I've been curious about the Classic and Hot British pedals and since no one in my area carries them, I was wondering if anyone has tried them and if so, what you think about them?
I use the Hot British. Good Modded Marshall sound--I use it for Rhythm only. I've only had it one month and have played two gigs with it. One thing I've noticed is that it doesn't cut through the band as well as I would like it too. I suppose that's true with most pedals. Good tone, though. Laser
Hey Marty S Horne, My guitar player in my previous band had a Tonebone Hot British through a Fender Bassman amp head. He had a nice Marshall style crunch coming out of it. I got to play through it and thought this was a good sounding tube distortion pedal. It sounds good when played through a clean sounding amp. If you can go demo in a store in your area, go try it out for yourself, if you can. Or buy one used and if you don't like it, sell it. Guitar George
I am using a hot british for my distortion right now. It has a terrific EQ section and would not be hard to taylor to your taste. It is really hot though. I've never needed to turn the gain up past 9:00 and currently have it set less then that. I have not tried the classic but it should be more flexible as far as gain is concerned. You sacrifice some EQ option with the classic but it may be worth it if you want to explore some lighter drive settings. Again, the hot british is excellent as far as tone shaping is concerned, but I won't ever use all the gain it has (and I like a good crunch tone sometimes). The controls are interactive as well. My favorite part is the mid-switch. You may want to look at a NADY td-1 as well. I've heard it is a copy of the TB classic and is a little cheaper. Brian from indyguitarist.com prefers it over the TB classic. What kind of tones are you looking for? What kind of rig do you have?
Thanks for the responses everyone. Plowkraut, I have a Mesa Nomad 55 with 4 10" Jensens I bought new 6-7 years ago. I bought it mainly for the clean sound which is killer; the 2 overdrive channels sound good for milder SRV type tones but I was thinking of adding a pedal for some of the heavier tones and the adds and website info looked like it would be good for a "Marshall-type" distortion.
The hot british is an amazing effect. Like mentioned, if eq'd correctly, can cut through almost any mix. Full, fat, and great sounding, I love mine. The classic is also a great sounding pedal, only got to use it in the store once. hot british does an over the top marshall sound, classic is more versatile. Hope this helps!
Hey Marty, I've owned both the Nomad and the Hot Brit (still have the Hot Brit) and have to say, if you're having a tough time getting "heavier" tones out of the other two channels of your Nomad, then the Hot Brit isn't gonna do squat for you. The Nomad has PLENTY of gain on tap and the red channel excels at heavy tones...I really don't understand why you can't get heavy tones out of it. Maybe you're having a hard time b/c you're running the amp through 10s instead of 12s...dunno, never played the 410 combo before. The Hot Brit is a wonderful pedal but it's not gonna turn your Mesa into a Marshall. In my opinion, it's hard to get a Mesa to sound like anything other than a...Mesa. That's not a bad thing...it is what it is. Change the tubes to EL34s and you'll probably get closer to what you want (I greatly preferred EL34s to the 6l6s in that amp). That in combination with the Hot Brit will get you headed in the right direction. Good luck! P.S. FWIW, I did not like the TB Classic AT ALL...
My bandmate had a DC5 which became the Nomad 55 or something. It had gain, yes, but not really a Marshall flavor - but mucho gain fer sher. The HotBrit was one of my faves and I only replaced it for size, convenience. It's a tube pedal and bound to fail sometime. Also, the wallwart was a PITA. If you have problems cutting thru, boost the mids to +7 or even +12. Experiment with the other EQ switches / countour. Many cutting tones are in there. I used it for the 80's hair bands lead tone ala Lynch and Dimartini and Jake E Lee - it was all in there. Great pedal. I've replaced it with the new KOB6 and been using that for over a year - also a great choice IMO.
I still contend that the Tonebone Classic is the best all around distortion pedal. (my opinion of course). Very versatile, and non-pedal sounding. More like a tube preamp in a pedal. And the EQ is sooooo crazy versatile. I will try to remember to do some sound samples tonight, through my clean TopHat. For $189 from one of the online music stores, its a killer deal too!
+1 for the Hot British sounding awesome. Probably the best sounding distortion pedal I ever owned. Directly into the power section of a Deizel is was sold me on the pedal. In front of my friend's old Princeton it actually sounded more Mesa than Marshall. Just some really killer tones in there. My only complaint was that it was pretty noisy when you stopped playing and didn't hit the bypass switch.
i'm gonna add that (a) the tonebone pedals sound best going into a super clean amp with some headroom to spare (b) My hot brit is actually a very quiet pedal, at least on it's own. Combined with a few others, it'll introduce noise, but then, what gain pedal won't? Anyhow, it's surprising that such a heavy distortion can be so quiet when not being played. I dunno what bailnout's situation was (could be a number of factors, like cheap cables or area he played in [again, not making any accusations]) but it's a very quiet pedal when I use it.
Suppose it's all relative. I use my Fuchs TDS50 for leads--which is my definition of full, fat and great sounding. I have no problem EQ'ing it to sound perfect in a band context. For a distortion pedal that does a good modded-Marshall sound, the TBHB is as good as I've found. Laser
Diff'rent strokes, eh? For those who might be a bit slow, the tbhb laser refers to is tonebone hot british. Took me a minute to catch that! For the record, I combine it with a catalinbread super chile picoso for leads (the scp goes after the HB), which really takes my lead tones to the next level. The HB is amazing on it's own for leads and rhythms, though!
