Marshall Drive Master

Easy Enough to use, keep the bass up around 7-10 and play with any setting. It sounds good. Getting your sound, however is a little bit harder. I like a alterna-mid hump on my sound and I usually use an 8-10-8 setup.

I have a DeArmond M65C - good guitar by the way and don't laugh. I have a VOX wah and a Fender Hot Rod Deville for the best clean and like 60's OD you will ever have. The Marshall scoops, crunches and roars. However, I would like a more out of control sound. It doesn't Feedback much unless you add the tube OD with it maybe I'll get a Dod grunge later. Other wise, it sounds AWESOME! Use it for rock anything from rock to metal to blues. Warning, If you want a fuzzed out wall of sound, get something else. This pedal is way too professional sounding. just as clear and responsive as a bell.

I don't know, i'd say that it is built well enough, I bought it used in pristine condition

Don't know, doesn't matter yet

I am in a ska/alt rock band and this pedal with my guitar is way too fat for that style of music. A better combo would be a Fender sc guitar (take your pick) through the same pedal. But for the styles of music that I actually like, Grunge, Alternative, Punk, Hard Rock. It rules

Simple labeling for simple controls! This pedal has gain, bass, mid, treble, and volume controls, each labeled, and a big metal switch. it is not exactley rocket science.

my current setup is a fender cyclone, into an ibanez WH10 wah, nobels tremlo, marshall drivemaster, marshall guv'nor, soundtank digital delay, sound city 50 top head into kelly 4*12 cab. With this setup I have found that the drive master has a fairly low noise level compared to most of the distortion pedals i have used.my amp is a fairly quiet one and so unwanted pedal hum is not easily disguised! When i first bought the drivemaster, i found that my setup was quite noisy, but with the use of decent patch cabels, my life was far more fulfilling.
The pedal itself has a ridiculously sensitive set of controls, and you really need to experiment to make sure that you are making the most of this pedal and it's possibilities. There are so many varied sounds within this lump of metal that given enough time, any one could find a decent enough sound!
personally, i have found that the pedal sounds at its best with the gain set at 2 o'clock, the bass at 4 o'clock, mid at 1 o'clock, and treble at 3 o'clock, whilst practiceng at home quietly, but for gigs or full band rehersals, the gain needs to be backed off a bit to about 1 o'clock, especialy if you are using a valve amp!

This pedal is as hard as nails. it is not going to break. ever.

This is the only distortion that i have so far found to be capable of covering that bis sounds that i like in a full on distortion. I also use a Guv'nor, but that pedal just doesent quite cut the mustard when it comes down to lifting the hairs on your neck in that big chorus at the end of the song you have just written!
The kind of music i play with my band lays somewhere between tool, sunny day real estate, and depeche mode, so i need a setup that can be ekceedingly flexable, and can change the feel of a section or phrase at the flip of a switch.
if you like marshall distortion, then get one if you can find one, they are seriously worth the money, and can produce nearly any sound that you could ever want. BUY ONE NOW!

Forrest Gump won't even have hard time using this thing. It is a stompbox, alright? Turning knobs and a stepping on the switch - that is all you need to know.

SETUP
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I have a Mesa Boogie Studio Caliber (forerunner of the DC-2) and a Fender Sidekick Reverb 65. Using the Drive Master in the front end of a tube amp with good clean tone, such as my Mesa, simply "Marshallizes" the sound. You could hardly tell the difference of a cranked Marshall and the Drive Master, provided you use it through a decent sounding amp.
NOISE
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The noise is there, but not really annoying as opposed to what the others say. IMO, noise comes from badly designed amps and pickups, and the pedals just make the noise more prominent. I have no problems with my Mesa amp so I do not get that much noise out of the Drive Master.
SOUND QUALITY
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Ballsy Marshall JCM-800 distortion in a box... I swear! At high gain settings, I can get JACKYL, GUNS N' ROSES, and some SPIN DOCTORS overdrive tone. At medium gain, I can really nail that TOM MORELLO tone with a Telecaster or any other twangy sounding guitar! Very versatile!

Perfect for people who want to nail Marshall distortion without getting another Marshall JCM series tube amp. I guess this is one of the most underrated overdrive pedals. It sounds even better than most Boss and Korg pedals I have tried. I recommend this for the serious guitarist who wants Marshall amp overdrive in a pedal. Of course nothing beats a real tube amp, but given the right amp to be matched with the Drive Master, you get absolutely ballsy Marshall distortion.

treble,bass,mid,volume and gain controls fairly easy to get the sound you want in conjunction with your guitar and amp im renting this so i didnt get a manual

im using a les paul copy into a fender silverface twin reverb its noisy noisy or anything like that for me the only problem i have with this is that it is kinda too trebly and cuts out a bit of my low end i usually have treble on 3, mid on 5 and bass on 10 and the sound is still kinda trebly but its bearable.
i play shit like the stone roses, oasis, the verve, ride, sloan....so on and so forth this pedal does a pretty good job I suppose, i might end up buying it but first id like to take a look at the fulltone fulldrive 2

yeah ive used it at a gig and its fine id use it again without a backback i use an ac adaptor so i cant comment on how it eats batteries

its a good pedal to compliment the fender twin but i am going to try out other options i can definately see myself buying this pedal though

Great overdrive tones out of this pedal. It sounds like a Cranked Marshall.

I M using this pedal with a Peavey Classic 30 with the 112 extension cabinet and stock speakers (a blue marvel in the combo and a sheffield in the extension) and only use it for a bost when I solo generally speaking. My guitars are a heavily modified Ibanez 550 (tone zone in the bridge, Air Norton in the neck) an Ibanex PGM and an ancient Hamer Vector (with a triple coil humbucker. I don't push the drive channel that hard and the unit is quiet when on. The only other effects I have are an Ibanez delay running through y effects loop and a cry baby that is placed after the Marshal in my chain..
Despite the guitars I play I don't go for a thrashy metal tone rather I get a really sweet smooth tone with the aid of the pedal. I tried the Shredmaster and found it to dirty. I can nail Gary Moores tone from his "Still Got The Blues" albun with the Hamer and can dial in a perfect Michael Schenker tone. When used on the clean channel with the coils split on my Ibanez guitars I get a real nice fat strat tone. Even with the gain way up chards are still transparent which is really nice.
I have been trying to find the right drive unit as long as I have been playing (15 years)and this is it. Fantastic tone great unit. My only nit is that this pedal sounds bad when using an ac adapter, so use bateries.

Very dependable EXCEPT for the cheap battery cover, I lost it and am now using tape. I don't think I would need a backup and if I lost it or it got stolen I'd buy another right away.

never had to try.

I have used Tube screamers, DS-1's, Pearl overdrives (that was a great pedal that got ripped off!!) and various Boss and DOD pedals. The Drive master is in my opinion the best OD pedal out there. I play a little of everything but consider myself a rock player first, this padal can take me from UFO to Zappa to Pearl Jam and farther...buy one.

I agree with another guy's opinion that it's hard to find your sweet spot, but I found it. I bought it used, no manual. Just mess with the bass, mid, and treble knobs until you find your sound.

With this pedal, I'll probably mostly use my Les Paul Custom, with Fender Hot Rod amps (Deluxe and Deville). My Strat sounded good with it, too. I mainly use Fender amps, because they have the best clean sound there is. I've always been in search of the distortion pedal that could more closely emulate the "Marshall overdrive" with a Fender. I have been using a Boss Turbo Overdrive for this purpose, and that's a great pedal. The Drive Master beats it.
I am very fond of early Aerosmith overdrive, AC/DC, just kind of a raw overdrive. Also Guns n Roses. At low gain settings, I thought the Drive Master was a little weak. But once I got it to about 10 o'clock and higher, it was very impressive. I have the bass on 8, mid dimed, and treble at 6 or so. I compared it at home on a test drive side by side with Boss Turbo OD, Bixonic Expandora, TubeScreamer, and it had the most "complexity" as far as tone. That's a good thing. It just seemed more present than the others. I messed around with it on lower gain settings for awhile, and then turned the gain up to about 6 and didn't want to turn it off. Wonderful sustain, harmonics, fluid leads. I probably won't use it like that often, but it's nice to know it's there. That definitely got the Slash/GNR and even Billy Gibbons tone. I don't agree with earlier review that you can get SRV sound out of it, no way.

This one's pretty beat up, battery cover missing, scratched. Switch seems solid, and built from solid steel. Looks like it'll hold up.

No idea.

I have tried the Ibaneze Tube King to try to get this sort of overdrive on Fender amps, and it was okay. I thought it got too heavy too fast. I think my quest may be over with this pedal. I may not ever need that Marshall amp I've always wanted.

Getting a good sound took about 10 minutes of fiddling and fine tuning both amp and peddle... now if anyone touches my peddle THEY DIE!!! The sound can be as big or small as you need and it has an absolute KILLER middle range

The sound quality is excellent. I use it with a real shit Honer Wave and it sounds bastard huge!! The peddle cuts through the rest of my band and sounds great for rhythm.

Well... I've only had it a few weeks, but it seems like it could last!!

Mmm........ don't know....yet!

My band is a heavy Rock n roll band and this peddle is perfect. I love the amount of different tones you ca get from it.
Before this peddle I had a DOD FX69 Grunge peddle, which broke before its first year of ownership was up... I brought a Rat, but that SUCKED!! so I brought this and am WELL CHUFFED!!
The amount of new insperation I have found from plugging this baby in is amazing! It is strange how altering your sound can breath life into composing!!

I'm a big fan of the Marshall distortion boxes for many reasons, and this is one of them. Hell, if you can dial a tone into an amp, you can dial it into this box. The controls are modeled after a marshall amp, straight laced and simple: gain, bass, middle, treble, volume. And just like a Marshall amp, it's got sweet spots that require some tweeking to get just right, but overall, it's pretty simple. Just take it out of the box and play with it. I wish the manual showed more examples, but that's the only complaint I have with it's use, and not worth a penalty as it shows what each does and if you can't understand the controls, maybe guitar playing isn't for you.

We come to another reason I love these Marshall distortion boxes: they sound great. I like a real distortion sound, not some over the top, ultra smooth, bass heavy Metallica sounding cyber distortion. This is rock distortion, and PERFECT to compliment a marshall amp. It sounds like an old JTM head like Jimi and Page play. With the gain all the way, Eddie is yours, and turning it down a bit, classic rock and SRV are yours. Versitile as a pedal can be. It responds well to my playing and really sounds like you are playing out of an amp. I've used it on both my solid state and tube amps, and it sounds great with both. Coming out the clean channel of my JTM combo, it sounds like a better version of the amp's dirty channel. I like it better! It's a great overall distortion sound. My one complaint is that it can be VERY trebly, I have to turn down the treble on it to 3 0'clock as well as limit my amp's treble. But it's got that classic Marshall mid-range down to a science. I'd like to see it with a little more gain, but it's perfect if you don't need a screaming distortion, just a fat, perfect emulation of a marshall tone. The only thing I don't like is that it sounds rather flat on the lower gain settings. You've got to crank it up for it to sound good. But that's just another way it's like a Marshall.

It's a metal box, that's always good. But I have a feeling that if you don't treat it well and gently, it would break. The electronics are fine, except for the battery solder, I've had to repair that (from the wires coming off the circuit board), but I use the AC out anyway. The stomp switch isn't very strong, and prolonged heavy stomping will cause damage. But it's built well, and will survive a long time if not abused.

Never dealt with them.

It's my main distortion pedal. I love the clean sound of the JTM, but the lead channel sucks. Too nasally. I wanted a distortion pedal that sounded like Marshall distortion. I wanted it to sound like an amp. This emulates it. Emulates. It's not an amp. It's nice and raw and fat, just like Marshall distortion should be. It sounds like an amp. It's not an amp. It's a pedal. It's got sweet spots like a real Marshall amp, and if you are willing to mess with it's and your amps settings, it will sound great. But you have to realize what it is. It's meant for rock, and has got alot of gain, but it's got drive, not shred (there's another pedal for that). I'm very happy with the pedal, it sounds great, and if you need a pedal that sounds like a Marshall amp, this is for you.

Easy to use. As guitarist magazine recommended near the time of release roll the high tone right off otherwise you lose your hearing - really bright.

sound quality is great once you set it up. I use it with gain on max and harmonics (even with the high tone off all the way) just leap off the guitar. nice crunch for rythmn, nice sound for lead just cool.

I have had this 7 years and it still works and sounds great...but This is why I wrote the review, the box is strong, the pots are strong but the sockets at the back are plastic. I broke the input socket...nothing superglue couldn't fix but still. Also the footswitch occasionally switches half on with almost no signal but you can just hear the distortion coming on. Again another stomp and its fixed and it was a very rare occurance but again it shouldn't happen.

Dunno

Rock/metal great for the job. I've played it for 7 years and its still going. I would probably get it again if I wanted just a distortion pedal rather than multiFX though I use the Zoom 505 at the moment . I chose it over the shred master cause backing off the guitars volume cleaned up better.

Not hard to use, you just adjust the knobs and hit the button with your foot. One of the easiest pedals I've used. The switch doesn't stick and you don't screw up the knobs if you hit it without looking.

I didn't like the sound quality very much. When I had this pedal (olny for about a month before I sold the thing) I had a peavey envoy amp and an american standard strat. I liked the distortion on my envoy than the drive master. I thought it was a little weak. The olny reason why I gave it a five was because my amp was crappy. I guess it would be O.K. if you got a decent amp, like any Fender tube, and your into cool over drive and not distortion (good for lead terrible for rythem)

The things built like a tank. In case of a nuclear war just wedge yourself between it and a crybaby wah.

I don't know

I used it jamming with friends (we like to play alternative, hard stuff a and more of a power pop). Didn't like it except when playing to the tunes of All-Star united (a christian band) and I used it for our youth groups praise and worship team. The drummer even told me it sounded bad.