My Radial Tonebone Hot British Pedal

[DrNomis_44]

Hi Everyone,

The good PBG Forum Doctor is back with yet another one of his new threads, this time it's about a pedal I bought last year, it has rapidly become one of my all time favorite pedals, it is my Tonebone Hot British Distortion pedal made by a Canadian company called Radial.

Okay so what's so special about this pedal that's made it become one of my all time favorites?, well, this pedal features a real 12AX7 Dual Triode Valve as part of it's internal circuitry, but the thing is, rather than use the 12AX7 as a typical gain-stage, it uses the 12AX7 in a way that actually doesn't contribute any gain per se, think of the Tonebone Hot British pedal as being like the preamp of a really good modded Marshall Valve Amp in a pedal-sized box, together with some extra tone-shaping circuitry in it, you can get lots of great Marshall tones out of it depending on how you set the controls and switches, I think this is useful in a recording situation, and I have managed to get some great tones with the pedal going straight into my Digi002 Firewire Audio Interface, all I needed to add were two or three VST plugins in FL Studio and I got some cool sounds, the plugins I tend to use most are Ignite Amps NadIR (Impulse Response Speaker Cab Simulator), Fruity delay 2, and some kind of Reverb VST plugin, of course, those of you who are Mac users should be able to get similar results with Mac compatible plugins.


Here's what my Radial Tonebone Hot British pedal looks like:




As you can see, it has quite an array of controls for a Distortion pedal, looking at the top panel, we have the following controls:


* Level Pretty self-explanatory, it controls the overall loudness.

* High Controls the Treble frequencies.

* Low Controls the Low Frequencies.

* Contour Sweepable Mid Frequency Control.

* Drive Controls the amount of gain, or distortion.


Right underneath the control knobs, there's a set of three 3-position slide-switches:


* Top End This basically acts on the high frequencies, and can be switched to either a Bright, Flat, or Dark setting.

* Voicing This acts on the Mid Frequencies, and can be switched to either a boosted Low Mid setting, a scooped mid setting, or a flat setting.

* Mid Boost This acts on the Mid Frequencies, and can be set to give 0dB boost, +7dB boost, or +12dB boost.


The pedal itself is powered by a 15V DC/400mA plugpack adaptor.

[SIMpleONe89]

Oh I had this pedal years ago and it was great! A pity I had to sell it.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


Just finished doing some maintenance work on my white Ibby guitar, so I might see if I can get together a demo of my Tonebone Hot British pedal over the next couple of weeks or so.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


Sorry guys, since I'm having some major issues with all my Audio Interfaces, I won't be able to do any more demos till the issues get fixed, I may have to go so far as to do a complete backup/reformat/clean OS install to fix my computer up.

[kimball492]

What's the problems with your audio interfaces Doc

[DrNomis_44]

What's the problems with your audio interfaces Doc

Basically, one of the Mic/Line inputs of my Digi002 stopped working, and then my Digi002 refused to work with my PC last night, my Saffire Pro 40 wasn't working with the PC either so I tried re-installing the Chipset drivers for my PC's motherboard, that got the Pro40 working with my DAW PC again, but I don't trust it enough to stay working long enough to record a demo.

I tried using my Scarlett 2i2 USB Audio Interface, but it was a bit glitchy too.

To top it all off, one of the String-Saddle anchoring screws on the bridge of my white Ibby guitar, stripped the threads in both holes, so that the Saddle is all lose and can't allow the string to be tuned up, my white Ibby was the only playable guitar I had at home till this happened, all my other guitars are getting some work done on them, been a really rough week for me so far, looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do something about buying a new PCIe Firewire 400 Card for my DAW PC, and also do a backup of all my wanted data off the system drive, then do a reformat/clean install of Windows 10 Threshold 2, the thing is, Microsoft are releasing Redstone, the next major update for Windows 10 on the 2nd of August this year, which is 28 days away, so maybe I should just wait until then to do a clean install.


I had a look on eBay for a suitable PCIe Card with a Texas Instruments chipset and managed to find at least one possible candidate, but it's located in England, was hoping I could find one in Australia at a reasonable price.

Yesterday, I went to my local Pro Music shop to buy a couple of sets of guitar strings, while doing some browsing, I noticed that they had a new Saffire Pro40 in stock that had Thunderbolt connectivity, but it was retailing for something like $899.00 or so.

[kimball492]

Try removing the drivers Doc restart computer then reinstall the drivers again see how that goes. I have have an RME Babyface that just is a pain sometimes. I have to unplug my usb lead wait a little bit, replug it back in and then its fine. Mines on the mac but had same issue on PC too. You could try unplugging the lead and re plug them back in. lots of DAWS hate more than one audio card at a time. And in ref thunderbolt you can get a thunderbolt card to put in your PC but your going to need a fast CPU and plenty of memory Doc.As its very bandwidth intensive.

[DrNomis_44]

Try removing the drivers Doc restart computer then reinstall the drivers again see how that goes. I have have an RME Babyface that just is a pain sometimes. I have to unplug my usb lead wait a little bit, replug it back in and then its fine. Mines on the mac but had same issue on PC too. You could try unplugging the lead and re plug them back in. lots of DAWS hate more than one audio card at a time. And in ref thunderbolt you can get a thunderbolt card to put in your PC but your going to need a fast CPU and plenty of memory Doc.As its very bandwidth intensive.

I tried doing the removal/reinstall of the drivers before with limited success, I downloaded the most recent version of the Windows Digi002 Standalone Driver, and it seemed to install okay, Windows Device Manager even reported that my Digi002 was working even though the front panel 1394 Led was not lit, I'm wondering if the Firmware for my Digi002 might have gotten corrupted, before the Digi002 stopped working correctly with my PC, the audio went really glitchy and distorted, but only for Mic/Line input 1, I tried Mic/Line 2 and that worked okay, and then the Digi002 refused to work with the PC even though it appeared to power up properly.

There's a pattern I've noticed, when the Saffire Pro40 did decide to work okay with the PC, the Digi002 stopped working, and vice versa, very weird, you think they would both stop working at the same time, I'm wondering if the driver software for the two Firewire Audio Interfaces could be conflicting with each other in some weird way?

[kimball492]

Ive had that issue again Doc after installing your drivers. I some times have to do the restart 2 to 3 times then the lights come on the hardware interface.
Weird but works.

[DrNomis_44]

Ive had that issue again Doc after installing your drivers. I some times have to do the restart 2 to 3 times then the lights come on the hardware interface.
Weird but works.

Same with me too, sometimes I have to go through several restart-cycles just to get it to work, it seems like the drivers are very sticky when they have crashed or locked-up, wouldn't it be great to have a new type of Audio Interface where you plugged it in and it just worked without having to install driver software?, I think that's where Analog has the advantage, it seems to me that when we switched from Analog to Digital recording, all we did was replace one set of problems with some new unforseen ones.


Macs are not immune from Audio Interface problems, a good mate of mine who does audio recording on a professional basis, used to experience problems with his studio setup, he was using a Digi002 with an Apple iMac which was running Pro Tools, every now and then his setup used to emit a loud burst of noise when he booted it up that sounded like white noise, he'd usually end up rebooting his iMac a few times to get it working correctly again, I read somewhere that sometimes Anti-virus software can interfere with the initialization of Audio Interface driver software so that you end up with very glitchy sound.


I reckon it's probably about time I changed over to some Firewire 400 ports with a Texas Instruments chipset, I honestly haven't been too impressed with the performance of my current firewire pots, both of them use a Via chipset.

One thing I did do is download a special app from the Focusrite website that checks my firewire chipsets for compatibility, it's called OHCI Tool, I ran it and it reported that both my Via firewire chipsets were compatible with the Saffire Pro40, but I reckon it's telling me porky pies (lies).