FAB TONE
If there’s one “wolf in sheep’s clothing” on
this entire list, this is it. Danelectro made
some pretty silly pedals throughout history:
They made pedals shaped like cars and
pedals named after an entire diner’s worth
of food. They made a line of pedals called
the “Cool Cat” series with pompadour-clad
silhouettes on the labels, yet the pedals
looked like small spacecraft. It’s safe to say
that something very weird was going on at
Dano headquarters for a lengthy period, and
there is perhaps no bigger marker of this
era than the Fab Tone distortion. Shaped
like some manner of weird 1950’s knickknack that sort-of resembles a car part, the
Fab Tone sounds nothing like one would
expect neither in aesthetics nor in name. In
actuality, the Fab Tone is a gnarly distortion
that has more low-end than almost any
other pedal out there. Honestly, the Fab
Tone gets unbelievable heavy and snotty
at the same time—it goes from crunchy to
borderline unusable with a few minor knob
adjustments. But don’t take my word for
it: notorious eardrum-splitting bands like
Mono, Mogwai and Oceansize all use the Fab
Tone to great effect. In fact, Mono’s guitarist
Goto, in all his walls of feedback and chestcaving distortion, uses only a Boss OD-3
Overdrive and the Fab Tone as dirt boxes.
Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, a band whose
live shows are said to deafen entire arenas,
relies on three dirt boxes: a regular NYC Big
Muff, a RAT, and—you guessed it—the Fab
Tone. They’re around $20.
22
TONE TALK //
“THE FAB TONE IS A GNARLY
DISTORTION THAT HAS MORE
LOW-END THAN ALMOST ANY
OTHER PEDAL OUT THERE.”
20 Underrated, Cheap, And Discontinued Pedals: Part 2