Marshall Drive Master

It's easy to use if you're a guitar geek. Otherwise, feel free to experiment. During gigs, I just made some adjustments on the drive and mid.

I immediately put it in my signal chain - samick strato into a dunlop crybaby, dunlop univibe, mxr flanger, dod st. chorus, the drivemaster, arion tube mania and finally, a noname solid state amp. Settings: gain at 6-8, bass at 8, mid at 4 or 5, hi at 4 or 5. This setup gives me a fat overdrive sound without fuzz. I hate fuzz. With the tube mania level at 4, tone at 4 and dist at 8, and the samick pickup set at bridge+middle, u get a sweet sustaining lead sound, like santana on supernatural. When used alone, u get nice rythmn crunch. Excellent for Clapton sounds, too.

The switch's metal cap fell off on first gig. Finished the song just fine. Glued it back and its back in shape. Its body is built like a tank, but input jacks are suspects. they're made of plastic. I always carry a backup pedal (mxr dist+) just in case.

My band basically plays rock and roll, but here in the philippines, u must play all types of music when giging,e.g. rock, waltz, swing, cha-cha, fusion, tango, pop, blues. The reason why the tons of effects!
I used the drivemaster when rocking, or playing blues and fusion. When taking the lead, I usually have the tube mania and the drivemaster for added sustain and fattening the tone. Been playing gigs for seven years, playing the guitar for 22 years. Ive been through boss bluesdriver(great for crunch), and hyperfuzz(sucks). I still wanted to add a delay.

If you find one, but it! its a rare comodity.

5 knobs, no mystery. If you can play guitar you can handle this thing. Just great.

My setup is Gibson Marauder -> Jim Dunlop Wah Wah -> DOD Flashback Fuzz -> DRIVE MASTER -> Chorus -> Fender 25w Amp. That?s the sound I've been looking, just turn the amp on and play it loud! I'm thinking about buying a reverb just to make it sound even better. Pure vintage rock!

No problems so far.

As I've said before, pure vintage Rock! Gov't Mule, Cream, Zeppelin...I've been playing for more than 10 years and this box makes my Marauder sound really good. If you want to rock, buy it now, it's a Marshall and it sounds like Marshall....

5 knobs, and i was searching my sound really long, not because this is a bad pedal (and it's not), it's because i didn't know much about gear
it has manual

i play with gibson the paul deluxe, and marshall 50w solid state amp, and it has pretty natural sound, dirty marshall sound! it takes out the best from my amp! from easy overdrive to hard rock, sound, great for rythm and leads! gibson-jh1 wah-drivemaster-marshall

it's build like a rock, i heard switches are not very dependive.....i didn't have any problems......yet

never dealt

i have guv'nor plus which is also a great pedal and boss DS-1 taiwan production and i like this pedal most! guv'nor plus is a story for himself, but i don't like DS-1! It's a great overdrive pedal a i would buy it again

5 knobs, frustated me for the last 3 years, since i bought it, just now i have found the sound i looking for. Just basic overdrive marshall tone (but took me 3 years(i must be dumb))

SG Special, ms-2 mini amp, a bit noisy but unnoticable noise. I get the sound of white stripes(not my favourite band) but that the sound i was hoping from a marshall pedal.

I can depend on it, solid metal bring a lot of confidence.
the battery cap missing, and i takes a lot of abuse by former owner but i hold up well.

Dunno

I play rock and noise pop, its good for the rock songs. I been playing for 6 years, other pedal is Sovtek Big muff. If it lost i buy something else because in Indonesia this is a litlle hard to find(of course i look for a better one).
This pedal are good for those looking for an almost vintage overdrive pedal but not for modern metal(Korn, etc). Not very vintage either but enough.

The same as the majority of stomp boxes on the planet. Its simple to use! The added bonus of the Drive Master is its equalization includes Bass, Mid, and Treble with Gain and Volume controls.

I use a PRS Santana SE guitar, Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp, Marshall Bluesbreaker II pedal, Vox Vintage Wah (w/ mods) and my latest pedal aquisition the Drive Master. The pedal is moderately quiet. I notice some hum, but it is standard. I bought this pedal to get back some of the vintage Marshall Plexi tone I lost after selling my JMP-1 preamp. This unit sounds great! It does very thing from a mild crunch stype overdrive to saturated Marshall glassy distortion tones.
Surprisingly though, my Bluesbreaker II is more over-the-top than the Drive Master, and I expected the reverse. This is a very cool pedal and I recently purchased this as New Old Stock off eBay based on the reviews from H-C.

Have not owned long enough to give make much comment. I have noticed that lots of owners of these pedal have lost the battery covers, and I see why. The cover design is a bit cheesy. Due to this I will rate as a 7. But other than this design flaw, the case and control knobs appear to be very sturdy.

Have not had to use them for this unit. I attempted to have some warranty work done on my JMP-1 and it seemed like it was going to be a hassle after I finally found an Authorized Repair Center who was familiar with the unit. The problem was not critical (setting control ofter skipped between patches). Based on this I will rate as a 7.

Overall, I think Marshall pedals are great. I have tried numerous OD and distortion pedals including: Vox 830, Big Muff, Vintage Rat, Visual Sound Rte 66, and Tube Works Real Tube. I don't care for the HRD's distortion channel, and so I experimented in a quest to find good classic crunch and distortion. The JMP-1 was good, but I can get most of the tones and flexibility I need from from the DM & BB2 pedals.
I have played for 2 yrs in my early teens and 2 years as a "middle aged" adult.

easy to use...five knobs
basic pedal

I have epiphone les paul standard, yamaha strato, crate 15r little amp and laney tf200 tubefusion. this pedal is really good. It sounds so natural. It sounds like distornation should sound.

i have had it for a week

first i bought boss od-2 turbo overdrive. it was really bad, i didnt like that fuzzy sound. I went back to the shop and traded it to this one. I am so happy that i traded that shit for this one.

this is really good all-a-round pedal. it has enouf distornation for me (i play music like slayer). GET THIS ONE . Good for all kinds of rock and roll

it's analog with five knobs, so what could go wrong?

setup: ibanez telecaster thinline with gibson pickups - drive master - yamaha g50-112. little noise. a typical transistor overdrive, with a good sustain. a little weak with single coils. can be used with both the clean and overdrive channels of the amp.

haven't used it long enough, but looks rugged and dependable

the best transistor overdrive i have used so far, but does not make my solid state amp sound like a tube as some comments indicate. a little weak with single coils on the clean amp channel, can be used as a treble booster for the overdrive channel, my main application. due to its low noise it can be used in any combination with other effects and amps.

It is a bit harder to use than a boss i spose, it's got more adjustables- lows mids highs gain etc. 5 knobs. It is still pretty simple.

I am using this with a Marshall superlead head which originally was 100 watts, converted to 50 (for tonal reasons and also because it was so frickin' loud).

My rig is- Superlead head through Mesa-Boogie 2 by 12 box into MXR phase 90 into no name delay pedal into Boss CE-2 Chorus into Ibanez tube screamer into Marshall Drivemaster into Crybaby 535 into Strat with Kinman Blues pickups. I get a great sound these days, but it took me a while to get things sorted.

First of all this is not a noisy pedal. I bought this pedal on a recomendation from my bass player. He was right. It is great, sounds very organic, natural and smooth. It is basically like adding a gain channel to my amp. It is good to tweak it lots though, to get that sweet tone.

It seems very tough, dependable, besides it lives on my pedal board so it's pretty safe.

Never dealt with Marshall. Probably never will.

This pedal gives you a great marshall 'roar'. Not a hugely high gain pedal but excellent all the same. I dont think they make em any more. If I found another one second hand, I would buy it (to have a back-up).

Very easy to use since it only has five controls - gain, volume, bass, middle and trble. Can hardly go wrong here.

I use it with a Peavey Bandit and an Ibanez humbucking guitar. I use the clean channel on the amp and then the Drivemaster as the only other gadget. It brings the Young brothers from AC/DC right in to my house. It gives you that kind of classic rock distortion with NO FUZZ involved. To me, the clean Peavey and the dirty Drivemaster is the perfect combination if you want to play AC/DC-tunes without buying expensive Marshall tubes.

Very solid and heavy construction. Get a rechargable battery or an adaptor though. This thing consumes batteries in a hurry. Have used it at gigs without problems, just make sure the battery is fresh.

No experiences.

Like I mentioned, I mainly like to play classic rock like AC/DC. I bought this unit to be able to get as close as I could to this kind of sound without buying a new amp. It might be hard to get real over-the-top sounds with this thing alone, you have to use the amps distortion too for that. Haven't tried out much other settings, I just want the classic rock sound with no fuzz distortion, and to me this pedal was the perfect solution.

a piece of cake. 5 knobs and your choice.

I'm play with and customized Tele through a Fender Stage Lead with a ton of effects. I play it through the drive channel(which sucks), but it guve me a darker sound. The pedal still sounds good the clean. I sound just like dirty Marshall Amp(the reason i got it)

never fails

I play experiment rock and i have ton of other pedals(distrotion and others), but if i have had to pick one it will be my drivemaster