Guitar Gear

…the problem is that I have my Timmy and Abunai 2 overdrive pedals on my board, and I haven’t found anything that’ll beat them. Believe me, I’ve tested and even purchased various overdrive pedals, like the Doodad Check-A-Board Overdrive/Booster, or the GeekMacDaddy GeekDriver. I had the GeekDriver on my board for quite awhile, but once I got the Abunai 2, that went. Then I got the Timmy and the Check-A-Board went. Since then, though I’ve tried out several other pedals, I haven’t found anything that’ll perform well with my various rig setups.

I think that’s that key to why these pedals are likely to stay on my board. Since I play a few different amps (plus three different cabs), mostly depending upon my mood, having overdrives that’ll work with all of these combinations is extremely important to me. Thus far, these two overdrives are the only ones that give me a satisfying tone with any amp I play. I loved the Check-A-Board for its TubeScreamer-like tone, but it seemed a little narrow. The GeekDriver is an interesting driver based upon the classic Range Driver overdrive. Unfortunately, it really only worked well with my Aracom VRX22. It did not sound at all good with my Aracom PLX18-BB or VRX18 plexi-style amps.

With either of those pedals, no amount of tone control tweaking would give me what I wanted. On the other hand with both the Timmy and the Abunai 2, I just make a couple of adjustments to the tone and gain knobs and I’m off to the races. With the Timmy, I rarely touch the tone controls. They remain wide open, and just get a little above unity volume and adjust for the amount of gain I want to have.

So along comes the Pigtronix FAT Drive. The recordings sound absolutely killer, and unlike other Pigtronix pedals that are rife with knobs and switches, Pigtronix has gone the more traditional route. I really want to try this one out. At $139, it’s a great price. Yikes! So tempted with GAS right now. But I’ll see where I can play one and try it out… It surely looks promising. 🙂