Review : Dawner Prince Boonar
There are a few products in the market that aspire to bring the sound of vintage Binson Echorec delays to the pedal marketplace. I have already looked at the Catalinbread offering and have not yet found the opportunity to test out the Strymon Volante in depth. The Volante is more than just an Echorec delay, and more than what I wanted specifically. Charles at Electric Mojo Guitars recommended the Dawner Prince Boonar Mk II.
He has never steered me wrong. In fact, his company is where I go for boutique pedals because, frankly, he has them and knows his stuff.
Dawner-Prince is out of Croatia. Origin should not matter, but while we see lots of pedals from Japan, the US, the UK and even Canada, I was not aware of a high end Croation builder. Now I know better.
The Boonar is a recreation of a Binson Echorec in a pedal. It is very small and does this one job with great aplomb. If you are a fan of the work of David Gilmour, you know the sound of the Echorec. It's not a tape delay, it is a rotating magnetic drum with four equally spaced playback heads. What makes the Echorec special is that you can activate any combination of the playback heads, and the four simple buttons on the Boonar make this a complete treat. This was one of my complaints with the Catalinbread. I also note, that in my opinion, the Boonar just sounds better. It is more expensive to be sure, but for glassy clean tones with just the right magnetic drum delay, there is nothing else that I have tried in depth like this device.
You might be wondering what all the fuss is about a device designed to sound like a drum based echo device with four fixed playback heads that first showed up in the late 50s. Partly it is the idea of renewing a vintage sound, partly it’s the desire to emulate the sounds of artists that we like, and partly it’s the reality that a genuine Echorec sounds like nothing else.
The Boonar does a great job of being an Echorec. There are four “playback heads”, buttons really that you can turn off or on. The delay between heads is always consistent, whatever delay you set, is the same separation between heads. Whichever heads you activate, create echoes that are governed by the global settings, so you can get repeat patterns really not available on a different type device and certainly not with the high level of simplicity.
The controls are powerful but still simple to use. There is documentation included, but I really liked that I could plug the device in and get good sounds without having to traverse the docs.
Across the top you have a volume knob, to control, you know, the volume. Next up is a tone control, handy because the nature of a drum is that it can lose a bit of high end. You have more control with this. Then there is a level indicator because the Boonar has a preamp and you will probably want to know when it is clipping. Then there is the Swell knob which controls the modulation of the echos. Finally there is the Drum speed, basically a control on the rotation speed of the virtual drum. Think of this as the delay control. Each of the playback heads is an illuminated push button. Push to turn the playback head on or off. Simple as can be. There are two foot switches, the left most used to configure your swell or repeats setting and the right one to turn the effect on or off. There's a small knob on the top that lets you set the age of the drum. This gives you some very nice textural control, similar to the wow and flutter controls on the better tape echo simulators. On the right side is a small control to allow you to manipulate the input impedance to better match the pickups in use from 100 kOhm to 1 mOhm.
Power requirements are 9V minimum, but you can use a supply up to 15v. The input power is converted internally to 24v.
I have tried several different Echorec effects. In my opinion, the Boonar kills all the others. Yes it is more expensive and worth every cent. I live in Canada and sourced my Boonar from Electric Mojo Guitars, the company that I use for all my boutique pedals. I highly recommend them.