Artec Cool Drive

Ok, this is a really simple pedal to use 4 knobs: Level, Pre, Post, and Gain.
Pretty self explanatory, the pre and post change a lot with the sound, and you can easily get a range of tones, from a classic, bluesy drive to an explosive distorted Marshall stack kind of sound.

Very nice, full sound. like i said before, great overall tone. It sounds as powerful or weak as you want. I A/B'ed it with a TS 808, and this thing holds its own, and after only 5-10 minutes, i could emulate it perfectly. Sadly, nothing is perfect... this will get noisy very quickly... which is perfect for me and even my blues devoted friend says it is great( as long as he manages the sound).
It will not leave my pedal board.

Solid steel and built like a tank. I dont even worry about the battery, seeing as i have been playing with a nearly dead 9 volt for 4 hours and 2 gigs now.

havent needed to talk to them.

I have been playing guitar for about 5 years now, and i have had the chance to play with many a pedal board and played everything from a cheap danelectro all the way up to a TS808 Keely mod. This thing sounds amazing. I have not seen a better value in a distortion/drive.

Analog pedals are easy compared to those Line6 digital confusion boards.

Im a pedal addict! I've owned Keeley DS-1, MT-2, Indy Guitarist mods on SD-1, Tubescreamer, RAT etc. I use only the best valve amps (vintage Fenders, Marshalls) - pure valve tone with none of the multi channel waste of todays amps. I compared this pedal with my others and the reason its on my pedal board are
1) it has whopping level available, more than a Tubescreamer so can be used as a great boost.
2) no tone is lost, this pedal does not shave off your high end, stunt your bass or boost your mids like other pedals (unless you want it too that is).
3) its very versatile. I dont need to mod this thing, with the PRE and POST tone controls you can shape the sound going in (pre distortion) and coming out, what a great feature!

The tone pots work very uniquely than other pedals. They range from mid hump to scooped mids. So you can have a mid hump before distortion then scoop the mids post distortion if you want a Mesa Boogie type tone. With the PRE control set to mid cut your sound cleans up in a Fender Blues kind of way.

One confusing thing, when the level is set low, it seems to have less distortion. I think the level and gain knobs are interactive. If you slam the level to full and crank the gain high it sounds different (a much more natural distortion) than when you have the level down to say 3/4?

The range of tones are really surprising, the Cooldrive gives me blues right up to hotrod Marshall tones. Because theres no tone loss its like having another channel in my valve amp. I like the way its True Bypass unlike many other pedals that bleed thru the distorted sound when you bypass them (SD-1 for example).

Sold metal casing, looks and feels very solid.

Never dealt with them.

I was dubious about buying this pedal because no one had really heard of Artec. But what a nice surprise, like a modded pedal but stock! And only cost me ??69. I'll be checking out the other Artec pedals soon.

Follow-up: I was wrong after all, and I'm happy I didn't buy it before testing more thoroughly.
It is a curious unit: no enough level boost to use it as a booster, and not enough gain to use it as main distortion.
Also, the both eq curves (before and after the drive module) don't do much to really change what you're pushing with (a Peavey classic 30 for that matter). In fact the amp sounded simply better without the unit.
I double-checked with a tube screamer (ts9) and this one is a real pedal to push an overdriven amp. No mysteries...

I don't like it at all!
I own the twinhead, a very marvelous pedal, which does far better as a booster!

A Quick review for the curious ones...
This is a quite special overdrive pedal with real bypass(works without battery too) and two eq knobs along with drive and level.
The first of the two is a prestage eq curve (goes from bump to flat to smiley ) and the second one is a poststage eq curve (same as first).
No hicut, then.
Read on...

First, not a noisy unit at all.

It should be used in front of an already overdriven amp, like tubescreamers do. This is very important, otherwise you only get strange shrill, not-enough-drive tones.
Once used properly you'll like its overall clarity, and tone-shaping possibilities.
Still, you'll have to play with the both eq knobs a long time to find what you're looking for.

I just checked it 20minutes, I'll post when I know more about it .
I think it'll be great with a small tube amp, as tubescreamers do.
In fact I'll buy one, since they are inexpensive and I have a good strong feeling about it. After 20+years of guitar, that should mean something...