NPD: Dano French Toast

Concretebadger · Post by **Concretebadger** » Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:18 pm

Kindly sold by Ekwatts on a bro deal, I finally picked it up from the delivery office this morning. Man, this fuzz is fun.

The enclosure is somewhat smaller than I expected...I thought it would be the same footprint as the Fab Tone I used to own, but it's quite compact. It has the Dano flimsy-feeling knobs and jacks, but even the plastic-y cheap stuff like Danos, NuX or Behringer has worked fine for me. Maybe touring musicians have more issues when they sling their pedalboard cases in and out of the touring van week in week out, but I've never *broken* a pedal before. I don't expect a problem with this either.

The sound is thick, scooped and muff-like, but notes have a ragged velcro-like feel to the decay, even when it's nicely saturated and sustaining the notes. The MASF Lavender Head has a similar feel to it, so maybe that's another Tone Machine inspired circuit? *shrugs* The tone control's a bit like a DS-1's in that it sounds shit at the extremes, but very usable in between. It gets brighter with the gain higher up though.

The octave is nice too...nicer in fact than the Fender Blender's. I guess both pedals are designed for similar applications (i.e. going "skronk" and making you giggle when you play through it), but this can be used as a "character" pedal and a more regular muff-style fuzz as well. The thing that annoys me about the Blender is that it's a bit of a one trick pony but this is more versatile while being less than half the size.

I like.

George · Post by **George** » Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:46 pm

I recall stacking it with a Boss OD3 got some pretty nifty Neil Young Zuma tones.

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Tue Jun 05, 2018 11:29 pm

Love my French Toast but can't use it on my pedalboard due to noise issues in octave mode when used with power supply (maybe due to something with the case providing a lack of shielding or something?)
Great sounding pedal, I stopped using the Green Ringer I built when I got mine because the fuzz was decent too.

NickS · Post by **NickS** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:29 am

I have my son's old EHX Freeze on the pedalboard and noticed some noise issues with other pedals, which varied when I wiggled the power connector that the Freeze was using. I've put it on a separate wall-wart and the noise problem's gone.

Fran · Post by **Fran** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:49 pm

That pedal is a hidden gem. I've got two of them because I feared mine would break and I wouldn't be able to find another.

Some years ago I replicated the Mudhoney sound on a YouTube demo with one, it was very accurate and I think they used a Superfuzz and an Ibanez 60's Fuzz.

Concretebadger · Post by **Concretebadger** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 7:38 pm

Yeah, an OD-3 run into one of these things sounds great. It's one of those low/medium gain boxes that works well with a lot of stuff...I keep trying different things, but the old OD-3 keeps coming back onto my board.

It's a pretty noisy pedal though, even with the gain low. Fortunately I have a couple of isolator adapters lying around, so I'm using one on the FT now. When you add a digital reverb or delay to a daisy chain, it's likely that a dirtbox misbehaves and you end up with background hums, whines and howls. EXH are buggers for that, but I think digital pedals in general are prone to that.

There are a few pedals around that do the Tone Machine thing, so I guess an MXR LA Machine or an Orange Fur Coat might give you a similar sound in a more road-worthy enclosure. This is fine for the studio though. Plus, it's a retro surf green colour with a goofy arcade machine-style stomp switch

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Wed Jun 27, 2018 4:31 pm

I kinda love that switch.

I just loved the Dano mini series, basically. My first pedals outside of a Digitech RP multi unit, I basically had the French Toast on my pedal board until I sold it to you! It was an odd feeling because I never sell gear just in case, and it's not like I fell out of love with it or anything, but I just felt like I'd become totally uninterested in playing partly because I'd been using the same gear for a decade and a half so thought I'd take a risk and shift a load of stuff.

Glad you like it. It does have idiosyncrasies but I don't think I've ever really liked anything that didn't. Makes life interesting. It's small, nasty and powerful.