Pete Honoré collaborates with ThorpyFX for unique 'The Dane' Signature Boost + Overdrive Pedal

I’m a touch late with this article as I could not find a suitable picture reference to fit in with my usual editorial style - another reason why I’ve still not posted anything about the new ThorpyFX Team Medic Buffer/Boost/EQ pedal - for which there are still weirdly no demo videos - so not sure what’s happening there. In any case ’The Dane’ has significantly overshadowed that other recent ThorpyFX launch - with plenty of demos, although the initial run of 200 pedals was only available via usual collaborators Andertons and Riff City Guitars.

I regularly check in with stockists, and it does not seem that the ’Team Medic’ has properly reached distribution yet (beyond Andertons) as none of the other dealers have proper pictures in place yet. As for the Purple Boost + Overdrive ’The Dane’ - the initial 200 run pretty much sold out overnight!

I watched the Andertons, Chapman and Pete Honoré demos, and what was not made clear in any of those that I recall is that the pedal is actually significantly reduced from ’The Veteran’ enclosure size - in fact shaving off an estimated 10% of real estate. Before I bought my ThorpyFX Fallout Cloud Fuzz, I was indeed a touch put off by the additional length and width the Thorpy pedals have over standard compact enclosure - on your pedalboard they’re an odd fit, so it stands to reason - that Adrian (Thorpe) has reduced that enclosure somewhat to bring it line with the typical standard compact pedal - while the width though seems to be mostly the same.

As for the pedal - the exercise supposedly started with the Peacekeeper and Gunshot pedals / circuits - and evolved so much from there as to make this quite a different circuit. The pedal is uniquely designed around Pete’s playing style, and his use of his principal Telecaster guitar. Meaning that the Boost is used very much in a principal role - to warm up and ’fatten’ the clean tones. It does this with a clever ’Lows’ control dial - which adds much needed body into that core Telecaster tone. The Boost is intended to be used independently as described, but also as a pre-gain boost to give more grunt to the main Overdrive. Most of us know that Pete’s favourite Overdrive pedal until this point has been the Greer Amps Lightspeed, but the core tone of the 3-dial Dane Overdrive circuit - Volume, Tone, Drive - seems a touch darker.

This is most definitely a ’Transparent’ type of Overdrive pedal with some really clever tone-shaping options and which definitely suits brighter single-coil style guitars, but funnily sounds pretty darn good on humbuckers too - judging from the below ’That Pedal Show’ video. I have chosen to feature that as the best representation of the pedal to date in my opinion.

The pedal retails for £249 - or will do again once more are built - a significant investment for some. I was originally on the fence because I thought it was the usual larger size, and I wondered if it was too specific to Pete’s requirements. I already have the ThorpyFX Gunshot and Warthog on my wishlist and have yet to formulate a definitive opinion on the Peacekeeper, another Transparent style ThorpyFX Overdrive - which gives you more tonal control via 3-band EQ.