An exciting collaboration between Dirty Sock Effects and our friends from the band 'Drift' to create the ultimate all-in-one creative drive box. It pairs a classic hard-clipping distortion circuit with an extremely flexible filter section, reminiscent of the resonant, aggressive filters found in analogue synthesisers.
The distortion circuit was designed from the ground up, with a classic op-amp distortion architecture at its core, with some extra features for on-the-fly versatility.
The ‘Drive’ control has an extremely wide range, from low gain, almost clean overdrive, to thick, fuzzy distortion.
Incorporated into the distortion circuit is a hi/lo gain footswitch, giving you two distinct distortion modes accessible at your feet. Set the green mode as an ‘always-on’ overdrive, and kick it into the red mode for some extra grit, or run it flat out in the red mode for a wall of distortion.
The tone control is a basic high-cut control. Turning it up helps things cut through a dense mix and turning it down can tame some unwanted treble.
And with plenty of output level, the distortion section can be used to drive the front end of your amplifier for natural breakup.
The filter section is the real star of the show. It has three modes for Low Pass, Band Pass, and High Pass, offering three distinct filter functions. The Freq control adjusts the global cutoff frequency, and Reso introduces a resonant peak at the cutoff frequency. Higher resonance levels take the filter up a notch and introduce peculiar artefacts, lower resonance levels make the filter operate in a more 'standard' manner, and it can be used more as a subtle tone-shaping tool. There is a small internal user-adjustable switch inside of the pedal that selects between high and low resonance modes (it is set to high from factory).
Of course, pairing the distortion with the filter is where things go up a notch. You can utilise the filter’s subtle tonal shaping to subtly tweak the distortion, or as designed, use it to create havoc! The filter's aggressive nature can bring interesting artefacts out of the distortion side, and can create everything from the most abrasive distortion ever conceived, to a sub-bass that will destroy speakers if you’re not careful. It is particularly useful in making sharp transitions between sections - for example, use the filter to cut bass in a verse section, then turn it off for a thick distortion in the chorus.
Controls:
Drive - Amount of distortion (applies to both hi and lo mode)
Tone - Basic high cut filter tied to distortion circuit
Drive Level - Output level of drive circuit
Freq - Cutoff frequency of filter (applies to all modes) 20Hz-20Khz
Reso - Resonance of filter, higher levels can cause oscillations and artefacts
LP/BP/HP switch - selects between Low Pass, Band Pass and High Pass filters.
Filter Level - Output level of filter circuit
Hi/Lo - selects between high and low gain modes in the distortion circuit, indicated by a dual colour LED.
Drive - Engages/disengages drive circuit
Filter - Engages/disengages filter circuit
This pedal runs on 9VDC Centre Negative power (2.1mm barrel), powering it using any other power supply may result in damage.
