Tone City Mandragora Overdrive Pedal Review

Tone City Mandragora Overdrive Pedal Review

The Tone City Mandragora is based off the killer tones of the Lovepedal Kalamazoo overdrive pedal.  What I love about the Mandragora is it’s extremely usable and sits somewhere between the Tone City Bad Horse and the Tone City Wild Fire in terms of gain.  This is an overdrive pedal to be sure, but the great thing about it is you can really dial in some thick tones with loads of sustain and vibe.  If you’re a fan of amp-like overdrive this will hit the right spots tonally.  I’ve tried this with a number of guitars now both at home and live and it’s one of my favorites from the Tone City Range.

The video below shows how the Tone City Mandragora will sound stacked with the Sweet Cream Overdrive by the same company.

The Mandragoa features 4 simple controls:

• Gain – Controls the amount of drive in the signal
• Tone – Controls the overall EQ of high end on the tone
• Pre – (Presence) Controls the clarity control (Glass control) of the tone.
• Volume – Controls how loud you want to be

Much like the bad horse pedal, this can be used to push an amp over the edge of breakup or also on a clean tone.  Another advantage to it is the Mandragora works great on an already off-clean amp, which is perfect for blues and classic rock.

Being that the Tone City pedals are so small there’s no internal battery compartment so you’ll need to run them on a Visual Sound/Boss style 9V power supply.

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The Tone City Mandragora is another home run for the price.  I used it live recently and it was sustain heaven.  The pedals are built extremely well and sound as good as the pedals they are based on.   Check out Tone City Pedals online.  I always base my reviews on build quality, price, and tone in perspective to where it sits in the market against other brands and pedals I’ve played.  For the money these are the best inexpensive pedal on the market I’ve ever tried.