Tonebone Hot-British Distortion

It's a no brainer!! Versatile controls at your fingertips!

I use it with tons of amps as I gig quite often. Mainly at home I use it with a Blackheart half stack and a Marshall JCM 800 half stack. Produces great sounding classic distortion from AD/DC to Metallica to even My Chemical Romance kinda distortion! Amazing shiat comes out from this box. Adding a Tubescreamer in front adds more crunch and attack to it which enabled it to go even further. Sounds thick and warm with great highs and amazing harmonics and picking sounds. I use a Fender Tele Japan and a Gibson 56 reissue Goldtop as my main axes and it's a really sweet combination.

Gigged with this many times over the past 2 years. No problems at all except for some slight scratches on the casing, other than that.... this thing could be thrown around and it would still be working.

Never gave me any problems so I've never dealt with them.

Great pedal for any kind of music but for me, blues and classic rock to classic metal, this pedal can get all the sounds. If you can't bring around a tube amp, this is the pedal to achieve tube sounding distortion.

Theres heaps of knobs and switches but that isn't a problem.

OK this is why i wanted review it!

Yes it would be much better with a noisegate,eq and different tubes!

BUT you shouldn't have to buy all these to make it sound any good!

It should as good as the company described it!

It is basicly just ment for good clean amplifiers

LISTEN KIDS WHO EVER, THIS IS NOT A SUBSITUTE FOR HI GAIN TUBE AMPILFIE

IT WILL NOT MAKE YOUR SOLID STATE 15 WATT AMP SOUND LIKE ONE!

trust me i know :P

the knobs variate to make some good sounds but the TONE in general all isn't up to my standards!

By the way it's worth about $400 Australian over here...

Trust me on this it's built like a brick!

I give great Kudos on that!

I have dropped it now a fews times after i found out it was not what i quite intended it to sound like and it still strong, the tube is still fine after all that too.

Contact with them is great!

But the advice the give is pathetic.

I emailed them, to see if my pedal was broken or something.

When I select to neck pickup and put it on full drive it sounds digusting!

The company just said ease of the volume on your guitar and it should be fine!

All that did was make lower in volume and lower in distortion!

Thats not what i wanted. I wanted it to be high gain for a reason!

I play metal rock and some blues licks

it's good for rock and blues in a sense, metal it has no hope! sounds like crap with full drive!

Ive had it for about a yar now.

I have a Squier Strat*, Epiphone G400 with Dimebucker,Ibanez Custom made Blazer series, fender front man 15 watt, digitech rp80


I have played the TONEBONE THROUGH A PEAVEY 6505 with cabs and a MARSHALL DSL with cab- to try and see the diffence

that's why i came to write this haha

I would say this pedal is easy to use. It comes with quite many knobs and switches, but they do what they say they do. No surprises. The manual is all right, but you won't need it. Same one for the Classic distortion and Hot British also.

I would say this pedal is easy to use. It comes with quite many knobs and switches, but they do what they say they do. No surprises. The manual is all right, but you won't need it. Same one for the Classic distortion and Hot British also.

This pedal had, when I got it a somewhat moderate variety of sounds coming out of it. Of course it sound great when you just got it. And after a few months I would rather play the amp clean then with the hot British plugged in. No matter the settings it always sounded as the amp was put in closed box, really thin and without punch. It was way to early to change the tube, but I thought I'd give it a shot before cursing it to h*ll (It's an expensive pedal so you except it to deliver). I???m my case switching to a Svetlana tube made all the difference. Sounds great! No loss in tone when switched on. Bluesy, rocky and metalish.

I use this with a one channel tube amp (Laney LC15R). The amp does not have much gain, and the two get along very well. This combination works better with passive pups tho. Never found Active ones could use the dynamics.

The metal housing seems really solid. Don't know about dropping it...

Haven't talked to them

Does start of with some distortion even if you're really soft on picking and volume is rolled down. Other than that this pedal covers most areas except the level of distortion where you no longer hear the cords. Great sound, tho expensive and the two channel version is even more expensive...

As distortion pedals go, this is one of the more tricky ones. Speaking from about 3 years of experience with the Hot British, you can find awful sounds and you can find phenomenal tones from this box! The tube you use in it will also make some difference in the overall sound (naturally, right?). Now, this is not to say it's as difficult to use as a programmable preamp like a Triaxis, but because of the extreme range of the controls on the Hot British, it can sometimes be difficult to dial in a tone. You definitely must spend some time dialing this box in.

Ok. Here's the deal: Use an EQ after this pedal! As of now, I'm using a Boss EQ pedal in my chain immediately after the Hot British, and to put it mildly, it makes an enormous difference in tone! The Hot British by its lonesome tends to be thin and harsh sounding to my ears. It gets especially bad in lower tunings or when using 7 strings or baritone guitars. Without and outboard eq, the distortion takes on a very JCM-800 gnarl. That's a good thing for some, though not for me, and certainly not for tunings below D. In fact, the first year I had this pedal, I was quite frustrated with it and very nearly tossed it. Then I read a few posts online about using EQ pedals after a distortion box in your signal chain and decided to give it a try. Holy Balls! Death metal, black metal, van halen, greasy single-coil SRV tone, and a lot more were instantly at my fingertips! Lower tunings are absolutely no problem anymore!

However, you must be aware that this pedal has a few problems. First, while I applaud Radial for using quality tubes, the JJ 12AX7's that come standard in the Hot British are not the right choice for the distortion this box is capable of. Try an Electro Harmonix instead and you'll see what I mean. The JJ actually reduced the overall amount of gain of the Hot British with no appreciable difference in tone. Maybe I had a bad one, but I had a similar problem when I switched to JJ's in a combo I played as well, so I'm inclined to think JJ's are inherently less gainful than other preamp tubes. Also note, that the Hot British has difficulty nailing mid-gain tones. Even at lower gain settings, the distortion is too thick (compressed?) for that edge-of-gain type of tone. You'd be better of using a boost pedal or your amps own overdrive characteristics for achieving that type of sound.

But, if over-the-top metal and blues is your thing, take my advice, throw an EQ in the line after the Hot British, and run it into a good, clean tube amp (I'm using a Heritage Patriot and it's out of this world!), and you have yourself a very, very respectable rig.

I would not advise using this pedal with a high gain head or combo. They're usually voiced way too cold (especially Mesas, VHT, Peavey, etc.) for the Hot British to work very well. The Hot British works better with a mellow tube amp than with solid states or really tight sounding tube amps (such as many of the newer Marshalls or Krank heads). In other words, you need something in your poweramp section that will take some of the bite off of this pedal.

Also, for those complaining that this pedal is noisy...get a noise gate for christ's sake! Gobs of gain=noisy. Duh! Try to find me any pedal, head, or combo that doesn't get noisier as you crank the gain. Sheesh.

I practically destroyed this pedal and it still sounds great...it's a long...and embarassing...story.

It's rugged beyond my expectations.

Dunno. Haven't bothered with them.

It's sort of like this: Distortion pedals suck. They all have problems. None of them can really compare to full-on poweramp distortion coming out of a cranked tube amp and a stack of speakers a mile high. But let's face it--the vast majority of us don't have the space or the neighborhood to allow us to play such a rig...at least without legal ramifications. So, almost all of us will have to compromise on our tone for the sake of economy and practicality. That being said, many of us are using lower-power combos and more preamp distortion than our arena rock compatriots. Of all the super-distortion pedals out there for us lowly neighborhood rockers, the Hot British beats just about anything for high gain. So really, I guess I'm saying that the Hot British is a necessary evil. Would I rather have a monster rack or an old Marshall at full volume? Yep. Who wouldn't? But my rig right now makes the most sense for my budget and for my environment. I'm quite pleased. Most of you reading this will be too if you follow my advice on the EQ pedal.

There's a shitload of combinations to this pedal as it has the switches aswell as the normal bass, treble and contour controls, so it does take a bit of tweaking to get what you want, but it's not rocket science.

I bought this pedal because i'd sold my marshall DSL100 and bought a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and i wanted to make the Fender sound like my Marshall dirty (the clean is epic). Well first of all it doesn't have as much gain as i thought it would, to be honest I don't really put the gain above 12 o'clock because after that it can get a bit muddy, at 12 o'clock it's a classic rock sound, maybe Guns n Roses style gain, no more.
To turn it into a full dirt sound i had to use my Carl Martin kick boost to metal it up, together they sound great but on it's own the Tonebone is a bit limited.
It's a strange sounding pedal, sometimes it can sound great, and others it can sound a bit thin, the guitar you use affects the tone massively - for example I've played my Peavey Wolfgang through it and had really good deep crunch think Tool, but then played my strat through it and it's sounded a bit flappy.

Overall I'd say that through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe it sounds good, but not as good as I'd been led to believe by some reviews on here. For rythym it's not great, but for lead sounds it really comes to life.

Only had it about 6 months, no problems as yet, it seems very well put together.

n/a

I'd love to try it through a different amp, something more suited to a good distorted sound, but part of me thinks well if I have to buy a Marshall for this thing to sound good, i don't then need a pedal which sounds like a Marshall !!! if you know what i mean.

It's better than everything else i tried, but i'm still far from convinced.

Sure, easy to use, no problem here.

I didn't own it long enough to comment.

I didn't have to deal with the company.

I have been playing for over 25 years. I play anything from Robben Ford type stuff, to older Dokken, Van Halen. etc. One of my favorite guitar sounds is on Don Dokken's "up from the ashes" ripping boosted vintage Plexi tone all the way, ragged, crunchy, warm and bright in all the right places, check it out even if you hate the music. Tone! Tone! Tone! Back off the distortion and use your fingers! Stop the insanity!

easy enough, good marks here

I've been playing for over 25 years. Don Dokken's "up from the ashes" has one of my favorite distorted guitar sounds ever; warm, raggedy ripping old Plexi Marshall tone to the nines. Crunchy, warm and bright in all the right places. Check it out even if you hate the band. I play from Robben Ford type stuff, to Dokken-like or old Van Halen type older metal stuff. You get the idea. Tone! Tone! Tone! Let your fingers do some of the work, back off the gain! Stop the insantity!

First I would like to say that I agree with the guy below me. This pedal has gotten raving reviews.. and alot of people jump on the bandwagon to buy this pedal. But the longer I play this pedal the more I realize its shortcomings. In my opinion this pedal is NOT very versatile. I have fiddled with the settings for hours and still come out with like 2-3 basic useable settings. I have to keep the gain really low or it gets muddy and sounds disgusting. I even went on the website and tried all the factory settings and still did not get desirable results.

My main complaint is that this unit is noisy when on. I have a custom built hand wired mojave head and a PRS so my rig is dead quiet at full volumes.. except for when i activate this pedal. I guess when your playing its not very noticable but as soon as the band stops there is that obnoxious buzzing sound. In my opinion sound quality itself is up to the discretion of the user. Someone who has played on a crappy transistor practice amp thier whole life will think this sounds awesome. The other thing i dont like is how it gets so muddy when the gain is set higher. Any setting past 10 o clock is overkill and takes away from the from the over all sound.

I bought it used and have had it for over a year no problems

I have gotten some great tones out of this unit at lower volumes but for live situations it has its limitations. It is definately a usable and pleasing product but it is not the holy grail of distortion tone as it is made out to be.

Easy enought to use, all is self explanitory.

I think it?s about time someone submitted an opposing viewpoint on this thing. I got so excited about this from all the reviews both here and in magazines that I raced down to a local shop and bought one on the spot. I own a Marshall Plexi 50 reissue with PPI master installed and old Marshall 412 cab. I play a Strat with Duncan Single Coils and an 80?s Charvel with Dimarzio Airzone or something like that. As soon as I plugged in I immediately knew what I was playing through: A direct rip off of the old SansAmp GT-2 pedal. This is not a distortion stomp box, but subminiature transistor preamp with a tube used for nothing more than a pilot light. The sound was ok for low volume riffing but it is synthetic sounding and does not blend into your amp, instead it completely obscures the basic sound of your amp. The louder I played the more transistory and synthetic it got. To be fair, I can see why it's popular. At low volume it makes a big sound with satisfying bass and I guess if you have a little combo amp that is as non-marshall as you can get (seems to be the case with majority of the raves here) and you have not played a real boosted Marshall in a long time (if ever) then you might think this is great. But into a REAL Marshall that only gets up to mild grind levels on its own, you might has well be playing it direct in to the PA. Yes, the distortion has a fairly steady, solid nature to it, but again the texture of the distortion is very plastic and unnatural sounding and again, worse the louder you play. It IS voiced well for guitar. Also, it is very articulate consistant sounding from top to bottom (no mushy woofy bass or screetching highs) and that was the one thing I really liked about the SansAmp, But I still say this is so close the sound of the SansAMP GT-2 that these guys must have directly ripped off the GT-2 circuit because the similarity in distortion character and voicing is just too close for coincidence. THAT I do not respect. In summary, a fun toy for the bedroom, but not a pro unit. The Classic which I tried later was smoother and less plastic sounding, but still the same syndrome of a "hostile take over" of the foundation tone of the amp you play it into. Rating this is tough, because as a stomp box distortion which is how it is marketed, I give it a 3. As mini transistor pre-amp designed to imitate a big Marshall amp, I would give it an E for effort were it not for the fact that I believe this is a rip-off of another design with a tube used as a distractor. There is NOTHING "tubey" about this thing, and I mean both the good and the bad qualities of tubes.

Seems well built, I was satisfyingly heavy in solid to hold in your hand, which is always a smart thing to do from a marketing/customer satisfaction point of view.

I have no experience here so this doesn't apply.

I think I covered this section in the above. My main genre is "rock-metal". I like a high-gain but old-school type of tone and value hearing the tone of the guitar well-preserved. I am sorry if I offend anyone who has such contrary experiences with it, but I felt a contrary point of view would be helpful for potential purchasers.

Very easy for me to find the sound that I wanted. A few switches and knobs. Great tweakability.

Sounds exactly like I want it to. I play guitar with Autovenom and you can check out the sounds of both the classic tb and the hot brit on myspace.

Here's where I have a problem with the tonebone distortions, both the classic and the hot brit. The switching sucks the sweat off a dead mans balls! For this reason I am now searching for a replacement to both of these distortions. I've sent one of them back to canada already and I'd rather trash the thing than keep having to do that.

Radial supposedly fixed the switching problem when it first became a problem for me. Whatever they did it didn't last. If there's one thing that I can't fucking stand is being in the middle of a recording session and having any expensive piece of shit crap out on me. Kudos for their quick turnaround though, lol.....

What style of music do I play? I don't know, listen to Autovenom and you tell me! I've been playing guitar for 28 years and own nothing but top quality instruments and effects. Although the tonebone's sound great, I can't rely on them to be there when I need them. Hey maybe I just got 2 bad ones, and the one that was repaired just got tired of me stepping on it. If some dumb sonofabitch was to put there hands on my pedalboard, I'd probably tell them go ahead and take the tonebones, they suck anyway. Then again, they may swallow a hollowpoint! I give it a 4 in overall because it sounds so good but I don't want any extra aby switches on my board so I consider it a piece of sh1t!