Tone Ink's Raven Brute & High Gain Distortion Pedal is a Killer Compact Triple Threat!

Oct 12, 202208:00 by

Stefan Karlsson

Brown Sound DistortionDistortionDriveMetal DistortionMulti-DriveTone Ink+-

I’ve long had my eye on Brazilian Emanuel Dantas’ Tone Ink pedals - in fact since before I did last year’s Tone Ink Range Overview - he’s since added the ’Rotten’ Rat type Distortion, and ’Rage Master’ Treble Booster. All these pedals typically come with extended-range controls and multiple different voicings within each compact unit. It’s a form factor that really appeals to me - and these are pretty distinct enclosures with a sloping front facia on top and bottom edges - and topped by a usually colourful anodised facia plate - albeit suitably black for the Raven and Rotten.

I’ve long wanted to explore this range - while Emanuel is so busy within the Brazilian marketplace alone that he’s not really thought too much about extending his influence further until I started knocking on his door - there’s a handful of Brazilian sites that carry these pedals, but no International Dealers yet. I keep trying to persuade my many dealer friends to approach Emanuel and do a deal to open him up to a wider audience - but that’s not happened quite yet - it will happen one day! In the meantime Emanuel has offered to open up his shipping for more overseas territories - more details below.

It just so happens that I’m doing my Monster Compact Metal Pedal Rundown later this month - which I’m likely naming ’Full Metal Racket!’ Where I list 32 of my favourite compact enclosure Metal high gain distortion pedals. It seemed a good point to get Emanuel and Tone Ink involved - and so this becomes the first review for the new additions of that series - culminating in the final reveal closer to the end of this month.

In any case I’ve been hugely impressed with the Raven - the variety of proper metal tones it has onboard and how easy those are to dial in. I feel that this pedal gives a good account of how Emanuel’s mind works - kind of doing the Boss thing to a degree - where the pedal sounds already great with everything around noon - and then extends the possibilities outwards - with usable tones in pretty much all directions as we shall see. It also retains a decent amount of articulation with everything maxed out - which goes to show how well this circuits is calibrated and dialled in at its core. Note also that you have the option of powering the pedal from 9V up to 18V - so use the latter if you want more volume, sizzle and zing like me!

Controls - Bass (Active), Mid (Framus Cobra-like Mid-Cut), Treble (Active), Gain, Punch (Input Gain and EQ) : Less Lows / More Defined Lows / More Body / Mid-Punch - for Solos, Bite (Clipping and Mids / Mid-Cut Profile) : Rect (MESA/Boogie Dual Rectifier), B.Red (Bogner Ecstasy Red) / 515 (Peavey 5150), Gain, Volume.

The 5 knobs are very straight-forward and self-evident - just note that the Mids is sort of in reverse, while the 2 x 3-way Voicing Selections - PUNCH and BITE - need some significant explanation as follows :

PUNCH (Input Gain & EQ)

This is essentially the signal input into the circuit where Low end frequencies and Input Gain in particular are adjusted for different output voicings :

RED - Perfect for Low / Drop Tunings, the RED option moderates the Bass at the input stage and allows for more definition for power chords in particular
BLUE - This voicing has a more intense cut - favouring Mids and Highs and delivering more definition in Low Gain - for more classic metal and hard rock tones - Blue is my favourite mode for Punch!
DARK - Developed to help beef up Single Coil pickups in particular and add more Solo-style Body definition

BITE (Clipping + Mid Cut Profile + Compression + Saturation)

The essential amp voicing character per each of the 3 types - a combination of specially selected clipping diodes and specific Capacitor values to impact the core voicing character of each Metal Amp type voicing. Those Mid Cut frequency selections exactly replicate the actual amp preamp values that they’re based on :

RECT - MESA/Boogie Dual Rectifier : Combines BAT & MOSFET clipping with 400Hz Mids frequency attenuation to produce the Dual Rec amp character
B.RED - Bogner Ecstasy Red : Combines Red LEDs clipping with 700Hz Mids frequency attenuation to produce the Ecstasy Red amp character (My favourite!)
515 - Peavey 5150 : Combines Silicon Diode Clipping with 600Hz Mids frequency attenuation to produce that classic Eddie Van Halen amp character

So Emanuel advises you start with all controls in the middle - but also to experiment with dialling back the Mids control - where that actually delivers Max Mids anti-clockwise as the knob acts more like a clockwise Framus Cobra-like Mids-Cut - so Max bump fully CCW and fully scooped CW.

In fact I found starting everything at noon works really well - where I initially first targeted the PUNCH voicing - before I selected my preferred BITE amp character type and then tuned the EQ, Volume and Gain to taste. While latterly I came to use the Punch as a fairly regular incidental voicing selector - so that when I’m in the Ecstasy Red Mode - where I mostly have it in the middle, I can flip the PUNCH switch up to mellow the output a little, and flip it down for a more concentrated mids punch.

You can’t really flip between the BITE Amp Character switches on-the-fly - as you need to re-adjust all the knobs per voicing to get the most out of it. But you can flip the PUNCH switch fairly liberally for different output aspects of your chosen amp voicing.

As I mentioned I always started with everything at noon - every time I approached the pedal - I always started from the same position - and always ended on the same position regardless of 9V or 18V power - all the knobs bar Mids on Max, where that is set to 9 o’c. And like I said - my favourite distortion character is with PUNCH on Blue and BITE on Red so far - for the half a dozen or so sessions I have had to date. I’m not really trying to tune in a voicing by memory or match it to a specific reference music - just going where the pedal takes me - and on 18V it’s pretty fantastic - proper high gain metal distortion great on palm-muted and open strings - one of my favourite High Gain pedals for sure.

The Raven Brute & High Gain Disruption is available right now on the Tone Ink Webstore for $195 including shipping to most countries - very good value indeed! I’m certainly very happy to have one finally in the Reference Collection.

Specifications