KORG Vintage Toneworks DSP

In this article, we're going to look at a really strange line of pedals that KORG released sometime in the mid ’90s. There's not a lot of information, but what I do know I'm going to share, and we’ll fill the gaps as best we can.

For the next few pages, just think of me as a very enthusiastic conspiracy theorist who happens to play the guitar.

The History

In 1999, Line 6 appeared on the pedal scene with a brand new stomp box called the DL4 delay modeler. This entire series changed how guitar players looked at digital pedals forever. Up until this time, a lot of companies had tried to use brand new processors and DSP innovation to get digital processing to feel and act like analog components. It was (and still is) very, very difficult. You basically were taking an analog sound and trying to create the same tone and feeling but in a digital domain. Early DSP was very slow, low memory, and it proved challenging to get good results. Not everyone could do it.

That said, there were some pretty good attempts. We have things like BOSS with the ME (multi-effect) series. We have DOD and Digitech with things like the FX7. We also have Zoom, which was a heavy hitter in the early DSP era with things like the 505; this is actually my first pedal ever, and it still has some pretty good sounds. Another company that contributed to this initial trailblazing of early DSP was KORG, and sometime in the mid ’90s they released the Tonework series.

Now here's the problem. I usually like to offer you tons of details. In fact, I usually have to cut out information from these episodes because no one but myself really wants to know these insane details about guitar history. That is decidedly not the case with this pedal series. Basically, there's nothing. There's no information on these. Nobody knows anything. They're super mysterious. Where did they come from? What’s the theme here? Why is this a series?

I don’t know, and it hurts my heart a little to say that. I like to know stuff. It’s kind of my thing.

I'm going to do the best I can to lead you on a journey of understanding this period of time and this series. Since this specific series doesn’t have a name (that we know of), I'm just going to name them the KORG Spirit Animal series, because they have these weird animals on them. Jeorge Tripps would be all over these pedals. We'll get into that later.

It doesn’t help matters that the only manual I have for this series is written in Japanese. Spoiler: I don’t speak Japanese. I occasionally eat Japanese, but that’s more for the taste than anything else.

The manual does contain one hint on page 4: we have a section here written in English called CE Mark of European Harmonized Standards, which is a very nerdy term for the legal application and approval to use certain components in these pedals. Basically, this section says that KORG had approval to make products with components that they were using here until December 31st of ’96. That means these pedals came before ‘96. Literally the one thing we know for sure about this crazy pedal series.

Well, I do know they're kind of weird, they're kind of cool, and the enclosures have strange animals on them, but that’s pretty much it.

Let’s take a closer look.

‘Spider-Ant’ ToneWorks 105OD Classic Overdrive

We’ll start with the 105OD Classic Overdrive. You'll notice it has a spider on it. Or maybe an ant? It has four legs. I’m going to go with a ‘spider-ant with four legs’, because we can use artistic license on #maybemythical creatures.

This is the Spider 105OD Overdrive by KORG, the first in the Spirit Animal series. It has a boost function and it has a weird aliasing harmonic that's slightly irritating as the note decays, but just like certain irritating family members, it's kind of endearing.

As always, look up the demo on our JHS show episode if you want to see this pedal in action.

‘Jackal-Cat’ ToneWorks 411FX Multi-Effects

Next up is the 411FX super multi-effect pedal. The Spirit Animal for this one is apparently a jackal-cat hybrid. A jackat, if you will. Or a maybe a cackal?

This pedal has achieved something truly impressive: out of the thousands of pedals in my collection, it wins the award for most complicated user interface I've ever seen. It's so confusing that in the demo we dropped in the JHS show episode, I literally just started playing my guitar and let Nick try to figure it out.

We figured out that this unit has switches for corresponding presets, which are labeled with random letters that maybe stand for drive, tone, contol, modulation, and ambience. We’re honestly not sure. There’s an off knob just by itself, for some reason? There's stuff on here that makes no sense at all, but it has a lot of effects in it, if you go for that kind of thing.

Admittedly, I spent ten minutes trying to figure it out. Maybe after fifteen minutes it all comes together.

‘Newt-Frog-Lizard’ ToneWorks 301DL Dynamic Echo

The 301DL Dynamic Echo is a pedal that I actually have in the original box. No big deal. The #maybemythical animal on this one is truly a mystery. Nick and I puzzled over this far longer than I care to admit, and the best we could come up with was some sort of newt-frog-lizard creature. Honestly, your guess is as good as ours.

Now, when you're investigating a pedal line, you want to know how well it did. What year is it from? What little tidbits can you find from the artifacts of history? Well, the box gives us some pretty handy hints. If you look at the price tag on this thing, you’ll see it was going for $179.99 back in the ’90s, which is fairly sound evidence for why it did not last long on the market and why people didn't much like it. That's bananas expensive for any pedal in the 1990s. You could buy a freaking sweet Members Only jacket for that price, or maybe some Jordans.

That said, it’s not a bad pedal. I actually had this pedal a long time ago, and they're still pretty cheap on Reverb.

What's cool about this is it feels like one of those older primitive digital rackmount delays. Now, those are super cool. A lot of the old U2 albums, a lot of stuff that Brian Eno produced use really low-fi digital delays, and this pedal does that really well. You have one row of knobs, four knobs, and you flip the switch here and those knobs change to different settings. It's really versatile. It's the first time I had ever seen ducking on a delay, which means you turn the ducking control up. And when you're playing, the delay is faded into the background, which is really useful.

‘Eagle-Hawk-Crane’ ToneWorks 104DS Hyper Distortion

Lastly, let’s take a look at the 104DS Hyper Distortion. The Spirit Animal on this one is tricky. I thought it was an eagle, but Nick said crane, maybe a hawk? So, eagle-hawk-crane is where we landed on that. A Creagle. Yeah, we’re definitely going with Creagle.

The 104DS Hyper Distortion is listed with a Cabinet Resonator (CR), which basically means that you can simulate different speaker cabinets. In the manual, this is listed as a ‘guitar hyper performance product’ #themoreyouknow. And I’ll admit it: it’s pretty accurate to call this distortion a hyper performance product. I mean, we all know that term. These kinds of products are all over the place. You can buy hyper performance cars, razors, drinks. This is a hyper performance distortion pedal. Just the next inevitable step.

As a pedal, I don't have a lot to say about this. Just one thing, really: it knows nothing of subtlety. It is on. It is definitely on. And it has a gate that's always on. I’ll be honest. I don't really like gates. Don't take what I'm about to say wrong, but I hate gates in distortion pedals, especially when you can't turn them off. It's like when U2 forced their album onto my phone, only this time KORG forced gate into my tone.**

**Rhyme Master Josh, reporting for duty.

This line of pedals that I have so lovingly named the KORG Spirit Animal series are honestly just odd. They’re strange. These pedals use a very primitive form of DSP technology, and when you get into the ’90s, there's some crazy stuff. They have sounds in them that aren't necessarily hip and cool. They don't necessarily do the things you would expect them to do from the labels, but they have some fantastic creative sounds.

If you're a session player or just someone looking for a pedal that’s a little outside of the box and not so run-of-the-mill, these are a great choice. Go check them out.