Fulltone Full-Drive 2

I think this unit is very easy to use and offers a lot of options, considering it has the Comp Cut, Flat Mids and Vintage settings, plus normal and Boost. It also allows you to run it with an 18-volt adapter (more on that later) that allows even more tones out of the unit.

The sound quality of this unit is very good. Not noisy at all. There are a lot of different tones you can get - all the way from clean SRV "Lenny" type tones with the Comp Cut to extremely vintage Rock 'n' Roll distortion sounds.

I have recentlt purchased a Dunlop ECB-04 18-volt AC Adapter to use with this pedal. This 18-v option allows for even more tones and characteristics to come out ot his box. Now, with the 9-v and 18-v options, I can get many different tones. The 18-volt on the Comp Cut mode really seems to fatten up my clean tones.

I play a 60's Strat with Heavy Blues pickups, an G&L Legacy ASAT, a American strat (new model with staggered pole pieces) and an Epiphone Sheraton II through a Traynor YCV40 (2 X 10) amp. All my guitars sound good with this pedal and this amp. I sometimes add a Keeley BD-2 and/or a Analogman TS-9 in the chain too. The FD2 works well with both.

I don't play "out" often, but believe this is an extremely sturdy, well built unit.

Great. I contacted them via e-mail about the ECB-04 adapter, to make sure it would be a correct choice for the 18-v option. I got a prompt reply. Good communications with them.

Great value. Many sounds and option out of one pedal. Couldn't be happier. I loved the pedal with 9-volts and like it even more after getting the 18-volt adapter.

The current vanilla version of the Fulldrive is easy to get useful tones from. It has a three way minitoggle that you can now set for a flat mids sound, and this makes a big difference from the late '90s FDs that had the pull pot. My old creme knob '99 was a terrific pedal, but I finally ran into some pedals that made it's mid hump too much for me, and I sold it. A few months ago I rethought my approaches to playing, amplification, and pedals, and decided to try the new FD II and what I consider to be a virtual twin of the old one, Olaf's Banzai Fireball I.

My amps are a pair of Dr Zs: a Maz 18 Jr NR and a Maz Studio Lead 38 with and effects loop and reverb. I run an Analog Man Mini BiComp into an old mid '80s DOD FX60 chorus, to the FD, to an OCD, and then the amp. The loop contains a Zoom 508 delay and an Everman Pot for solo boosts. Not noisy; with the overdrive at 9:00, volume at unity, tone at 12:00, there's some additional grease added to the Zs' tone, already set for slight breakup. The boost kicks in a nice sustaining lead tone that can sing with the proper settings. I generally use this for modern country and classic rock leads. Not the end all of tone, but with single channel amps a very handy tool to make them virtual three channel machines.

I've never had any real problems with Fuller gear. A switch went out on a Fat Boost years ago and he sent me a replacement within days. As far as backup, I usually carry something from TC Jauernig or the Fireball with me in a gig bag in case I need to swap or have simple ear fatigue. But in a pinch the OCD and some guitar volume adjustments can cover for the missing FD II.

I've corresponded just a couple times with the company. Got an answer on the broken switch, didn't on something else, but it didn't bother me. Fuller gets dished on a lot, but as a lifelong Customer Service rep I know that I have bad days and good days, days when I'd like to reach through the phone and shake the shit out of the best customers we have and days when the biggest whiner in the world gets treated like royalty. It shouldn't be that way, but yeah, sometimes you just can't help it. So I'll cut Mr Fuller a lot of slack, since most people seem to get fair service in the long run.

Again, not the end all of two channel overdrives, but with the flat mid option a much more versatile pedal than before and much better than most. I play in a couple bands playing a broad variety of music, from singer songwriter stuff to classic rock to fusion jazz. I've been playing for over 30 years now. If this were stolen... Yeah, I'd probably reup with another one at this point. The Fireball is a great pedal on its own. T C Jauernig now has a dual Diabolical Gristle Tone manipulator that is a great pedal, as is his Gristle King. Dave Barber's Direct Drives and Burn Units stack up well with the Fulldrive, as does Homebrew's Power Screamer. In my experience the Power Screamer is a slightly quieter BOOST pedal in front of something like the OCD, but the Fuller is a close second.

This pedal is extremely easy to use. It's virtually impossible to make it sound like garbage. Tones abound and you can go SOOOOO many places with this thing...more later.

I mostly use Fender Strats for single coils sounds and I use SG's or an Ibanez S470 for humbucker stuff. At the moment I am playing into a modded Peavey Classic 50 with a mixed set of Emenince speakers.

I have played guitar for pushing 20 years and have a lot of experience with various amps and guitars and effects.

This thing is NOT noisy. The only time it seems to get a bit noisy is when you have it turned up really loud and then you step on the boost and it's cranked all the way up on the Vintage setting. other than that it's dead quite.

I can get TONS of tones out of this thing. It's not going to give you that chugga chugga sound. IF you want THAT...you need an amp not a pedal. For lead stuff....this thing is the real deal.

There are 3 voicings for this pedal and I'd like to take time to talk about each.
1 Comp Cut. This knocks out the compression you get in a pedal. Normally I would think this would be counter productive as I like to get a good compressed sound and in the studios compression rules the day. However, this takes your clean sound to a completely different level. It's amazing and just seems to make the amp breathe a bit more. BE CAREFUL the boost on this channel is RIDICULOUS. You can get what seems to be an EASY 30+ decibal boost on this setting. Enough to kill small children at 500 yards if you so wish. I GENERALLY leave the boost around 9 o'clock if I use this voicing.

2. FM- Flat Mid. This is truely divine on a neck strat pick up. You can just get tone for days on this voiceing. My favorite distortion by far. The boost is more of a saturation thing on this setting. Adds flavor. Doesn't really add a ton of volume at all.

3. Vintage. Like an old marshall cranked up. I don't tend to use this one a lot. I use it more for rhythm than anything. I just don't play 80's metal. Boost is nice but a tad noisy....like a slight hiss. Can't here it when playing at all.

This thing is extremely transparent and does nothing but ADD tone to your tone. It's makes good GREAT. It make GREAT....unreal. It take crap and adds some GOOD stuff to it to me.

I have used it and used it and it handles anythign I throw at it. I dropped a guitar on it and the strap lock dragged against it and it RUBBED the paint. Didn't ding or knick the paint. It RUBBED it. This thing is almost mint looking after all this time. NEVER had an issue with it and I don't see having one.

I don't have to deal with them. I paid for a high quality product and got it in spades. I feel confident that if I DID have an issue I could call them up and be taken care of. You just don't make products this good and not have an easy time taking care of your buyers.

I play all styles of music and this pedal has handled everything I throw at it. I go to comp cut for country and blues, I go to FM for blues and rock, and I go to Vintage for Rock and above.

Been playing long enough to know and that should count for something. This pedal is my desert island pedal. I won't take the stage without it and I won't go into the studio without it. It's a first grab every time.

I love the TONE of this pedal. It's second to none. It never fails to impress and everyday I can find NEW stuff with it.

My fav feature is a toss up between comp cut and FM....the boost is certainly a cool feature. This pedal make a two channel amp seem like a 6 channel amp....it's THAT versatile.

What could make it better?? Hmmmmmm....it could be FREE. That's it.

It's a little silly. The drive and boost knobs behaves differently depeding on the mode you have it in. There is a flat mids option but why have a toggle determine EQ settings?

I think I made a mistake buying this pedal. I use it anyway because the sounds that come out of it are better than average but it's not the best. It hit's that 70's sound right on the head, but that's all it seems to do, as if it were a one trick modeling pedal. The character of the distortion isn't as dynamic and interesting or as versatile as that from a TS9 or an 808. Right now I'm basicly just using it to dirty up the signal with the drive real low, right around 1. The flat mids mode works pretty good as a light transparent fizz.

I can get a realy interesting tone out of it's clean boost however, I turn the volume real low so that the out put is near equal to bypass and when activate almost any degree of boost the overdrive is kick in balls overdrive. It's realy explosive. It's muddier than the normal modes but I've never heard a more agressive overdrive. It sounds like a very heavily pushed circuit.

I have a Maxon OD808 and I much prefer it's sound for the heavy lifting.

very very sturdy

dont know

You should check out the Maxon OD808 first if you are considering this pedal. It sounds much nicer.

Extremely easy to use. I small child could figure out.

The sound is the sound of your amp. If your amp sucks this pedal will suck. It's purpose it to push a good tube amp to the saturated sound it will have at 7+. But, as you all know not many in-home situations will allow you to turn your amp to 7+. And, if you play through a '65 Twin, like I do, than you know that sound your looking for is even more elusive. Of course, the Twin is all about a brilliant clean sound, which is why I bought it versus s Deluxe or Vibrolux.

Too new to tell. But I have little doubt. It's a solid piece of equipment.

Not applicable at this time.

This is the pedal that will put your tube amp (not solid state, this isn't get the real thing on the cheap) into overdrive mode, i.e., past 7, and not lose your ear drums or piss off you neighbours in the process; this is the pedal you've been looking for if that's your goal. It is designed to keep the sound (tone) of your amp. Hence why the tone control has minimal affect - it is designed to roll of the high/low frequencies created - so ignore the fools who want the tone contorl to make their inferior amp sound good. And, for those Twin Reverb owners, wondering why they didn't buy the lighter Deluxe (or equivlanet lower wattage tube amps), but know it was because the Deluxe is nowhere near the clean of the Twin, just buy this pedal and keep working out because lugging a Twin around ain't no joke.

Oh, it's easy to use... I've been using it for 3 years now and you just spin the knobs and there you go...

On the other hand, it's not really all that easy to dial in something that sounds really good. (See Below)

OK... after 3 years here's what I think...

I'm using a '62 RI Strat with CS '54 pickups into a Twin Reverb RI with Weber Speakers. The only other effects are a Fulltone SoulBender and a Teese Wah.

The thing about this pedal is that it really is nothing more than an upgraded TubeScreamer that can be used as a clean boost instead if so desired. It doesn't get noisy or bog down your signal with a buffered bypass, but it never really gives you anything more than a TubeScreamer. I thought that I'd be able to dial in a nice transparent drive on the Flat Mids setting, but it just sounds like someone cut the balls out of a TubeScreamer. I'm constantly fighting with the pedal to try to get the right sound out of it. The other thing is that there is some really unflattering farting out on anything other than the Comp-Cut mode.

The overall sound of the pedal is not what I'm looking for, but I've come to realize that it's also not what I equate with good tone. I recently had the opportunity to A/B this thing with a Banzai Cold Fusion and the Cold Fusion blew the FD 2 away for a lower gain OD sound.

I guess that this FullDrive is great for anyone who wants to cop a slightly improved sounding (but much lower noise) TubeScreamer thing... Maybe guys who are still hung up on that whole SRV thing (Though it wasn't really hitting the SRV thing either...)

It never failed me once... It's a VERY reliable unit. Always gave the same sounds and always worked.

I dealt with Mike Fuller regarding my SoulBender and he was really pleasant to deal with despite the fact that I had only imagined the problem. I don't know what a lot of you folks expect, but, it seems to me that maybe you are the problem when it comes to bad experiences with Fuller...

This isn't a good match for the stuff I'm playing... I'm looking for something that can take the chime of my Strat into my Twin and add a bit of sustain and clipping without taking over the tone. This thing just makes me into a knob tweaker and hinders the art of music making. I didn't really have much to go by when I bought it, but I already had the SoulBender and thought that based on the good stuff that I was getting from it, I would be able to set this up to do what I needed. With 3 different modes and the boost side, I thought I'd be able to dial it in. Well, it's not nearly as versatile as I thought it would be and I've been fighting it for 3 years to get something more from it. I'm done and it's going away. I'll look elsewhere for my OD.

Very easy, traditional style layout (with a non traditional boost section).

I use a Hamer Monaco Elite with Duncan 59s with a custom made 18 watt style amp that is like a combination of a 1974x and a 2061x (burrissamps.com). I run the Fulldrive at 18 volts which makes a huge difference. The tone is fatter, solid, and has more definition. Like a combination of clean boost and overdrive. I keep the volume at 1oclock, tone and gain at 11 oclock, and the toggle in the FM position for more clarity. These settings yield a killer Warren Haynes/David Grissom type of humbucker tone that is great for almost anything. The 18 volt option is really what makes this pedal for me.

Seems very well built. When you open it up it looks very organized with nice solder connections. There is a lot of space to do a repair if needed (replace a pot or a bypass switch).

N/A

I play everything except metal, this pedal is a killer vintage style pedal. Been playing 15 years and tried countless boutique overdrive pedals. My gear was actually stolen a week ago and I bought another Fulldrive to replace the stolen one (Tulsa s*cks). As I mentioned before, the 18 volt option really separates this pedal from the rest. I haven't tried a Barder Direct Drive but I've heard it also has an 18 volt option, I'd love to a/b the two sometime. The only thing I'd change on the Fulldrive would be to remove the boost and make it a clean boost instead of a gain boost, otherwise it's perfect. The pedal is under $200, killer!

It's easy to use. I hae the version without the switch. It's a good sounding pedal, no doubt, but it's just not quite enough. If only it had just a tad more gain - it may be the perfect pedal. but it just doesn't quite do it. You will still need another pedal for singing leads. It's more of a rhythm guitar pedal, imho.

the sound that it can do - it can do well. if you're going for that classic rhythm guitar sound, say around 1976 or so, then this is the pedal for you. If you're looking for a versatile - all you need is this pedal for whatever musical situation awaits - then you should get a Foxrox Zim and be done with it, because the fulldrive aint gonna do it. But don't get me wrong, what it does do, it does it well. It's a totally pro pedal.

Totally reliable, unlike the fulltone clyde wah, which I had tons of problems with. If you open up the fulldrive you can see that this is a quality boutique pedal, no doubt

The few times I contacted fulltone - it was always a pleasant experience. no complaints here.

It's a good one trick pony kind of pedal. I eventually outgrew it and moved on to a foxrox zim. You'll still need a tube screamer for your leads, cuz the fulldrive wont go there. Maybe the new ones with all the switches do that, I don't know. All I know is the one I have just doesn't have enough gain. For a long time I thought it was the perfect pedal, but over time the thick midrange tended to muddy my sound and I kept missing being able to take my sound over the top. This is not an over the top kind of pedal. Maybe that's just what you need, I don't.

This pedal is fairly easy to use, it only takes a few minutes to figure out and works well. I give the pedal a 9 because nothings perfect.

The sound quality is better than an other overdrive I have had or tried, and I played with a bunch of them. The pedal adds a little bit of noise, but at gig levels you will never notice

no problems here, I gig without a backup for this pedal. It's already a pretty expensive pedal to shell out for another one for backup.

never dealt with

I give this pedal an overall 9 because like I said, nothing is perfect. I have the cream colored custom shop version and this is hands down the best overdrive out there, in my opinion.

Easy too use, but you need some experience in overdrive/distortion pedals, specialy because of the 3 way switch.
Maybe I'd give an 8 for beginers, but this is certainly not an average overdrive box, just check the price tag!
The manual would help the young ones.

Look, I've been playing exclusively ROCK guitar (think AC/DC) for 20 years, recorded 4 records and player many live gigs. I can say I understand a bit about overdrive pedals and tube amps.

Allways a Fender Stratocaster guy (all originals from late '60 and early '70) through Marshalls (100watts JCM800 - 1 and 2 channels models - and Super Lead reissue and 50watts 1987).

Owned MXR Distortion+ ('70s script and block logos), Ibanez TS-8/9/10, Boss (all overdrivers and distortions) and Rocktron Austin Gold and Sonic Glory Overdrive. Tried Carl Martin and Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive. Some very good and some nice, but they all add noise, hiss and color the sound.
Sure the Fulltone Full Drive 2 is my very first "boutique" stomp box.

It is the most transparent overdrive I played and that is exactly why I bought it. It is very quiet, although I play very, very loud!!! It acts like a cranked amp and is very dynamic too.

I could use the amp heavily saturated, but it would be too loud for playing in a band and wouldn't have no headroom for solos (there is another guitar player in the band, playing Gibsons through Marshalls). So, the Full Drive 2 is most like a 2 channel amp for me.

I use it on FM mode with every knob on 10, but the volume (set around 9 o'clock).

The only other pedal is a MXR Dyna Comp (compressor), script logo from mid '70s.

Does it color the sound? Of course! It's something between the guitar and the amp and it is suposed to do something to the sound! BUT... THE COLORATION IS MINIMAL and you can't notice it on live gigs or even rehearsals. Please, at home or at a guitar shop nobody can really test anything musical.

It's not for Heavy Metal players, just check the name on the box!!! Besides, it's light blue, not black or red!!!
If you don't have a very good guitar AND amp, doesn't expect any pedal would save the day! It canonly make things a bit better.

Fits well Rock'n Roll, Hard Rock, Pop, punk and probably any other style where the guitar player needs more than a clean guitar. It can rock a clean amp, being it an all tube or transistor.

I totally depend on it! Must buy another for back up... maybe the 10th anniversary Full Drive 2...

Well, just wrote once but they never answered... By the way, I'm Brazilian, but I wrote them in English...

Bloody expensive but a great pedal!
I payed around US400 here in Brazil for a new one, but, hey, it is actualy 2 pedals in one (overdrive + boost)!!!
Sure makes me want to play more and more!!!
Enjoy!

Deca

http://www.barangarock.com.br

PS: I have nothing to do with Fulltone, I'm just a far away customer... and they not even replyed my e-mail... hehehe
Just ordered a Fulltone Fat Boost las week...