Mike Fortin’s FOURTEEN overdrive pedal takes his popular amp modifications and puts them in a dual-channel format, in essence, packing his best custom tweaks in one pedal. The pedal is designed to give players a lot of control over the amp’s tone and push it into higher gain territory, as it often happens for this amp brand targeting mostly guitarists into a heavy sound.
Each one of the two channels has controls for Drive, Tone, and Level, and can be set to deliver three different overdrive flavors, including his well-known Hexdrive plus takes on classic OD-9 and OD808 circuits.
Here’s the list of the voicings:
- HD Mode (HexDrive): Think of this as a clean boost that can turn into a nice overdrive. The gain knob is interesting – you can boost your amp without adding much dirt at lower settings, but crank it up and you get a sweet, focused midrange.
- F9 Mode: This one gives your amp a bigger clean boost to make it naturally distort more. It can also do a really clean boost at lower gain. As you turn up the gain, it gets a more natural, tube-like overdrive with a punchier midrange that makes your playing stand out. It’s also louder than the HD mode.
- F808 Mode: This is the hottest mode, with the most output and saturation. You can use it to boost your amp or as a full-on distortion. It’s designed to sound like a tube amp breaking up, with more compression and a smooth, blooming sustain as you increase the gain. It also emphasizes the upper mids for a clear attack and is the loudest of the three.
