The Prince of Tone is an interesting one for me.
I'd been after a Prince of Tone (PoT) for ages, I mean years. I always buy used and I remember about 6-7 years ago bidding on eBay and losing out on a few of these, which, in my opinion, were selling at too high a price at the time - at least for my wallet.
Then, as ever, life moves on, pedals get bought and sold, and I'd still never actually got my hands on a PoT.
A couple of weeks ago though, one came up in my Reverb feed which I thought was a very good price, and this rekindled my desire (coincidence? lol).
I've had other AnalogMan pedals, the Beano Boost and the Sun Face, and just like those the PoT is amazing build quality. Lovely solid casing, nice smooth feeling knobs, just overall a classy feeling and looking product.
I installed it on my pedalboard in the usual drive position, which maybe interesting for a few of you as I tend to use a kind of hybrid set up right now. I use a Quad Cortex into the Friedman Smallbox 50 with drive units in front of the QC. This means I can switch between using the preamp of the Smallbox, or use models / captures of other preamps instead, using the power amp section of the amp to drive the cabinet. This allows me to always use a high quality valve power amp section with the QC as well as using all the effects of the QC like chorus, delays and reverbs either before or after the pre amp as I see fit. The main benefit being I can use the Smallbox as a complete amp, or split it and use a preamp from the QC and the power amp from the Friedman.
Picture out of interest:
Anyway, back to the PoT!
With the very simple and ubiquitous controls of Volume, Drive and Tone, it's a simple pedal to use, and very easy to get great tones from. The small toggle switch moves between the classic overdrive, to a boost, to a distortion setting.
Video Demo of the Prince of Tone:
The boost is great, I love this. Probably my favourite of the three settings. It's not a clean boost but, as AnalogMan says, somewhere between a clean boost and an overdrive. Crank the drive and there's some grit there for sure, suffused with that kind of Blues Breaker thickness of tone. However, it retains lovely dynamics as it's less compressed than the other settings.
It's akin to the yellow side of the King of Tone, if you are familiar with this.
The OD setting is bascially the standard setting of the King of Tone too. If we compare it to a Tube Screamer as most people are familiar with these, there is a little more overdrive and volume. To me there is a similar mid hump with maybe less low end roll off. It accentuates all the right frequencies, that's for sure. It is not a Tube Screamer but will cover some similar ground.
The Dist setting (Distortion of course) is a little misleading to me. If you flick this switch and expect the PoT to turn into a fire-breather like the Revv G4 for example, you will be disappointed.
What it does do though is add a little more gain, more harmonic interest, and a touch more compression. It still has the same character and tonal properties of the overall pedal though.
I definitely found there to actually be very little difference in the settings at low drive settings, and in the video you'll notice I focus mainly on the higher drive settings because of this.
There are also a couple of internal dip switches. Here's the bumph from AnalogMan's site:
DIP1 : LO-MID lift switch. The tone from your lower strings will be enhanced a little when DIP switch is ON.
DIP2: TURBO switch- with higher gain settings you'll hear deeper compression, especially in DIST mode. You will hear a brighter, crunchier sound with this on at higher DRIVE settings when this DIP switch is ON.
Here's where mine were set in the video, notice both are On:
There's also a treble trimpot inside, which you can see in the photo above too.
Sounds
The most important thing to me is the sound of the pedal of course.
I think I can sum it up like this:
The Prince of Tone is a Blues Breaker style pedal, with a lot more versatility.
When played into a clean amp, it sounds great. All the overdrive harmonics you want in the mid range are there. It's voiced so although it has a large impact on your tone, it still preserves your pick up sound. It's not so coloured that it renders all pick ups the same.
The guitar I used for the demo was a a Strandberg Plini Salen model. This has a single coil in the bridge - a Suhr Classic T - and a humbucker in the bridge - A Strandberg OEM.
Both sounded fantastic. I love the way the single coil still sounds open and warm, but also the way the bridge pick up pushed the pedal and amp harder, giving plenty of classic rock tones.
When played into an already pushed amp, there is plenty of volume in the pedal to really make the amp scream in all the right ways.
Summary
If you are on the fence about trying one of these, I would definitely get one especially if you see one second hand for a good price like I was lucky enough to do.
Really you should get two, as then you'd have a King of Tone, but with lots more versatility;)
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