Guitar Player reviews the Dawner Prince Boonar Tube Deluxe

While most effects manufacturers are busy making new or different flavors of familiar effects, Dawner Prince Electronics has carved out its own unique niche. In addition to building a selection of excellent-sounding stompboxes for a range of guitar-friendly effects, the Croatia-based company has created pedals that emulate rare electromechanical effects from a bygone age. Dawner’s Pulse pedal, for example, is an electronic re-creation of Gibson’s early 1970s Maestro Rover RO-1, a compact rotary speaker in a drum-shaped metal container. It’s a left-field choice — the Maestro Rover isn’t exactly well known — but that’s what makes it such a tantalizing choice. And take it from someone who own a Maestro Rover, the Pulse is an amazingly accurate emulation.

Given all that, I was especially keen to try out Dawner’s latest attempt at sonic resurrection, the Boonar Tube Deluxe. It’s a re-creation of the Binson Echorec 2 T7E, an electromechanical four-head delay unit from the 1960s and ‘70s that used a magnetic drum recorder rather than a tape loop. The Echorec 2 is perhaps best known among guitarists as the delay preferred by David Gilmour for much of his career with Pink Floyd.

Dawner Prince have tread in this territory before with their Boonar Multi-Head Drum Delay, a pedal that delivers a highly accurate emulation of the Binson. But the Boonar Tube Deluxe takes the concept much further in its design and control set. Among the changes are a revamped DSP engine for the magnetic drum emulation, a broader and well-chosen control set, a larger and easier to use control panel and — most significantly — the addition of a real subminiature military spec dual-triode vacuum tube in the preamp that feeds the delay circuit.