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The disavow tool is technically a recommendation to Google to ignore the toxic links, it does not have to disavow any, let alone all of the sites that you suggest. The point of sorting out a penalty is is performing penance and proving you won't do it again. Taking the easiest step first without recording efforts that show that you have tried to resolve it manually won't make you pass the manual review.

I know this for a fact as the agency that got us in a penalty in the first place performed two disavows before I took over and lifted our penalty. I manually checked over 10,000 and recorded my efforts for all, only then was it lifted. I understand that you want to fix it quickly as it is your business, but there is no quick fix other than playing by goggles rules on this one and showing that you understand that spammy links are not good. I recommend email out reach and recording everything on a goggle doc to send through with your re inclusion request. Best of luck

1. DISAVOW does it work ? And if it does - when can you see the effect in your webmaster tools ?

The disavow tool is just is a recommendation to google, if you have made efforts to speak to the website master and try and get them removed yourself and still have issues, then use the disavow tool. If you have made no efforts to contact the webmaster then you are simply sending a recommendation to google that you would like link removed and it is up to them to action this, in some cases they do, in others they do not.

2. How can i remove links when sites aren't visible or there's no contact form ?

Do they have a facebook? Do they any social media that you can use to contact them? No? Then take a screen shot and record that you have made attempts to get the link removed but are unable to do so. Google can't punish you if you have made every effort to remove the link before disavowing.

And remember you can only do one disavow. Therefore if you are removing and uploading new lists, then only the links on the list that is currently uploaded will be considered for disavow.

3. Do i have to bite the bullet and pay these spammy sites to be removed ?

simply? yes, and record the attempts to pay/contact the webmaster then submit this to google.

4. Is 1000 + links coming into your site from usually a directory naughty ? and should i remove these asap ?

Depends on the directory but when we were penalised the majority of toxic links were spammy directories, so I wouldn't recommend featuring on them. Also they will be the same entry but with different tags/ categories attached to the page so it will be the exactly same page but indexed several times by google as it is considered by the google bot to be a different page, rather then consider the "tag" that has been placed on the page.

A nice spread of links from different ips, c- blocks and domains is always preferable then a 1000 links from just one domain ( unless it is a gov or .edu site of course!)

The disavow tool is technically a recommendation to Google to ignore the toxic links, it does not have to disavow any, let alone all of the sites that you suggest. The point of sorting out a penalty is is performing penance and proving you won't do it again. Taking the easiest step first without recording efforts that show that you have tried to resolve it manually won't make you pass the manual review.

I know this for a fact as the agency that got us in a penalty in the first place performed two disavows before I took over and lifted our penalty. I manually checked over 10,000 and recorded my efforts for all, only then was it lifted. I understand that you want to fix it quickly as it is your business, but there is no quick fix other than playing by goggles rules on this one and showing that you understand that spammy links are not good. I recommend email out reach and recording everything on a goggle doc to send through with your re inclusion request. Best of luck