Amped: Review TC Electronic Dreamscape

John Petrucci's Modulation Pedal   14-Jun-12

John Petrucci is a hot ticket right now, the rise of prog rock through the mighty Dream Theater has given him the Hall Of Fame status. Add to that the new TC Toneprint pedals and you have a perfect match. TC’s new range have been wowing everywhere, with great construction quality and a sound to match, it's unsurprising (see our review).

TC and Petrucci have teamed up to create a special Chorus/Flanger/Vibrato that meets Mr Petrucci’s exacting requirements. The TonePrint process requires the artist and the designer to spend some qaulity time honing and tweaking the setttings to get the sound just so - indeed, there is a video available if you want to see what that entails.

With three effects available; Chorus, Flanger and Vibrato the Dreamscape is a true stereo system and is well suited to effects loop integration - indeed we found it to be better that way.

 
Split in to two sections, 1 and 2 the effects are designed by John (Mr Petrucci to you) to work with clean and distorted sounds respectively.

With Depth, Speed and Mix controls, you don't get the full repertoire of tweakery - for instance Flanger usually has a feedback or regen control, and you dont have that here, but the point is really to get a piece of the JP sound.

So how is that?
Well in a word I would say generally quite subtle - apart from the Flanger 2 sound, it's on the less extreme side. However, it does sound really, really good. The chorus and vibrato add an expensive sounding sheen to the tone and retain a musicality and dynamic range that you can appreciate. it is possible to dial in some more extreme settings, for that Scary Monsters or King Crimson sound, but the pedal sounds at it's best at more subtle settings to our ears, and what JP was aiming for.

Of course you can get more presets into your pedal by beaming from the TonePrint App (ios, Android) with  25 contributing artists making presets available. I guess it would be nice to have access to the TonePrint editor at some point to grow your own, but sadly that’s not to be for now.

 
The only other thing to watch out for is that this is a battery monster - just make sure you have a power supply if you want to use it.

Dreamscape TonePrint Artists:
Brian Nutter (Keith Urban), Bumblefoot, Charles Cave  (bass White Lies), Dann Huff (Megadeth), Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age), Duff McKagan  (Guns n Roses),
Guthrie Govan, James Munky Shaffer (Korn), Jon Thorne (bass various), Keith Gattis, Michael Britt (Lonestar)

Available now:
£203,€296 $249

More Information

• TCelectronic.com