Tonebone Hot-British Distortion

This pedal nails a great controllable distortion for almost any player who digs older heavy rock ala VH and Racer X Yngwie Malmsteen you can dial these tones in almost immiediately. With a very informative manual for tweaking tones and performing a tube change if neccessary i would say its all encompasing.

I'm using my own handbuilt super strat outfitted with a floyd rose and dimarzio pickups specifically a evolution in the bridge and a fastrack 1 in the neck i'm playing it through a peavey 5150 with a behringer four twelve with 100 watt jensens. The great thing about the pedal is that it totally reacts to your position with the amp making it easy to control feadback and noise. With the true bypass you cant go wrong with this unit. Once again great for Racer X van halen and yngwie. The ultimate overdriven sound for me!

Built solid with the steel chassis and has very long tube life as well.

I have heard they back up there products well but the durability and satisfaction has given me no reason to contact them

My playing style is very power metal oriented with some prog influences of early dream theatre i like to play racer x and yngwie stuff as well and this pedal meets me needs much better then the regular distortion of my 5150 and my GT-6 and my MT-2. The true bypass was the make or break for me when buying it because i i realy wanted that in my setup and the tone speaks for itself. If this pedal were stolen i would but another one because it has become a part of my playing and its extremely veratile.

Easy interface if you think not then well you should get something with just 3 knobs. Some people complain that it has too many controls that you'd never remember the settings you like. Do you remember when you first played a guitar and had no idea what the hell you were doing? Learning applies to amps/effects too. How about windows? You didn't just up and know everything and that's far more complex anyhow. :)

For the guy who picks up radio stations... YES it is a problem with your gear leaking RFI's(radio Freq interference). I had that too on a few pedals...hell even my amp had that problem. Get a good cord to go between your guitar and the amp, but not 20 feet long or something. The shorter the better. Also it's a must to get a power conditioner/filter(furman). Plug all your stuff into that. If you have rack gear which I doubt that is most likley your problem. Never mix balanced and unbalanced cables(get a EBtech device)

The sound on this is super. Someone mentioned it's too dirty at minimum drive... HELLO it's called HOT BRITISH DISTORTION<-note the DISTORTION. Also, someone said it was too noisey for a pedal at this price. The only pedal where you do not have interference/hiss are on FAKE DIGITAL Stuff! Don't get me wrong, I too at times love harsh digital death metal sorta stuff. I'm guilty as charged with a genesis-3. That is brutal as fuck, but serves a purpose and has NO noise. It has a noise gate built in and I use that to abruptly cut off for tight fast palm mutes. That's the only thing I use that for(don't give a shit about the effects and such it has). It blows away even the new line6 uber pedal, the crappy Warp drive, boss MT-2, etc.

Anyone who has real gear has a noise suppressor or gate. It's just a fact. Yes. It sucks to have to plop down money just to make something not hiss. It's like going to the dentist to have him clean your teeth even though you brush everyday.

dont know..didnt have it long enough. Who cares if you have to change a tube in it. It's not brain surgery!!!!

This is one of the best deals in this type of product. Canada makes these and they kick ass.

Easy to use. Lots of presets in the manual. Just start with one of those. I use it with fairly low amount of distortion, but even at its lowest setting, it distorts quite a bit. It has 5 knobs and three switches. So there a lots of options. Just put everything in the middle or look in the manual to get started. It takes some tweaking. The manual is adequate.

I use it with my Blues Jr. Not noisy. The effects sound good. This is the pedal to use if you want your Fender to sound like a Plexi, well almost. Think Eric Clapton "Sunshine of your Love". Lots of others. Best sounding pedal I've heard. It has a tube in it's circuit. Also, it is truely "True disconnect". It disconnects the circuit even when there is no power to the pedal (it doesn't work with batteries, comes with a power supply). So it does not color the sound at all when turned off. Also, no noticible click when activating the pedal with the foot button, (so long as you are not sounding a note). About as good as it gets, pedalwise. They make another pedal for "Fender" distortion, called the Tonebone Classic.

Dependable so far.

Haven't used them, but I hear thay back the product up.

I play classic rock, blues, rockabilly. I am an old rocker. It is a better pedal than my Barber Direct Drive, and the Barber is not bad. The tone is very amp like. By that I mean it sounds like a distortion channel would sound on my Fender, if it had one (it has a distortion knob, but no channel). This is British (read Marshall) distortion. So now I have a two channel amp, and both Fender and Marshall sound! My Blues JR is a great amp BTW. Whatever you do, get a tube amp. They have the TONE!

Relatively simple to tweak. 5 knobs and 3 switches and all sound good with in front of my amp. The annoying thing is replacing the tube, which requires you to disassemble the unit, including taking off the knobs. The manual is straightforward and has settings suggestions for popular tones.

My guitars are Ibanez RG250DX w/ stock pups, Dean Avalance w/ X2N's, and Ibanez RG220 w/ EMG81's. They all sound good through the tonebone. The only other pedal in my setup is an MXR Smart Gate which really takes care of the noise when the Tonebone is on high gain. The unit is a high gain pedal so some noise is to be expected, but mine was a "scratch and dent" item - there wasn't a scratch on it but the tube was loose!!! Shame on musicianfriend.com. I think this may be to blame for some of the noise but I'm not sure. I mean, the tube prongs were slightly damaged. But like I said, the noise is not a real major issue for me since I'm usually playing hard and heavy.

I run this preamp through my cool little Tech-21 Trademark 10 watt single channel modeling amp w/ 10" Celestion and the sound is awesome. With the versatily of the Trademark I can get truly impressive heavy metal sounds. It also does good with rock/blues if that's your thing. I've also tried playing it through a Tech-21 Powerengine-60 (just a 60watt power cab with "transparent" tone) and I get that fat vintage tube tone.

It has 3 very useful switches: Top End (flat, dark, brigh), Mid Boost (out, 7dB, 14dB), and Voicing (out, fat, notch). The notch with cut mids. There's a contour which goes from scooped, bassy to a thigh, midsy, crunchy. When you boost the mids there is a small amount of noise introduced. There are also controls for Bass, Trebble, Gain, and Level. I normally have the gain maxed on the Trademark but on the Tonebone I'll usually go from 0 to about 5. I'm not gain crazy, just tone crazy.

You can't get clean sounds out of this but who cares cause I'm a headbanger and distortion is an everyday part of my diet and this badboy really does deliver. (I guess maybe if you use an EQ to squash the input you can get cleans). What you can definitely get kickass heavy metal rhythm and hot lead tone. Along with the Trademark I can get classic and modern high-gain Marshall, Mesa/Boogie and Fender tones with a unique quality that truly inspires me to play more. I was thinking of buying a Tonebone Classic for leads but decided to order an MXR 10 band EQ instead.

I've tried playing through Marshall (MG, AVT, JCM), Line 6, Johnson, Crate GT, Vox AD60, and I can honestly tell you that my current set up blows them all away. I guess playing through Line 6 is OK if you don't mind bad tone because they are great for variety and versatility but I would much rather hear a high gain tube tone versus a cold harsh digital tone.

I'm giving it a 9 because I'm just never quite satisfied, but like I said, this unit will enhance your sound better than most units out there.

I don't play live but it seem like it could take some punishment. It's a solidly built steel casing that seems sturding enough. I haven't had any problems with it.

I play thrash/death/black metal and this pedal makes me cream my pants everytime I play it. It can achieve very creamy, warm tones or crunchy, heavy tones for psychos like me. AC/DC or Zeppeling, Metallica or Slayer, The Haunted or Arch Enemy, Hendrix or Satriani, and even death metal sickness like Cryptopsy and Immolation. Again, I can do this along with a Trademark amp (which gets a 10 on its own, by the way). If lost or damaged I might try the Tonebone Classic first before buying another. I hate nothing about it except that I think it should have two channels and then we'd really be in business. But, as-is, it's just great and I have no complaints.

The manual outlines most of the popular settings. The user can tweak from there to get their own sounds. This pedal is pretty intuitive.

Custom LH Strat with SD hotstack, Jem LH 555 (only model for leftys), Schecter C-1 Plus, Ibanez LH RG 550, etc... I run this through a THD Univalve (w/Avatar 2x12) on the clean (roll) channel. It doesn't matter what guitar you play, this pedal will sound excellent with tweaks. This is a specific pedal, so expect British type distortion (duh). This is by far the best distortion pedal that I have played. It is noisy when dimed, but quiet on most settings. Also, please note that you need to plug into a quality amp. I have found that this pedal will not make a crappy sounding amp sound like a British Stack. Start with a descent amp, and you will hear the true ability of this pedal.

I have had this thing for around 6 months and dropped it a couple of times. The pedal works like new. Not sure how long the tube will last, but the unit looks very well made.

If you want a British type distortion and don't want to spend the $$$ on a Marshall stack, this is THE pedal. I play mostly rock, so this pedal is a staple for me. Played through a good amp, this is the best British type distortion pedal on the market. Try it you will see/hear the difference. If this thing were stolen, I would definitely get another one. I bought one because of these reviews. This pedal is that good!

Basic distortion pedal: Level, high, low Contour (mids character) and drive. There are also several filter switches that can drastically change the character of the sound. one button, on or off. Any mumbleoid could figure this out.

I am using this box with 2 schecter avenger 7strings with seymore duncan invader and distortion pickups and a Gibson les paul Goth with EMGs. The amp is a Ashdown peacemaker 40: 4 12ax7s, 4 EL84s, Celestion vintage 30 speaker. Every cable is Monster or Planet waves.

The sound:
THis IS the closest thing I have ever come across that sounds like a marshall stack in a pedal. I A/B'ed it against my MetalZone and the Boss was laughable by compairison. Be forewarned that this is the "marshall sound". If you are looking for a Nu-Metal Mesa sort of crunch this aint the pedal for you. THis pedal does perfectly pull off Randy Rhoads tone from the live "tribute" album perfectly! You can also get dead on over driven Plexi tones from it. You know, where it sounds like the speaker has grown hair.

However, I am using this pedal to push a class A tube amp. I have not yet put it through my Peavy Bandit 112. Probably wont ever. it sounds great where its at.

Cons:
Slight noisiness from the pedal at higher drive levels and when the High is turned up. a Boss noise suppressor should stop this.

IT takes some tweeking for the low B on my 7 strings not to come out as total mush. it can be done though.

Built like a tank. there is a tube in it, so as long as I use some common sense it will be cool.

This pedal is more than double the price of any boss distiortion box. You better expect something special, right? This pedal is so fuckin dope you could smoke it. how that for an endorsement.

I play a variety of music ranging from the styles of deathmetal and nu-metal to fusion and classic rock. I am a guitar teacher and have spent a couple years working in music stores, particularly the "big guy". I have become a total Tone Snob. This pedal is great but WARNING!: THIS IS NOT A "DO IT ALL" PEDAL! This is not the Ideal distortion for anything detuned and fast as hell. The distortion has a loose feel and absolutely Killer Tone! But is not a Bogner Uberschall. That being said, I can rave about what this pedal IS.

If you are a fan of the "marshall sound" you need this pedal. I love that sound. Through the years countless guitarists that have inspired me have used this sound. Now I have it! The Hot British (with tweeking) can emulate the tones from a JCM 800, 900 and Plexi better than anything I have heard to date. Enough said.

This pedal is fairly simple to use. Lots of options.

It's hard to believe this is a pedal. The distortion rivals many preamp devices. I thought the Triaxi's distortion was good but this is better.
I gigged with this last weekend for the first time. The feedback got out of hand a bit but I was playing very loud. I really liked the sound. I had flashbacks of early EVH tone. I did my usual "Eruption" piece in the 3rd set and it really made my playing smoother.
I really don't like pedals but I think of this more as a preamp section. This purchase was a no-brainer.

Only had this 2 weeks

no comment

I've owned many amps and pedals over my 28 years of playing and gigging. Yep this one's a keeper.

This pedal is incredibly easy to get a GOOD sound out of it and with a little tweaking (it is a tweakers dream) you can get INCREDIBLE sounds out of it. Subtle overdrive tones similar to a TS808 all the way to Dimebag Darrell over the top scooped tone and all points in between. There are enough tone shaping options on this pedal to get just about any sound you want out of it! A basic understanding of tone shaping controls will make it easy to use but some people might get confused (like i do trying to use computer recording software) and that is why i rated it as i did.

This pedal absolutely SCREAMS!!!! I have had it for two years and still honestly look forward to plugging into it everytime i play. i bought it direct from the tonebone website using paypal when that was the only way you could buy it. it has great note definition, is amazingly responsive to my guitars volume control, none of the excessive noise that i hear reviewers talking about here but you have to accept a bit of it when you buy a high-gain pedal. also, maybe my hearing isn't as good as it should be...hell i am a guitar player....we love it loud!!!! it also sounds like the best hot-rodded marshall you ever want to hear. Some people don't like the marshall tone...don't buy this pedal!!! I use it with either my music man john petrucci or my PRS single cut. i run it into a morley bad horsie wah and then right into either my 65 twin re-issue (the best sounding set-up) or into my 1959 plexi re-issue. both amps and guitars sound incredible with this pedal (in fact, all the guitars and amps i have tried with it sound incredible) but the 65 twin i have sound the best. great fender clean and then balls-to-the-wall distortion. i keep a fairly simple set-up because i dont like having too many things to trip me while i am on stage. the plexi with it is a great tone too but a bit over the top because of the early break-up in the tubes but still a ROCKIN' guitar tone! i hope i described it well enough. I LOVE THIS PEDAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

when i got it, it was fine for about 3 months and then the switch went bad in it. in the middle of a gig i was having to hit the switch 4 or 5 times to get it to come on. how embarrassing!!!! after the gig my drummer even commented on how crappy it was that it happened. i got the switch replaced and have had no other problems. i contacted radial engineering/tonebone and they said that the bug has since been worked out. i rate it based on my experience.

only had to deal with them once (see above) and the owner responded quickly to my email about fixing it but i took it to the local shop because shipping to canada and back was more expensive.

I have been playing for about 18 years. I, like most guitar players, am a certified gear junkie. Certifiable is probably a more appropriate description of me... Anyway, i have several guitars and several amps-mostly high end stuff but not boutique. i used to swear by the boss ds-1 and since this pedal i cannot even stand to look at a ds-1. i prefer to play hard-rock/heavy metal, i have played in a full-on disco showband, top-40, blues, even country (i guess i am a musical whore). i feel fairly well versed in most of it but always go back to grinding (zakk wylde style!!) and whatever i play i have a very useable tone fro anything. again, it is incredible and very versatile (remember...all the knobs) and since i got the switch fixed i have not had a single problem with it. i am going to buy another very soon and if they both get stolen i will buy two more after i get out of jail for assault!!!!!

5 knobs:level,low,high,contour,drive.
3 switches:top end,voicing,mid boost.
It may take a little more time to find your sweet spot with this one
than say a Digitech or Maxon but once you are there,you will be more than happy.One point off however because of the 15v wall wart needed to power it up.

After 2 years of extensive use as my main distortion box,here is my opinion of this Canadian-made beauty,i will make it short because it has all been said before.

PROS:
-Super beefy,hot-rodded,classic metal tones(ala Maiden,Priest,VH...)
-Very smooth and natural-sounding,does not sound like a pedal.
-Sounds great with tube or solid-state amps.
-Reliable and easy to service,high quality pedal.
-SOUNDS MUCH BETTER THAN ANY MARSHALLS I HAVE EVER HEARD OR TRIED,
HEADS OR COMBOS,TUBE OR SOLID-STATE OR HYBRID,AND THE JACKHAMMER
PEDAL-WHAT A JOKE!

CONS:
-The wall wart.
-Too dirty at minimum drive setting.
-A bit noisy at maximum drive setting.
-Hefty price tag(two crappy BOSS pedals for that price).

I'm giving a rating of 9 for that truly great pedal(nothing is perfect).You want the old Van Halen sound?TONEBONE HOT-BRITISH.

Very reliable.Strongly built.It comes with a Tesla 12ax7 tube.Good.
I always take care of my Tonebone because i love it.I will keep it
for as long as i will be playing the guitar.Only one thing though:
The wall wart provided with the pedal looks kind of cheap.Also,tube
failure can happen,but my Tonebone still sings with the stock tube after two years.No problem.

I sent an e-mail one time asking if i could change the 12ax7 for a
12au7 in order to bring the aggressiveness down a bit.They replied
the next day telling me to only use a 12ax7 tube to prevent damage
to the pedal.I think they are ok.I bought my Tonebone Hot-british at
Musique Gagne et Freres in downtown Quebec City,a good place to buy
by the way.If you go there,ask for Steve:"BIG GUY GENTLEMAN".

Plugged between my LesPaul Classic and Ampeg 15w tube amp,the Tonebone Hot-British really helps me to capture the sound and feeling
i love when playing guitar.To me for the kind of music i like to play,the Hot-British hits the bull's-eye,nothing compares.
If you are into hard-rock and classic metal of the 80's -all those
great bands that were there 20 years ago and are still rocking today
(Iron Maiden,Judas Priest,VanHalen,ACDC,Dio etc...)-i really suggest
you should give the Tonebone Hot-British a try.If you are into blues,
country or speedy-thrashy musics,don't waste your time.

Very easy to get a good sound; just plug it in & turn the dials. Great for those who like to play around & adjust; maybe not so great for those who don't like to tinker.

I use a SRV Strat (with Joe Barden pups) > '72 Fender Silverface Deluxe Reverb (that's been professionally blackfaced). The Hot British (like the Classic Distortion) is very quiet & has a great range of tones. Very "British" like the name implies - much more "Marshall-ish" than say "Vox-ish". This pedal does have about 30% more gain than the Classic.

Very sturdy construction. Quality components. No issues at all (see my rating on the Classic Distortion).

I emailed Radial regarding Dealers in Canada & they were very prompt (1 day) in responding

I actually took both the Hot British & Classic Distortion home to try out & ended up in keeping both! I play blues, blues-rock & classic rock. I really thought (note past tense) that this pedal & the Tonebone Classic were THE overdrive pedals. I've been through some great pedals - Klon, Keeley-modded TS-9/TS-808, John Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive & I really thought the Tonebones were the ones. That is until I tried a Stephenson Amplification Stage Hog. The Stage Hog does ALL the tones of BOTH the Classic & Hot British PLUS WAY more. The Stage Hog doesn't color your amp, gives you fantastic string definition, and interacts with your guitar's volume & tone controls in a fantastic way. Plus, with the Power Scaling feature you can enjoy cranked, thick overdriven tone at whisper levels. Check out the Stephenson Amplification website -http://www.stephensonamps.com/stagehog.htm Mark Stephenson is an amp guru! He has fantastic customer service & knows tone. I can't recommend his products high enough! The Tonebones - well I dumped both of them within a week after getting the Stage Hog. If you have any questions about the Stage Hog I would be more than happy to reply. And no, I am not affiliated with Stephenson Amps in any way; I just really believe that Mark Stephenson has products that deliver "the tone" that guitar players have spent hundreds (thousands) of dollars searching for. I strongly encourage you to check the Stage Hog out!