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Fulltone Distortion Pro DP-1 David Szabados Suggested Retail Price: $219 The long-anticipated Fulltone Distortion Pro has arrived. This is one that I, along with many people who are still on waiting lists, have been waiting for. Originally, this was supposed to be Mike Fuller’s tube-driven distortion box, but apparently he was unsatisfied with the end result. What he has designed and made is being described like this according to Fulltone’s website: “Not a FUZZ! The greatest hi-gain sounds you can imagine, from Brian May to Boston, Holdsworth to EJ in a little metal box -- dripping with harmonics and feel -- unlimited shades of dirty, crunchy, Bluesey, and it even cleans up well as you turn the guitar's volume knob down. Leave the pedal on and do everything from the guitar! NOT A TUBE-DRIVEN PEDAL (and much more "tubey" sounding than any I've heard). Volume, Distortion, Resonance, Voicing, Hi-End and Saturation controls -- capable of turning the thinnest brightest amp you own into a 100 lb. violin.” Reading this description, this little box promises a lot! And as of this writing, I’m currently looking at the unit that has arrived at the office and won’t actually be able to play through it until later this evening. Am I skeptical of all this apparent marketing hype? You better believe it! Of course, tone is very subjective which is why I plan on recording sound files of various types to accompany this review. But, all said, when your product claims to get tones from Brian May, Eric Johnson and others, that’s a very elite caliber of players and tones to associate a product with. That said, Mr. Fuller’s Fulldrive II certainly didn’t disappoint and earned a 10 out of 10 rating and “Legendary Award.” Will the Distortion Pro do the same? Features The Distortion Pro has quite a number of features all housed in a box that’s just a tad wider than a typical MXR enclosure. The two main larger control knobs are for Volume and Distortion. Beneath these two knobs are four smaller controls for Resonance, Voicing, Highs, and Saturation. The Resonance control shapes the bass frequencies, while the Voicing is a midrange control, though the user guide says it is not a typical midrange control, but one that also alters the distortion in the frequencies that the control is tuned to. Highs will boost or cut the treble. The Owner’s Manual states: “Part of this pedal’s magic is the frequency ‘overlap’ between this and the Voicing knob, allowing for some unusual signature settings.” The final control for Saturation apparently not only controls additional clipping and sustain and is interactive with the Distortion knob, but is apparently key for dialing in the desired amount of “tube” feel. Standard Fulltone features such as LED with true-bypass switching along with 9V DC receptacle jack are here in the Distortion Pro as well. The Distortion Pro utilizes a very clever battery hatch for battery replacement. Most custom or “boutique” pedals this size (as well as production models from companies like MXR) have to be unscrewed from the bottom with a Phillips screwdriver to access the battery. The Distortion Pro utilizes a knurled thumbscrew and the battery hatch then opens up on hinges. Nice! The Owner’s Manual is very well-written and includes sample settings to use. Reading through this, references are made to AC/DC tones, Jimmy Page tones, Eric Clapton/Cream tones as well as ways to get a “Browner Sound” and finally “Cutting Blues Tone” ala Stevie Ray Vaughan. Finally, there are two internal trim pots which Mike Fuller generally recommends to not be played with as they are ideally set at the factory. Trimmer #1 regulates the amount of gain to match humbucking or single-coil pickups and Trimmer #2 controls the maximum available midrange and distortion of the pedal. Construction Quality I’m not trying to skimp here, but happy to report that Fulltone’s products are built extremely well with generally the finest components available. Read and look at the Fulldrive II review with internal photography. Construction is second to none. With a 5-year warranty, Fulltone really backs up its products. O.k., now I’m off to go home to actually play through the Distortion Pro! Sound As we’re all aware of, different guitars and amplifiers will produce different tones. I’m going to play the Distortion Pro through both a standard American Stratocaster with stock pickups as well as my recently upgraded Les Paul with the EVH Seymour Duncan Custom Shop pickup. Think of the Les Paul as having the tone of a basically stock PAF type pickup with a slightly hotter wind. Amplifiers used will include various vintage Marshalls, blackface Fenders, and my sonically-variable Hiwatt. Sound files will come via the Strat and Paul through a nice black face ’65 Vibro Champ. Here’s one other interesting thing I’m going to be listening for. I find MANY products – whether it’s an amp, pedal, etc. sound really good at low listening (store demo) levels. However, get them home and play them in a band rehearsal setting and they lose it – whether they become thin in tone, brittle, or just plain harsh – I always do this kind of testing with products, but I wanted to make it a point here because good distortion will sound good at all levels, not just for practicing in the bedroom. With that here goes… At the point of this writing forward, it’s now been about two weeks since I’ve had the Distortion Pro. If I had to use one word to describe this box, it would be “Unbelievable”. Why unbelievable? It’s unbelievable that for all the marketing speak and hype that this product does live up to it. Tube sound and feel? Absolutely. And no, I’m not on Mike Fuller’s payroll, but it’s apparent that either he’s just blessed with a gifted ear for what sounds good and what doesn’t or he’s sold his soul to the devil to get the schematic for such great tone out of this box. Let me back up now and tell you how I came to the conclusions I did with the DP-1. My first test was with the pictured setup running a Strat into the Vibro Champ at moderate “household” levels. Immediately, even before playing with the controls or sample settings but just turning on the unit and tweaking some knobs, you notice that there is a smooth characteristic to this drive. Nice gain structure without the brittle character that often accompanies distortion boxes. I’ve found especially that it’s much more difficult to find a good sounding distortion rather than an overdrive. For some reason, as more gain is added, it’s much easier for the effect to sound increasing sterile and transistor-like. Not so with the Distortion Pro. I adjusted for maximum distortion and found the Saturation control especially interesting. Fully clockwise, it’s like the guide says: a “browner sound”. Smooth gain, nice punchy attack and great rock & roll tone. Rolling the Saturation control counter-clockwise brings more present, blues-oriented mids – not mids in a “honky” sense of the word, but more of an up front kind of tone, again all with incredible smoothness. The Voicing control helps fine-tune this particular characteristic as well. While I was initially pleased, my skeptical nature said, “Sure it sounds good through a Strat, but I’ll bet this thing is really tuned for a Strat since Mike Fuller tends to favor them.” I plugged in my Les Paul. Same stunning results. I was floored. “O.k., but since it’s transistor-based, I bet it will sound like garbage when playing at REAL volume levels.” I took my guitars and DP-1 into my rehearsal studio and plugged it into my Hiwatt DR103 Custom 100 watt head running through two Marshall 4 x 12 cabinets. I set the Hiwatt for an ideal clean tone – lively and punchy with nice mid and a reasonably strong bottom end – and I turned up the levels. I kicked in the Distortion Pro running first at a higher gain level with Distortion on full, Saturation on about 90% full and other controls approximately 60% give or take with a little tweaking. The Distortion Pro delivered – it retained it’s wonderful sonics and complemented the Hiwatt extremely well. It also has great dynamics and responds well to a players picking attack. That is another area that most distortion boxes suffer in – “feel” – but the Distortion Pro has plenty. Switching through various guitars, heads, and cabinets and settings on the Distortion Pro revealed that this unit is really at home with any setup. To my amazement, all of what I thought was “marketing hype” at the Fulltone site really wasn’t at all. This unit DOES do all of those sounds and not only that but it does them extremely well. Can this unit replace the need for a tube amp to get the best tone? Can anyone just use any solid state design and fix the overall tone with the DP-1? No and here’s why. If you’ve spent time with amps at higher volume levels, that’s where the warmth of a quality tube amplifier will really shine. It’s the way the tubes will color the sound that is just very musically pleasing to the ears. This is the weakness with solid state designs – and the tones do not seem to represent themselves very well at rehearsal/stage volumes especially. In general the best tubes amps sound better when turned up, while solid state amps tend to sound worse as you go up the volume scale. With the Distortion Pro, it can be thought of as serving loosely in the preamp stage which of course is very critical as well, but the unit is so well designed that it can hold its own through a quality tube amp at high volumes. If you have a solid state amp that doesn’t sound good to you at these higher volumes, I don’t think the Distortion Pro will save your tone though it may be able to enhance it still somewhat. I did a comparison of the Distortion Pro running through the Hiwatt vs. running straight into my favorite Marshall Super Lead straight in with my Les Paul just to get a good A/B sense sonically as I played. I’ve got to tell you, I’d be just as happy with either, the punch and full-bodied distortion and sustain coming out of the Super Lead with my Les Paul is one of my favorite rock tones. The Distortion Pro running into the Hiwatt set clean did a remarkable impression – the attack and punch were there in the distortion characteristics of the Distortion Pro. Did I already tell you how smooth this pedal’s gain sounds? To sum up this pedal, again, it’s unbelievable – it’s for this reason I need to get some sound files up on it for the other skeptics (like I used to be!) out there. All in all, it’s a winner and well worth the money in my book. Overall The Distortion Pro DP-1 is going to be a part of my permanent rig along with the Fulldrive II overdrive reviewed previously. Both of these units really provide the spectrum of tones I’ve always wanted. To say the Distortion Pro is the best-sounding distortion box I’ve heard comes after MANY years of playing through all kinds of gear, including all the major Boss, Ibanez, and DOD products as well as the Pro-Co, MXR, and EH gear. Lots of gear, lots of experimentation - and the Fulltone DistortionPro DP-1 is clearly the best and has been a 100% satisfying purchase (no free boxes from Fulltone unfortunately. As of this writing, I know that there is a supply and demand issue with not enough supply of the Distortion Pro. My advice: If you’ve got the two bills to spend and have been looking for a distortion unit that covers the gamut of hard rock and blues, or you’re looking to dial in a personal and unique distortion tone, all with smoothness, nice attack, and sustain, get yourself on a waiting list and order one. While I didn’t think this would be the case when I began this article, it’s easy to now give the Fulltone Distortion Pro a perfect 10 score and an Editor's Choice Award. Check out Fulltone on the web at www.fulltone.com. I’ve got to personally thank Mike Fuller and his team for taking the time and putting out the great products they do. The team obviously cares and they’re out to make the best products possible – it’s for this reason that Fulltone is as successful a company as it is. If only more companies modeled themselves in this fashion instead of always focusing on saving dollars, think of what an interesting world we’d be living in! Until next time, take care and best wishes to all of you for the year ahead!