Tech 21 Double Drive

Doddle .. does what it says on the tin.

This may help explain the previous reviewers loss of bass with some distortion or overdrive pedals(it's easier to draw a graph, but you can't do that here!)

When you overdrive a signal, you push the signal beyond it's normal amplitude. All this means is that you "clip" the upper and lower ranges of the the wavelength to provide an overdriven or "clipped" tone. The downside of doing this is that you are effectively chopping the tops and bottoms off of the wavelengths. This in turn means that you lose those frequencies (upper and lower) Hence you lose bass (the higher frequencies tend not to be so noticeable).

Most pedals provide a bass or tone control to compensate this but they add an unatural element to the tone .. hence most overdrive and distortion pedals never quire seem as good as an overdriven valve amp.

So there!

Anyhoo .. the Double Drive, used to push an already mildly overdriven amp is superb .. primarily because all you are doing is pushing the input signal harder, not adding another element to the signal.

Stick to my pedal board in a nuke-proof flight case. Never had a problem

No nonsense pedal. Good price copmared to others I tried that do the same thing.

Really, really easy. You want class A (vox) you turn the A knob. You want A/B (marshall) you turn the AB knob. Use both for more gain or combo tones. Turn both off for clean boost. How is that "counter intuitive". Sheesh

I've had it for a year now so I have a good feel for what it can and can't do. First the good stuff.The clean boost works well. The pedal is transparent for an OD. Its one of the few pedals I've tried that REALLY doesn't suck any bass out of your tone. The mid range is subtly emphasized but it is nothing like the honk of a TS-9. The overall quality of the distortion is smooth and quite amp like. So what's the catch? The difference in tone between a and ab is minimal. A is slightly grittier and ab is slightly smoother with slightly more midrange but they are not different enough for my taste. The sound is very compressed and lacks the touch sensitivity of a good amp or even some pedals. The pedal is noisy at higher gain levels. The deal breaker is that all the bass that the pedal captures distorts in a very unmusical manner. If I play thirds on the E and A strings it sounds completely unnatural. Something tells me this is why so many OD pedals have a noticeble bass loss when kicked in. It must be filtered out to prevent exactly what I'm hearing from this pedal. Perhaps there is no way to have accurate bass and musical disortion in the same pedal.

professional build quality

Not bad but not good enough for me to keep. Its Ebay bound.

Pretty simple, but as someone else has said the 'A' and 'A/B' labels are counterintuitive, the guy in the shop seemd completely confused and didn't know how it worked. However, the thing sold itself to me, a nice easy way to get a bit of drive into a bug clean Fender amp without messing up the sound. That's all I wanted and it seems to give the kind of sound I wanted.

I'm using a 94 special edition ash bodied Strat with Musicman Albert Lee Pickups and a Custom Vibrasonic amp. That's all. It gives me the option of a cooking sound without actually having to cook, or make the ears bleed.

Well, it seems well-made and I'd rely on it.

Never had need to contact them.

I was in the USA and thought it good value at just over half the cost of one in the UK. Mine is blue which is a major plus point :-). This is one of those little boxes that I am likely to stick with unlike other pedals that are gimmicky, noisy, unreliable or ultimately having no practical use. This one will get a lot of use.

This unit seems pretty basic, but I think you have to spend some time tweaking it to get just what you want out of it. Mine is Orange/Red and labelled "limited edition", but I think newer ones are black. There's a level control (straight forward enough), a tone control (high-end rolloff) and a control for AB gain and A gain. This is a little counter-intuitive. The signal starts at the A control (to emulate Class A amps) and then goes to the AB (AB Amps) control, which essentially adds a different type of voicing and "doubles" the gain structure of the setting from the A control. Tech21 NYC does a better job of explaining this on their site. I find that it is pretty easy to get good sound from this, and there are a variety to be had. You have to be careful though, because its easy to achieve severe amounts of gain from this unit and in my opionion it is possible to reach a point of over-saturation where there's just too much and then it becomes unusable and sounds as if the whole pedal is overloaded and ready to meltdown. This only happens if you try to dime both the A and the AB controls, but happend more readily when A is cranked and AB is running pretty high (3 o'clock or so). All in all, its pretty easy to use, but also very easy to bump a knob and lose your ideal sound (pretty sensative controls).

I use a variety of guitars but my signal mostly starts with either a solid body w/a Duncan 59 in the neck and Custom 5 in the bridge (I can split both) or a semi-hollow body with a Jazz in the neck and a JB in the bridge. From there I go to a Fulltone Clyde Deluxe Wah -> Carl Martin Compressor -> Double Drive -> Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive -> Guyatone MD3 delay to a Fender Custom Vibrolux Reverb. I bought the Double Drive to give me that hi-gain, modified, cranked Marshall-like tone (think the lead-tone in the Black Crows' version of Hard to Handle) and this pedal delivers that to me on a platter. I can't confirm this, but something tells me that this pedal excels when places in front of a good tube amp. I used to play solid state and digital amps, but I've given up. Everything is still better with tubes. It seems to work in concert with my amp and produces a wonderful singing, cutting (without being harsh) tone that I just can't get enough of. You would not believe how huge my amp sounds (and its only a 40 watt 2x10)!!! My one complaint about this pedal - and it really bugs me - is that I seem to lose a lot of the characater of my neck pickup and my wah (not necessarily used together) when this pedal is engaged. I don't understand if its some kind of impedance or signal mismatch or issue between pedals or just a quirk of this pedal. I need to spend more time tweaking and troubleshooting to figure out why this is. However, I mainly use this pedal with my bridge pickup (full and split on the solidbody) and without wah, so I am overall very pleased. This is not a true bypass design and it doesn't need to be. It is quiet and transparent and the benefit is that even with the pedal in the off position, you get a buffered signal out to better drive the rest of your effects and the long cable back to your amp. I have both true bypass pedals and non-true bypass pedals. I think true bypass has its place, but I also think it is WAY over-rated.

I have used several other Tech 21 products and thier stuff truly is top notch.

I've contacted them vie e-mail with questions from time to time, and they sometimes respond and sometimes don't. If I called and got nowhere, I'd take off more points, but I have not called so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

In my opinion, this pedal is very unique and delivers some astonishing sounds. Its built well, easy to use and sounds great for any type of Rock and Roll tones. While you can obtain more subtle overdrives from this unit, I use it more for an all out distortion pedal, where I think it accels (I use the sparkle drive for the more subtle overdrive tones). I just don't know why a world-class wah or top notch neck pickup would have difficulty coming through this pedal. I guess nothing is perfect!

Very easy to use. Y4 knobs: level, tone, Driva A and Drive B. You can select either Drive A (Voxish) or Drive B (Marshallesque) or combine the two with varying degrees. Havent tried the manual since it's so easy to use.

My current performing setup is an 81 Les Paul Standard with a Fender Super amp. For lighter overdrive I use a Vox Valve Tone pedal. I was looking for something to give me more overdrive for some of the harder rocking tunes that we do...without going into a distortion pedal. Since getting the Super amp I have had a hellova time getting decent overdrive sounds. Most overdrive pedals sound thin on Fender amps. I even think a TS9 sounds somewhat thin. The Double Drive did what I was looking for: more overdrive with fatter sound.

Not much noise to speak of with this pedal. One thing I've noticed is that the tone control is very sensitive. there is a very small sweet spot on it..otherwise 90% of the adjustment potential on it is crap. One other thing: I dont notice a ton of difference between drive A and Drive B. A is warmer with B having that Marshall brightess. I combine the two for a happy medium.

Only real complaint I have with this is that when you turn the volume down on your guitar...this doesnt clean up. That's a little weak.

I was looking for a Vintage Rat pedal at first, but

No idea. Havent owned tech21 before. Seems prett sturdy however. Good chassis.

No idea.

I play blues Rock, classic rock and some 80's rock. I only recently got this pedal. As mentioned before, I originally wanted a vintage Rat. I always thought of a Rat as being a Fuzz...I found out otherwise after playing one. You can get a very sweet sound out of the Rat by keeping the Distortion down. However, Since I couldnt find one I decided to test out the Double Drive and was impressed. You can go from a very mild overdrive sound to a very full sounding "Brian Mayish" to "ZZtopish" overdrive. As someone else mentioned, it would be ideal if this had 3 buttons: 1 for each drive and one for a combined.

easy, but to get a good sound out of this thing is impossible. trully a really bad product.

the worst. never heard anything as bad as this before. the A drive sounds o.k. very tiny and thin, the A/B side is terruble a big mess. it clips like crazy. trully trully a bad product.

dont know, i returned it the day after it arrived from musicians friend. it felt very light, the battery compartment was made of cheap plastic. so i dont think it would of been very reliable.

never dealt with tech 21. i was also thinking of getting a killer wail, but after this experience tech 21 is on my never to buy list. i dont think their products are quality products.

the worst. if you want a good distortion unit get the marshall pedals or the boss sd-1. dont spend your cash on this junk. it really really sucks!!!!!!1

Very easy ti get good sounds out of this thing. A and A/B knobs increase the saturationof each, level increases volume, tone adds treble bite. Manual is minimal but how can you make this complicated?

I use a telecaster and a L.P. Jr. through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. This is the pedal if you can only afford one amp. This pedal will give you a Marshall tone or a Vox AC-30 tone. You can also dial them in together to create some cool new tones.

Sure its dependable. I'm not going to put it under the truck tire or anything.

Never dealt with them. Hope I won't have to.

I'm into rock and altcountry. The Vox tone is great for my sound. I'm very happy with my simple but effective tone now. If I could add a feature I would put two footswitches on it to set a tone on each and be able to access them with one stomp. I guess thats a bit picky but I'm supposed to be critical here right? Very natural-sounding distortion and cool clean boost. This is pedal for musicians who like their guitar tone and just want to color it a bit. Buy it--it's cheaper than a Vox and a Marshall amp.

This is really quite a pedal. I couldn't believe the sound it made coming out of a 15 watt fender blues jr. Amazing. I already have a sparkle drive, and was looking for something with more distortion. I couldn't believe my ears! I was standing there with my strat in front of a blues jr, with this plugged in, and got this monster tone! I am in love. I'm not into metal, but this gets some cool vand halen and early ozzy tones. That's not my style really but I like playing it sometimes and it's great to have that option available to me.

Great pedal. I've been playing 8 yrs, and am very happy with it. I've had every piece of gear under the sun, and was very impresssed. Only 100 bucks? Man I wish I'd given this a try before wasting my money on high end boutique crap.

Sound quality is ok when the distortions are turned up, but compared to the GT2 or the Tri-AC or Tri-OD, they sound unrealistic and harsh. Sound is muddy, with the high-end peeled off when the distortions are turned all the way down to the "clean boost" setting. The Tri-OD gets better class-A type sounds, and the GT2 excells in class-AB arena.

I've owned almost everything Tech21 makes. Currently, I use a Tri-AC, a Tri-OD, and a Killer Wail. This box doesn't make the grade. Skip it and pick up a Classic, GT2, TriOD, or TriAC.

Easy to use. Was dialing up a variety of tones in no time.

Modern and vintage Telecasters with a couple of Juniors and Melody Makers through a tweed Deluxe. A wide variety of overdrive levels when using the mix controls for A and A/B. A bit noisy when both drives are maxxed but that can be expected. Very nice clean boost with the drives turned down. The dynamic range is wonderful.

Seems dependable. Upcoming gigs and studio work will put it to the test. Will toss the Guv'nor pedal into the gig bag just in case.

Haven't dealt with Tech 21

Rock and alt country player. 30 years playing. Main guitar is a '68 Telecaster but I also sling a '96 Amer. Std Tele, a 59 Les Paul Junior, a '65 Melody Maker and a '96 Amer.Strat through a Fender Blues Deluxe.A great pedal for dialing up overdriven AC30 to Marshall Plexi tones and just about everything in between. Would like to have seen seperate controls for bass, mid, and treble instead of one tone knob. Did an A/B against my old Marshall Guv'nor pedal, a Boss DS-1, and a Tubescreamer reissue and the Double Drive is the hands down winner. The other pedals are able to approximate the Double Drive but they are limited in the amount of variations. Just can't compete with the Double Drives ability to create a wider range of overdrive tones