From Great Eastern FX co, the UK builder who brought us the celebrated Small Speaker Overdrive last year comes a new drive with a unique tone-shaping system.
The Design-A-Drive’s main feature is a 6-way width control that ranges from thin to fat and controls the contour and response of the midrange and low end. The Edge knob controls 2 high-frequency filters and alters clipping characteristics.
Combining these two controls along with level and gain is meant to give the player access to wide-ranging overdrive tones, from transparent to fat and midrangey.
Great Eastern FX Design-A-Drive, Builder’s Notes:
We are delighted to introduce our latest pedal, the Design-a-drive. It’s something we’ve been working on for a long time, so we’re really excited to finally tell you about it!
The Design-a-drive is a low- to medium-gain overdrive equipped with a couple of unique EQ controls – Edge and Width. Designed from the ground up to get at the bits of the frequency spectrum that really matter, these controls make it ridiculously easy and intuitive to dial in the tone you want.
Width is a six-way rotary switch that controls the mid-range and low frequencies, while Edge adjusts two different high-frequency filters as well as subtly altering clipping characteristics. In use, these controls do exactly what their names suggest, letting you decide exactly how much bite, breadth and definition you want your guitar to have.
Why we built it
There are lots of great OD pedals out there that only really shine through one particular style of amp. Though they might feature basic EQ or ‘Tone’ controls, the fundamental character of the drive has been decided by the circuit designer and can’t be changed. We wanted to create a pedal that let you be the designer, changing the frequency response on the fly to suit whatever guitar and amp you’re using.
The Design-a-drive is available from today, both direct from our website and from our network of dealers, priced £229 (inc VAT) in the UK and $265 in the US. We hope you like it!
