Danelectro Cool Cat pedals offer tone on a budget. We look at the Fuzz, Transparent Overdrive and Vibe.
Danelectro has always been something of a cult favorite among musicians, a company responsible for dreaming up loads of good sounding, inexpensive gear with a distinct fifties flair. Musicians not afraid to step outside of the rarified boutique world have discovered a range of cool, usable tones from boxes named after diner dishes like French Toast and Chicken Salad. For the rest, the combination of cute model names and an abundance of cheap plastic parts left the impression of Danelectro as a strictly budget-minded product. Fortunately for fans of the company’s distinctive style, the latest line of miniaturized effects pedals, dubbed the Cool Cat series, have set out to redefine that image – without raising the price tag. Perhaps one of the most exciting things about the Cool Cat series is the physical upgrade. Danelectro has stepped up to the plate with new, heavy duty metal cases and jacks, and I’m proud to say their effects have never felt sturdier. Every pedal is true bypass, and a quick look inside confirms it – even the guts look well planned and executed, something that cannot be said for all price point effects. The footswitch, while not a Switchcraft, feels solid and clicks with the same tactile satisfaction as one. The only physical point of worry I would have would be the battery compartment, located on the underside of the pedal. The battery latch seems to be made of a fairly flexible plastic that might not survive the long haul, but considering it exists in its own world underneath the rest of the pedal, it shouldn’t be too big of a concern (if you’re truly paranoid, you could always just plug in a 9V adapter). Unfortunately, there remain a few design decisions that don’t seem completely thought through. The knobs sit on the front face of the pedal, with their descriptions printed on top of the box; if you imagine the knobs on Roger Mayer’s famous rocket enclosures, you’ll have the right idea. And while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in its own right, the knobs are partially covered by what can only be described as a little ledge extending off the top of the enclosure. While this is likely in place to prevent accidentally tweaking the settings, it inadvertently makes purposely turning the knobs more of a hassle than it ever should be. It’s near impossible to set your knobs precisely unless you’re looking directly at the front face, and forget about trying to make adjustments with your foot. A handful of the pedals including the transparent overdrive and the chorus also include stacked knobs, making the task even harder; the manual acknowledges adjusting these can be “tricky,” but that seems akin to saying that a Dumble sounds “good.”
Download Example 1 Fuzz at 3:00, Volume at 1:00, Tone at noon | |
All clips recorded with Tele Deluxe with SD Fat Cat humbuckers and Volume and Tone knobs on full. Recorded with a modified Epiphone Valve Junior Stack (Volume set at 5) featuring an Eminence Red Coat 12”, through a Shure SM57 and into a ProSonus Audiobox interface. Guitar by Randall Davis. |
My adventure with the entire Cool Cat series actually began with the Fuzz and a recommendation. In the midst of a brief but deep vintage fuzz phase, I found myself jonsing for the buzz saw intensity of a Foxx Tone Machine, albeit at a little more reasonable price. PG’s own Dirk Wacker recommended the Cool Cat Fuzz, and my search ended almost as soon as it began. As soon as I plugged in the Cool Cat Fuzz and cranked everything to 11 (including the Volume, Tone and Fuzz controls crossing the front face of the unit), I heard that same psychedelic grind, that electric wire, hive of bees sound that I heard in vintage and reissue units, all for a fraction of the price. Now, I should clarify before I receive a mailbox full of angry letters from boutique purists that the Cool Cat Fuzz is not the same as a Foxx, even if they do both conjure animals in their names. The Cool Cat isn’t powered by germanium, nor does it feature any sort of Octave/Sustain switch, like its ancestor the French Toast did. But the Cool Cat Fuzz does have a lot of power hidden underneath its unassuming orange metal housing. There’s more than enough gain on tap for psychedelic fuzzheads and the Tone knob is versatile enough to move from dark, woolly sounds to cool transistor radio tones. Ratchet up the gain, turn the Tone back and you’ll even find yourself in Big Muff territory, even if it’s not an exact impression. Needless to say, at its craziest and loudest, there’s enough sustain to play a note and check back on it days later. Of course, as a relatively inexpensive, germanium-less fuzz, something’s gotta give, and that shows up in some of the softer moments. Turning the Volume on the Fuzz down resulted in sounds that were muddy, and some of the pedal’s great touch sensitivity gets lost, too. But considering that the pedal doesn’t add a lot of noise to the signal, and that it actually cleans up nicely with the help of your guitar’s Volume, you’re still getting a lot of bang for the buck – a big hats off to Danelectro for doing their homework. The Cool Cat Fuzz is literally a no-brainer if you have even a passing interest in fuzz.
Buy if...
you have $39 dollars
Skip if...
you’re only looking to use your fuzz at wimpy levels
Rating...![]()
MSRP $39 -Danelectro- danelectro.com |
Hit Page 2 for the Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive...
Download Example 1 Gain at 1:00, Volume at 12:30, Bass on 1:00, Treble at noon |
Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive
Fresh off the high of the Cool Cat Fuzz, I plugged in Danelectro’s Transparent Overdrive for a little more traditional crunch. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the company’s decision to include the word “transparent” in the name of the effect – it has become such an lazy buzzword that I cringe hearing it these days – but thankfully it seems that Danelectro has some tone to back up that name. The Cool Cat Transparent OD is surprisingly clean and clear for such an inexpensive design; in lower to medium gain situations, the pedal retained my guitars’ fundamental (a Telecaster and LP) without smothering my tone or noticeably compressing the signal. At higher gain levels, the sound squishes more and the signal loses some of that original clarity, but at all points you can tell the Transparent OD is doing its best job at adding gain and little else. If you’re not particularly concerned about coloration or compression you’ll be wowed by the sheer amount of crunch on tap – try out the “Woman Tone” setting in the manual if you have a sturdy amp and a stout disposition. The Treble and Bass knobs – set up in that infernal “stacked” configuration – give you some minor tone shaping options (cut and boost), but this pedal really excels at taking your existing signal/tone and beefing it up. Of course, if you were to put this box up against a high-end boutique OD, the Danelectro probably wouldn’t be the smoothest or most invisible of effects, but that’s missing the point entirely. This pedal provides a lot of gain and a lot of clarity for very little. The fact that it can function effectively in a variety of roles, from a barely-there boost for lead lines to a bludgeon for the front end of your amp, is even more impressive. If you’re looking at overdrives twice or even three times the cost of the Cool Cat Transparent OD, make sure to give this one a try – you just might save some serious cash.
Buy if...
you want a great sounding OD at a fraction of the price
Skip if...
your fingers can’t handle the stacked knobs
Rating...![]()
MSRP $49 - Danelectro - danelectro.com |
Hit Page 3 for the Cool Cat Vibe...
Download Example 1 Intensity at noon, Speed at 11:00, Mix at 11:00. |
Cool Cat Vibe
It was obvious that Danelectro could do dirt, but I wondered if they could do modulation. I played around with some of the other entries in the Cool Cat series, but was left a little wanting with items like the Chorus and the Trem (both respectable as value picks, but nothing that would wow experienced players). Then I stumbled across the Cool Cat Vibe, which surprised me with a versatile range and a mess of tasty sounds. I should note before going any further for players looking for a Univibe sound – or the uniquely off-kilter Univibe impression done by the superb Danelectro Chicken Salad – that this probably isn’t going to fit the bill. The Cool Cat Vibe is more of a vibrato, with the manual calling it akin to “a prehistoric chorus that has emerged from a swamp.” Take that as you will. Featuring Mix, Speed and Intensity knobs across the top, the Cool Cat makes it simple to dial in a number of really smooth vibe sounds, from deep, organic swooshes to fast rotating speaker sounds. There were even some pseudo-chorus sounds to be found with the right settings. If you’re a true tweaker, or just like really overdone effects, there is also a trimpot located inside the unit which controls the overall intensity (although it should be said that in the stock position the Intensity knob has more than enough range) although this isn’t advertised by the company in the manual. Sonically, the Cool Cat Vibe sounds great, and could hang with vibe boxes twice the price. There’s a little bit of a high-end roll off, which helps keep everything smooth and fluid, along with a slight volume boost. The volume boost is perhaps one of the more controversial design decisions here, and it’ll either escape your perception or drive you absolutely nuts. If your rig if carefully calibrated from beginning to end, this pedal may be disqualified immediately by adding in saturation; likewise, players with hot pickups or a heavy hand will be able to make the Vibe breakup. That said, if you’re playing a grungy Hendrix cover, it only adds to the pedal’s aura. Regardless, a simple Volume control could have been a nice addition to enable players to control the level, and resulting tone, themselves. .
Buy if...
you’ve been looking for a solid, organic vibe on the cheap
Skip if...
you can’t deal with the slight signal boost
Rating...![]()
MSRP $69 - Danelectro- danelectro.com |
The Final Mojo
In the end, the Cool Cat series from Danelectro is a solid collection of effects available for a fraction of the price of the boutique stuff. And while these mass produced pedals may not have all of the nuances or responsiveness of high-end effects, they certainly do one hell of a job. Add in the fact that they’ve been well updated with solid metal cases, sturdy footswitches and jacks and true bypass wiring, and you cannot go wrong. Even if you pick one up and don’t dig it, you can always give it away as a holiday gift. And isn’t that truly gearhead peace of mind?
Join PG contributor Tom Butwin as he explores all-new versions of the Framus Hootenanny 12-string and 6-string acoustics—made famous by John Lennon and now available with modern upgrades. From vintage-inspired tone to unique features, these guitars are built to spark creativity.
Neil Young’s ’70s hits are some of the most recognizable radio rock jams of all time. But Neil’s guitar playing continued to grow over the ensuing decades, as he traversed styles from blues to country to electronic to rockabilly and beyond, eventually developing one of the most tonally decadent, fully formed improvisational voices in the entire guitar universe.
Neil Young’s ’70s hits are some of the most recognizable radio rock jams of all time. But Neil’s guitar playing continued to grow over the ensuing decades, as he traversed styles from blues to country to electronic to rockabilly and beyond, eventually developing one of the most tonally decadent, fully formed improvisational voices in the entire guitar universe.
Like any discography that’s been growing over the course of more than half a century, it can be hard to decode Young’s work. And with such an adventurous spirit, it could be easy to make some missteps and miss out on his best guitar works. In this episode, Nick guides Jason through some of his hero’s finest moments.
More news from Neil always seems to be on the horizon, so here’s your chance to catch up.
This episode is sponsored by Gibson.
This Japan-made Guyatone brings back memories of hitchin’ rides around the U.S.
This oddball vintage Guyatone has a streak of Jack Kerouac’s adventurous, thumbing spirit.
The other day, I saw something I hadn’t noticed in quite some time. Driving home from work, I saw an interesting-looking fellow hitchhiking. When I was a kid, “hitchers” seemed much more common, but, then again, the world didn’t seem as dangerous as today. Heck, I can remember hitching to my uncle’s cabin in Bradford, Pennsylvania—home of Zippo lighters—and riding almost 200 miles while I sat in a spare tire in the open bed of a pickup truck! Yes, safety wasn’t a big concern for kids back in the day.
So, as I’m prone to do, I started digging around hitchhiking culture and stories. Surprisingly, there are organized groups that embrace the hitching life, but the practice remains on the fringe in the U.S. Back in the 1950s, writer Jack Kerouac wrote the novel On the Road, which celebrated hitchhiking and exposed readers to the thrill of maverick travel. Heck, even Mike Dugan (the guitarist in all my videos) hitched his way to California in the 1960s. But seeing that fellow on the side of the road also sparked another image in my brain: Yep, it always comes back to guitars.
Let me present to you a guitar that’s ready to go hitching: the Guyatone LG-180T, hailing from 1966. The “thumbs-up” headstock and the big “thumb” on the upper bout always made me think of thumbing a ride, and I bought and sold this guitar so long ago that I had forgotten about it, until I saw that hitchhiking dude. Guyatone was an interesting Japanese company because they were primarily an electronics company, and most of their guitars had their wooden parts produced by other factories. In the case of the LG-180T, the bodies were made by Yamaha in Hamamatsu, Japan. At that time, Yamaha was arguably making the finest Japanese guitars, and the wood on this Guyatone model is outstanding. We don’t often see Guyatone-branded guitars here in the U.S., but a lot of players recognize the early ’60s label Kent—a brand name used by an American importer for Guyatone guitars.
With a bit of imagination, the LG-180T’s “thumbs up” headstock seems to be looking for a roadside ride.
Kent guitars were extremely popular from the early ’60s until around 1966. The U.S. importer B&J fed the American need for electric guitars with several nice Kent models, but when the Guyatone contract ended, so did most of the Kent guitars. After that, Guyatone primarily sold guitars in Japan, so this example is a rare model in the U.S.
“Unless you are a master at guitar setups, this would be a difficult player.”
This headstock is either the ugliest or the coolest of the Guyatone designs. I can’t decide which. I will say, no other Japanese guitar company ever put out anything like this. You have to give the Guyatone designers a thumbs up for trying to stand out in the crowd! Guyatone decided to forgo an adjustable truss rod in this model, opting instead for a light alloy non-adjustable core to reinforce the neck. Speaking of the neck, this instrument features the most odd-feeling neck. It’s very thin but has a deep shoulder (if that makes any sense). Totally strange!
Another strange feature is the bridge, which offers very little adjustment because of the three large saddles, which sort of rock back and forth with the tremolo. It’s a shame because these pickups sound great! They’re very crisp and have plenty of zing, but unless you are a master at guitar set-ups, this would be a difficult player.
This could be why the LG-180T only appeared in the 1966 and 1967 catalogs. After that, it disappeared along with all the other Yamaha-made Guyatone electrics. By 1969, Guyatone had gone bankrupt for the first time, and thus ended guitar production for a few decades. At least we were blessed with some wacky guitar designs we can marvel at while remembering the days when you could play in the back end of an explosive 1973 AMC Gremlin while your mom raced around town. Two thumbs up for surviving our childhoods! PG
There's a lot of musical gold inside the scales.
Intermediate
Intermediate
• Develop a deeper improvisational vocabulary.
• Combine pentatonic scales to create new colors.
• Understand the beauty of diatonic harmony.Improvising over one chord for long stretches of time can be a musician's best friend or worst nightmare. With no harmonic variation, we are left to generate interest through our lines, phrasing, and creativity. When I started learning to improvise, a minor 7 chord and a Dorian mode were the only sounds that I wanted to hear at the time. I found it tremendously helpful to have the harmony stay in one spot while I mined for new ideas to play. Playing over a static chord was crucial in developing my sense of time and phrasing.
The following is the first improvisational device I ever came across. I want to say I got it from a Frank Gambale book. The idea is that there are three minor pentatonic scales "hiding" in any given major scale. If we're in the key of C (C–D–E–F–G–A–B) we can pluck out the D, E, and A minor pentatonic scales. If we frame them over a Dm7 chord, they give us different five-note combinations of the D Dorian mode. In short, we are building minor pentatonic scales off the 2, 3, and 6 of the C major scale.
Viewing this through the lens of D minor (a sibling of C major and the tonal center for this lesson), D minor pentatonic gives us the 1–b3–4–5–b7, E minor pentatonic gives us 2–4–5–6–1, and A minor pentatonic gives us 5–b7–1–2–4. This means you can use your favorite pentatonic licks in three different locations and there are three different sounds we can tap into from the same structure.
If you smashed all of them together, you would get the D Dorian scale (D–E–F–G–A–B–C) with notes in common between the D, E, and A minor pentatonic scales. Ex. 1 uses all three scales, so you can hear the different colors each one creates over the chord.
Ex. 1
Ex. 2 is how I improvise with them, usually weaving in and out using different positional shapes.
Ex. 2
The next idea is one I stole from a guitarist who often came into a music store I worked at. On the surface, it's very easy: Just take two triads (in our example it will be Dm and C) and ping-pong between them. The D minor triad (D–F–A) gives us 1–b3–5, which is very much rooted in the chord, and the C major triad (C–E–G) gives us the b7–9–4, which is much floatier. Also, if you smash these two triads together, you get 1–2–b3–4–5–b7, which is a minor pentatonic scale with an added 2 (or 9). Eric Johnson uses this sound all the time. Ex. 3 is the lick I stole years ago.
Ex. 3
Ex. 4 is how I would improvise with this concept. Many different fingerings work with these, so experiment until you find a layout that's comfortable for your own playing.
Ex. 4
If two triads work, why not seven? This next approach will take all the triads in the key of C (C–Dm–Em–F–G–Am–Bdim) and use them over a Dm7 chord (Ex. 5). Each triad highlights different three-note combinations from the Dorian scale, and all of them sound different. Triads are clear structures that sound strong to our ears, and they can generate nice linear interest when played over one chord. Once again, all of this is 100% inside the scale. Ex. 5 is how each triad sounds over the track, and Ex. 6 is my attempt to improvise with them.
Ex. 5
Ex. 6
If we could find all these possibilities with triads, it's logical to make the structure a little bigger and take a similar approach with 7 chords, or in this case, arpeggios. Naturally, all the diatonic chords will work, but I'll limit this next idea to just Dm7, Fmaj7, Am7, and Cmaj7. I love this approach because as you move further away from the Dm7 shape, each new structure takes out a chord tone and replaces it with an extension. I notice that I usually come up with different lines when I'm thinking about different chord shapes, and this approach is a decent way to facilitate that. Ex. 7 is a good way to get these under your fingers. Just ascend one shape, shift into the next shape on the highest string, then descend and shift to the next on the lowest string.
Ex. 7
Ex. 8 is my improvisation using all four shapes and sounds, but I lean pretty heavily on the Am7.
Ex. 8
This last concept has kept me busy on the fretboard for the last five years or so. Check it out: You can take any idea that works over Dm7 and move the other diatonic chords. The result is six variations of your original lick. In Ex. 9 I play a line that is 4–1–b3–5 over Dm7 and then walk it through the other chords in the key. These notes are still in the key of C, but it sounds drastically different from playing a scale.
Ex. 9
In Ex. 10, I try to think about the shapes from the previous example, but I break up the note order in a random but fun way. The ending line is random but felt good, so I left it in.
Ex. 10
While all these concepts have been presented over a minor chord, you can just as easily apply them to any chord quality, and they work just as well in harmonic or melodic minor. Rewarding sounds are available right inside the harmony, and I am still discovering new ideas through these concepts after many years.
Though the above ideas won't necessarily be appropriate for every style or situation, they will work in quite a few. Developing any approach to the point that it becomes a natural extension of your playing takes considerable work and patience, so just enjoy the process, experiment, and let your ear guide you to the sounds you like. Even over just one chord, there is always something new to find.