an 80's shred wail. The tone control is excellent, plenty of scope. I'm not a distortion pedal fan - I bought it because I saw it on eBay and having heard good things, thought I'd give it a go, I was very plesantly surprised.

I got this second-hand and had to have it fixed. Whilst it was being fixed I had the battery connections tidied up because there was too much wire and the actaul connector looked quite scruffy. Now it is perfect, I'd gig without a back-up and if it died on me I'd probably replace it or by an overdrive such as a TS9. The construction is superb, very hard wearing, solid metal. The knobs are small and hard and recessed away from the footswitch so breakage is highly unlikely. One gripe is that the switch isn't great and sometimes needs a wee bit extra pressure.

A superb, very useful wee pedal. Clean distortion low and you can use the tone control to dial in all sort of Fender Twin-esque sounds. High level, mid-high distortion and high one and you're in shredders paradise. High tone and distortion and you dial up a Muse vibed sound. Superbly versatile, mostly due to the scope of the tone control. Does a better distortion than both the Boss DS1 and the Ibanez DS7.