ShortScale.org

It was just a good 2 months ago that my soon-to-be moving to Seoul pedal-crazy bud from the Harmony Central boards Seifukusha (Joey) had been contacted by someone from Dano staff, asking to recommend a dozen or so HC forumites who'd sincerely be interested in trying out the new line, and I was soon contacted by the rep about trying out and commenting on some of the new Cool Cat line prior to their release. Lucky me again.

Fast forward to this afternoon, when a package came, curiously sent all the way from Camarillo, CA.(practically walking distance from my late grandfather's rural mini ranch in Somis). In the hefty box were the Cool Cat Transparent Drive, Distortion, and Vibe, along with a really cool record-shaped mouse pad in a spiffy 45 RPM sleeve, and a mug. SWEET.

First off, considering the hefty metal casing, they're lighter than Boss pedals. Unscrewing the thick back plate revealed a very thin shell and a convenient plug-to-PCB design that is shared among each of the pedals. There's a "True Bypass" sticker on the front to encourage the masses (and pacify those who have bufferphobia), with a nice and tight 3DPT switch engage from the firm spring top bypass.

The verdict? So far I've only spent a good amount of time on the Vibe, and so far I really like it a lot, starting with a slight boost at work when engaged. Speed and Intensity knobs do what they do well, but the Mix knob makes things really shine. Fully engaged you get the detuned wobble (which actually made me a tad nauseous), and around 11:00 to 1:00 the blend with the dry signal combines to get that delightful pseudo-UniVibey yowie-yow... yowie-yow... yowie-yow..., with a classic timbre that somewhat decently recreates the classic rotary simulator. Unfortunately, it lacks the mid-low throbbing swell (something the Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe had annoyingly too much of), which could be dialed in elsewhere but nonetheless is a little thinner than the bypassed signal. Curiously the bright blue LED has a slight pulse when intensity is up and responds to the speed knob as such, but it's not that noticeable without dim lighting.

Overall a good pedal that I'd most likely pay the $69 street price to pickup. It's also surf green, B*%@h!

Gonna hold out on diving into the other two until I get to try 'em on the Rivera 100W twin at our practice space this Saturday, but have a feeling the transparent drive won't be bad at all. If it and the distortion sound decent, I might bum a large case off of the Moollon team and do a fun rehouse.

Inside the Transparent Drive:

WTF.

Why does all this stuff happen to other people? I know loads of folk now that are getting free crap sent to them. I've been making youtube demos like a MUG and I've not had a sausage.

Fuck's sake.


Anyway, Vitrolic burps aside, they look really nicely built actually. Some people will spazz out retardedly for no reason at the PCB onto 3PDT (but as I've had some building experience now that completely makes sense and is a smart and practical move), ditto the plugs from board to board. I wouldn't bother rehousing it for anything other than fun, seeing as it looks like they've done an excellent job of layout and construction. The components on the board and the board itself look very good quality, those large capacitors and metal can transistors are pretty high end components. They have used SMD (surface mount device) caps, diodes and resistors it seems, makes sense with the size of these badboys. I'm impressed, personally. I've always been a fan of Danelectro's stomp boxes.

If you're seeing some LED wobblies that doesn't mean it's not true bypass, just that the power supply (which is shared bwteen the board and the LED when the switch is in "effect" position) is being somewhat caned by the LFO.

Nice observations, Mike.

And man, considering all those comprehensive demos and the respect you've garnered, you really should've been da man.

I haven't a clue how good the innards are, but the setup is sure nice and tidy, and the sheer simplicity of the install made it look good for a goofy rehouse because everything pops out with no effort, and it would simply take a big enough drill bit on a case to have things fit. Good fun nonetheless, it's anything but a mess on the inside, and I've nothing to complain about.

Concerning the light, I was somewhat hoping the LED warble would be more pronounced a la my presently-dormant-in-L.A. Lovetone Doppleganger and a few other tasty Vibes out there to display tempo/degree of detune, but you're probably right about the power tapping going on, with things not being exactly intentional.

ultratwin wrote:Nice observations, Mike.

And man, considering all those comprehensive demos and the respect you've garnered, you really should've been da man.

I haven't a clue how good the innards are, but the setup is sure nice and tidy, and the sheer simplicity of the install made it look good for a goofy rehouse because everything pops out with no effort, and it would simply take a big enough drill bit on a case to have things fit. Good fun nonetheless, it's anything but a mess on the inside, and I've nothing to complain about.

Concerning the light, I was somewhat hoping the LED warble would be more pronounced a la my presently-dormant-in-L.A. Lovetone Doppleganger and a few other tasty Vibes out there to display tempo/degree of detune, but you're probably right about the power tapping going on, with things not being exactly intentional.

Sometimes it's deliberate design I think, and sometimes it's clearly an effect of the well... effect. For example when I owned a DD-20 it, being digital had a nice pulsey blue LED showing you the current tempo, and I've seen it on various other analogue tremelo and delays also. However sometimes it just seems to be a byproduct of the effect, at least you haven't got the dreaded "LFO chops" in the background like chunnering robots.

Ignore my previous hissy fit, to be honest I'm glad you got them, you certainly have more refined ears than me and will probably be able to give them much more comprehensive and useful feedback - plus you're a session musician and recording artist in your own right. I'm pretty sure they could have preempted any feedback I might have by just hamfistedly playing Back In Black through each pedal and observing the reaction of a labratory chimp.

Haha, but is that not the most tonally "honest" part of the demos? And for that matter I doubt anyone bothers to set up a microphone for the sake of a less compressed intranetz tone.

Come to think of it, It's about time we'd got a vid cam 'round these parts, I've been wanting to do more than a few fun reviews and get some of the cat antics to tape.

Now time for me to hone them monotonous blues chops.

If you made video demos they would be the best demos out there.

Your DC-2 demo was GLORIOUS.

[/ta-da]

DO WANT

Did they give you any hint as to when these would be released?

Not a peep from them at all, but I doubt they'll be doing any more tweaking of the initial stock by the looks of things.

The box just came with the shipping invoice and a little card (with a buzz saw on it) that says, verbatim:

the card wrote:
Here's the Buzz...

Here are the VERY FIRST "Cool Cats"...we are sending to you BEFORE They are zapped into interplanetary distribution. The "Cat" along with his faithful and finicky staff have fussed over these for 2 plus years now! We hope you enjoy them!! And hey, if you DO enjoy them, please let some other people know! We...and the Cat...would appreciate that very much!

Rock and Roll mouse pad!!!!!!!

ultratwin wrote:[/ta-da]

That's ruddy awesome.

WTF thats awesome.

^ all that too

Awesome.

Some proper PCB skin shots for the electronically curious and tinkering circuit geeks:




Transparent Overdrive:








Distortion:








Vibe:

Thanks for those. Good old TL072 opamp. I'm starting to design with these soon.

awesome for you ultra! that mouse mat is the shiznit!

Here’s a little more on the pedals, including a few surprises.

The CD-1 Distortion does pretty much what I figure it’d trying to do: heavy overdrive with a throaty Marshallesque front end, with Treble/Bass controls. Unlike a DS-1 it cleans decently up by rolling off guitar's volume, gets fuzzy past 2:00. Pretty uneventful, but then again it's a very musical pedal, with plenty of breakup compression going on without hitting the proverbial RAT wall(no offence, I like RATs when it is a RAT). More on that in a few days.




Although I haven’t tried it into the most favorable amp setup as of yet (2 days to go until Twin-time!), the CTO-1 Transparent Overdrive is turning out to be a more interesting OD than first expected. Although not exactly quite a clean boost when gain is low, it’s very good at adding the “hair o’ dirt� to the front end of the amp. Overall very transparent and useful for letting most of the guitar’s original tone shine through, and letting the amp respond as such to a gentle push with a squirt of dirt. The voicing is much less mid-humped than a TS, and adding on gain doesn’t quite bring it into distortion zone but does oomph up the bass frequencies just a tad…then you start working with fun dials: Treble/Bass.

That’s the big surprise, which makes this thing more than a one-trick dirtbox. The EQ is basically stacked sequentially into the gain stage, so the breakup greatly affected by how much of each band is being pumped in. Both at 12:00 with gain around 3:00 it comes pretty close to some of the OD-3’s better moments, adding the treble to the 3:00 position is a killer Tele bridge screamer with still a lot of the present bridge twang mixed in, and with Treble/Bass maxed, it’s a fairly nice and heavy crunch drive without sounding especially scooped at all. Neck pickup with dials dimed and guitar tone rolled off a tad is warm and fuzzy(I'm not one to use the phrase "woman tone", but you get the idea), showing that there’s more gain in varying colors.

I like the “transparent� moniker as well because it definitely doesn’t have that “24/7 stuffy in the lower mids built-in EQ� like a Bad Monkey can have even with the gain down, and it doesn’t get wooly/woofy and dark unless you roll off the Treble knob when the bass is up and driving the gain. All in all, this thing has both a glassy/clear and heavily distorted side to it that’s worth trying out. I have a feeling we'll be hearing about this thing for a while.

We’ll see what the Rivera can do for the both on Saturday.

The Overdrive sounds great. I like when you can use pedal EQ (or amp EQ) to focus the breakup across the guitar frequencies.

Agreed, the thing I'm anticipating the most on Saturday is the freq driving the gain amp and in turn seeing how the amp responds. The good ol' BFJ EGDM has a voicing knob that determines where the breakup happens(yet is still Voxy no matter what), but this thing has a few shades of drive coming out that are already displaying more than a few colors of OD.

Good times.