Today’s featured pedal is yet another overdrive in a long line that we’ve reviewed, but this one has a couple of secrets up its sleeve for some great tonal functionality. The Smooth Driver is the first offering from Burnt Audio Effects, and is an excellent first stage pedal to really push your amp and add some much-needed crunch to your overall sound. With a simple setup and broad range, this baby blue beauty really get things cookin’.
Volume, Tone and Gain controls are the usual suspects as far as three-knob overdrive pedals are concerned, with each one playing well off of each other to form the unit’s core tonal structure. The Gain and Tone knob both feature a good range of sounds to work with, and when you combine them with a good bit of output Volume, there’s not an amp or a pair of eardrums that will stand in your way. You can easily achieve a nice clean-ish boost, some tube-driving crunch and even a little distortion when combined with a dirty amp or fuzz pedal, giving off some thick, saturated sounds.
The real key to the Smooth Driver’s sound is on the inside, however. Instead of the usual choice of Germanium or Silicon clipping options, here you get BOTH in one unique package. With both styles mixed into a hybrid clipping section, you get some asymmetrical double-sided clipping, with 2 Germanium diodes running one way and one Silicon running the other. This produces an interesting blend of the two, for smooth and creamy gain, along with some extra thickness and warmth to your tone.
The Smooth Driver is true bypass, has top-mounted jacks for sneaking onto any pedalboard, and uses either a 9V battery or 9V negative tip adapter for its power sources. Built with high-quality components in Minnesota, it also has a low noise floor, which helps to produce its superior tone and gain structure, too. Thanks so much to Mac from Burnt Audio Effects for letting us check out their flagship pedal, and be one of the first to get to put it through it’s paces and see what it is capable of. If this is any indication of what’s to come from these guys, we’re super-stoked to see what they release next.
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