TONE CITY Mandragora Overdrive

Some pedals get all the attention. The Mandragora is not one of them, and that’s a shame. For the price of a few picks and a decent coffee, this little box from Tone City delivers one of the most expressive low-to-medium-gain overdrives in the micro-pedal world. It’s inspired by the Lovepedal Kalamazoo, a boutique favorite with a loyal following. Tone City has no connection to Lovepedal, but it’s clear they understood what made the original tick. What makes it stand out is how it reacts to you. Back off your guitar’s volume knob and it cleans up. Dig in and it growls. Push it into a clean amp and it gives you everything from a just-off-clean sparkle to thick, juicy rock and roll, with a generous helping of blues in between. Stack it in front of an already dirty amp and it turns into a sustain machine. Reviewers keep coming back to the same word, sustain, especially for singing lead tones. **Controls** Gain (G): Sets the amount of overdrive, from a light touch of grit up to thick, saturated drive. Vol (V): Sets the output level, with enough room to give your amp a push. Pre (P): The secret weapon. It works as a combined gain and tone control, adding sparkle and harmonic richness without cutting your low end. It’s also a quick way to match the pedal to your amp, and it helps lead tones stand out with clear definition. Tone (P): A wide-range tone control that softens the treble and shifts the overall voice of the pedal. Together with Pre, it gives you more control than you’d expect from a pedal this small. I suggest starting at the first "all noon" capture and go from there. The pedal can be very bright, especially with single coil guitars. I chose to vary the presence control for each gain level since it also affects the gain. The tone control doesn't seem to do much on reducing the brightness so I kept it at noon all the time instead of making the pedal even brighter. I also recommend watching intheblues' and Andertons' YouTube videos about it (see below). In the Andertons' video the Mandragora seems overall significantly brighter than the Lovepedal original.