Guitar Tricks Insider November / December Issue | Page 58

GEAR REVIEWS
adjustments during the gig. We also really
liked the bright red light and the soft-
touch footswitch, which uses a silent relay
instead of the hard, Carling-style switch
found on many designer pedals. You can
play this pedal at home in your socks
without killing yourself.
Speaking of construction, the pedals
themselves are housed in rugged metal
cases with sturdy aluminum knobs, input/
output jacks on the sides, and a power
connector on the rear. The optional
battery compartment is accessed with the
removal of four screws on the pedal base
plate. With its true-bypass design, have
no fear if your battery dies in the middle
of a set. You may lose your overdrive
sounds, but your guitar signal still passes
through the pedals.
All these similarities are great, so what’s
the difference between these two pedals?
The tone! With the TrueOverDrive 1 and
a few different tube amps set to their
clean channels, we obtained classic ‘80s
Marshall tone, ideally suited to rock
and hard rock, and the response was
appropriately relaxed. At lower Drive
settings, we obtained soft distortion that
the alt rock/indie crowd would love when
paired with a classic Fender tube amp,
while hair band fanatics will prefer to dial
in the Drive at the higher gain settings.
The TrueOverDrive 2 pedal takes a more
modern European metal slant to its tone,
delivering the kind of tight, high-gain tone
that makes your humbucker-loaded shred
machine work its magic. This tone comes
more from the Bogner/ENGL camp, and
the response is similarly tighter in feel.
It’s so authentic that we found ourselves
doing multiple A/B tests comparing our
amp’s clean channel plus TrueOverDrive
vs. our amp’s crunch channel on its own.
You’d be hard pressed to notice any
significant difference.
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GUITAR TRICKS INSIDER
DIGITAL EDITION
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER