Comments on: ModTone DynoDrive Overdrive Guitar Pedal Review

By: ManicMonkey3

ManicMonkey3 — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:33:29 +0000

Well, I ordered the first DynoDrive in July 2010 and it arrived broken. The Amazon.com affiliated business promptly sent me a new one and it worked and I was satisfied. I liked using it to boost my tube amp overdrive. It made my Fender red knob Twin sound like a more modern amp- Mesa like- and less Stevie Ray Vaughan vintage sounding. SRV has a great sound, but most of what I play doesn't have that tone. Anyway, the second one just broke and it's only December- a little over 4 months old. I have it on a daisy chain with a One Spot. I don't abuse it or leave it on all the time. All of the other pedals have lasted for years. I don't think these pedals are built all that well. I can see why an OCD might be worth the money. I definitely prefer this pedal for overdriving my amp to my TS9dx tube screamer. I like using this even for getting hard rock rhythms out of non hard rock, vintage amps. I'll contact ModTone to see if they have a warranty. Nothing is mentioned on the box. I have a receipt.

By: ManicMonkey3

ManicMonkey3 — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:32:31 +0000

Well, it turns out Amazon makes returning things very easy and they sent out a replacement faster than I could ship mine back. The first one was broken all right.

My first impressions of the pedal are very good. It does a very good job of overdriving the lead channel of my Fender red knob, all tube, The Twin. I think I find the sound preferable to my Ibanez TS9dx at this. The Ibanez is at the place I practice, so I couldn't do a direct comparison.

I also liked the sound on my clean channel. It sounded very natural, like amp distortion- better than my TS9dx. I'm not sure I liked it as well as a straight on overdrive on the clean channel as I did the Fulltone OCD I played a few weeks ago. However, this is $63 and that was $150. In addition, I'll mostly be using amp distortion on either my Twin or Marshall VM head and this will just boost it.

I even tried it as a preamp for my Fender Tele with SCN pickups into my recording interface while running GTR3. I decided to just run it in with tone at zero, gain at zero and level at full. It gave this sound a little more presence and sustain (dare I say, liveliness?) without any added noise.

You're probably saying, well, it slightly increased the volume, but it seems to be more than that. In fact, the SCN bridge is very high output, so I dialed it down to 9 or 8.5 and backed off the tone control slightly as well because it was just too sensitive on the GTR3 program and seemed to be overly amplifying pick attack and finger noise, hand rubbing strings on palm mutes, etc. Anyway, turning the guitar volume knob up to 10 did not give this same sustain/presence (brightness) boost. It was subtle, but it was definitely there.

The point is that it made a nice little preamp before the UA LA610 into the Firestudio Mobile I have. It was subtle on chords, but fairly obvious on leads and single note stuff- brighter artificial harmonics, etc.

I've owned a lot of distortion pedals, but had stopped buying them a few years ago. Basically, my idea had been that if I got enough distortion pedals then I could make my Fender Twin sound like any amp- like a modeler without the microprocessors. That idea was obviously flawed, but I only discovered that after trying out more amps and speakers.

So, I thought I was done acquiring pedals a few years ago, but Brandon's review got me interested because of how emphatic he was and because the price was low. I think I will definitely use this and I think it is a great value. Hopefully, this one keeps working and they don't double the price.

By: ManicMonkey3

ManicMonkey3 — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:09:18 +0000

I just got this pedal for $63 off of Amazon. I think mine is broken. The tone and level dials seem to work, but the drive knob does not add any noticeable level of distortion/overdrive even when cranked up 100%. I detect no difference in drive when the dial is at 2% vs 100% when playing through the clean channel of my Fender Twin. In addition, if I turn the drive dial all the way down to 0 I get a pop noise and no more sound coming out- essentially it's a volume off switch. In addition the level knob does not seem to be loud enough in output to add any kind of clean boost. It can take volume away, but at 100% pretty much matches the guitar pickup volume of my Tele. Basically, this thing is only working as a tone knob- one knob eq. I thought it was adding a little subtle sparkle but I kind of think it might be a placebo effect. It isn't really doing much of anything- maybe just a trace of added sustain. Not sure about the quality control going on in the factory in China where it is being produced. I played a Fulltone OCD a couple of weeks ago and was quite impressed. The one thing I can say about this pedal is that it is not making the guitar tone any less clear the way some cheap overdrives do. I think I have a dud. Hopefully, Amazon makes the return process easy. I've never had to return anything I've bought for that site before.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:43:01 +0000

Almost all of the Modtone pedals are fantastic. The hidden gem to me is the Speedbox XL (Version 2), and the Extreme Metal. Both are creamy delish x 10! Esp that Extreme Metal pedal. And don't think that just cuz it says Metal that it's high gain fizz. It has LOTS of tones packed inside. The coolest one is a Brian May/Michael Schenker sorta tone that has that "mid-range thing" happening. The new Stutter Kill pedal is wicked cool too. I've tried them all, and own almost all of them, and you can't go wrong with any of them. My least fave, and it's only my personal preference, is the Phaser. My fave "effect" pedal is by far the Tremor pedal. It's got classic tremolo to it, but it also has a very cool rapid on/off pulse thing that I LOVE.

By: musichead

musichead — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:00:43 +0000

Who is this Green Day you talk about?

By: Amplitube 3 Review | Home Computer Recording

Amplitube 3 Review | Home Computer Recording — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:52:53 +0000

[...] high gain sounds, a Tubescreamer type pedal is required in my opinion. I use the yellow Modtone pedal I don’t turn it [...]

By: Brandon Drury

Brandon Drury — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:14:46 +0000

Ha! It's like that Weezer song talking about the half-Japanese chick who didn't know who Green Day was! Sexy!

Brandon

By: musichead

musichead — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:07:13 +0000

Actually, I'd prefer an audio engineer who didn't know who the allman brothers are... just my two cents. Like the day they came up to Iggy Pop saying: "David Bowie wants to produce your record", and he replied: "who the fuck is that?"

By: Brandon Drury

Brandon Drury — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:43:32 +0000

I'm borrowing the Modtone Tremolo pedal from a buddy. It's exceptionally smooth! It almost sounds too right. But when it's off-time and mixed with my Line 6 FM4 Modulator thing (the Purple one) it suddenly becomes completely insane!

Brandon

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:00:59 +0000

I work at a music school/store and we have been carrying Mod tone effects for About a year now
These are Great built tough and user friendly
The duno drive and the clean boost seem to be big sellers as well as the analog delay and aqua chorus