Modtone Dyno Drive

MODTONE DYNO DRIVE
By Adam Ironside

Features

A simple three knob design, as with most overdrives, Tone, Level, and Drive, makes anyone feel at home straight away. It has pretty good looks, in my opinion anyway.

To be honest, I was quite impressed with the packaging the pedal came in. Most of the time you get some shoddy box or something, but even the box managed to look cool and ‘modern.’ Inside the box was an information sheet with some suggested settings and stuff (does anyone ever use them??)  and also some free plectrums which I don’t use, but I thought it was pretty cool anyway. I just hope Modtone put as much effort into the design as they have the looks…

Sounds

Well, it’s a TS808 clone with some revisions (as are nearly all overdrive circuits nowadays) but in this case the revisions don’t seem to effect the tone in a positive way.

The tone control doesn’t seem as versatile as it should be, kicking the pedal on adds a noticeable change in tone, increasing either upper mids or low high-end and already sounding quite sharp and harsh. Twisting the knob all the way off does not particularly correct the problem, and with the tone on full you get a very sharp, treble-y overdrive, which is not to my personal tastes.

The level and drive knobs do as expected and there’s quite a bit of juice on tap considering it is essentially a tube screamer.

Used on it’s own, driving a clean channell, I did not enjoy the sound of this pedal. As I have said, it was very harsh in the upper frequencies and I prefer a more mid-rangey and smooth overdrive. Boosting an already overdriven amp had a slightly better effect and I like the way it give definition to palm muted notes even with high gain settings. I could imagine using this pedal in the studio on a rythym track or something that needed a tad more definition, but for me I would not be using this as a lead tone.

Other opinions will of course vary and if you like the increased high-end and crunchy British style overdrives and treble-boosters, then this pedal may be for you.

Overall

The ModTone stuff is well made, reliable, sensibly priced and not bad. It is just not suited to my tastes. As I have said, if you prefer more of a Brit crunch and increased high end, this pedal might be right up your street.

Rating

6.5- I initially had this rated at five making it an average pedal. I decided to increase the rating because of the use it could have on my studio rythym tracks. Not a bad little box, but far from my favourite.

The Modtone DynoDrive is available worldwide.
http://www.modtone-effects.com

Sources: www.modtone-effects.com