The Design-a-drive, our uniquely adaptable overdrive pedal, has just turned four years old.
Launched on the 6th of July 2022, it was the second ever pedal we released. Since then, it's become a fixture on many of your pedalboards and has been used by artists like Mark Webber (Pulp), Mark Potter (Elbow), Dan Hawkins (The Darkness) and Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crow).
The idea for the pedal came out of thinking about how certain overdrives often get paired with a particular type of amp. You'll frequently hear people recommend a Tube Screamer type pedal for Fender amps, for example, or the Crowther Hotcake for Vox amps.
Though there are lots of factors involved, the EQ profile of an overdrive is fundamental in making it click with a particular amp and, indeed, a particular guitar of set of pickups. But usually it's the pedal's designer who gets to decide things like how much bass to cut or retain and where the mid peak sits. If it doesn't work for your guitar or amp, then you need to get yourself another overdrive pedal!
But what if we could leave those options open so you could decide them for yourself? What if you could even change them on the fly, when swapping guitars in the middle of a set, for example? These were the questions that started us down the road to developing the Design-a-drive.
The initial design was fairly complex, with lots of specific tweakable controls. However, it seemed really important that the pedal should be quick and intuitive to adjust so you could get to the sound in your head with minimum fuss. So we gradually combined and condensed the various controls into the streamlined final product you see today.
The Width knob, a six-way stepped rotary switch, simultaneously adds low end and moves the mid emphasis down through the frequency spectrum. At the same time, it subtly compensates for the additional gain that comes with adding more low end so that you don't have to be continually adjusting the Gain control.
Meanwhile, the Edge knob lets you adjust the amount of presence and bite in your tone. It's also tied into the pedal's clipping circuit, adding more grit and texture as you turn it up. As with all our pedals, we worked hard to make the whole range of the control useable, rather than too muddy at one extreme and too shrill at the other!
So that's the Design-a-drive – our attempt to rethink the kind of EQ adjustment available on your average overdrive pedal and provide the flexibility to work with different guitars and amps. That's not to say that it's some anonymous blank canvas. The pedal has real vibe and character, while its use of hard-clipping diodes means that it's very dynamic and amp-like in its response to how hard you pick.
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