'83 Drive is a dual overdrive guitar pedal and the ultimate tone machine, providing a variety of delicious tones. It can be used as an always on drive tone all the way to a mid boosting lead tone. Our take on the legendary K-style overdrive and the Black Box Bluesbreaker, it features two independent overdrives, giving you two classic drive sounds favored by many guitarists in one enclosure. Our inspiration for the ’83 Drive came from our enthusiasm for each of the two pedals used alone and by how amazing they sounded when stacked. Both pedals have played an important part in the live guitar tones of John Mayer through the years, as the pre drive he stacks into his TS10 to obtain his lead tone. We decided for ’83 Drive as the number "83" is a significant number to JM.

We have recreated the circuits staying true to the originals, but made the BB circuit true bypass with additional switching options for tweaking. We also increased the headroom to 18 Volts and added an additional gain stage to increase the output. We have kept the buffer in on the K-style side of the circuit.

The ’83 Drive is divided into a side A (left) and a side B (right), separated by the order toggle switch in the middle which flips the internal order of the effects and hence the signal path from guitar to amp.

Side A features the BB-style circuit with external knobs for GAIN, TONE, VOLUME and a three position toggle switch labeled LOWS. The lows switch changes the bass response of the circuit. Internally you find three dip switches (gain, soft clipping, hard clipping) that further enables you to tweak your tone.

The side B features the K-style circuit with external knobs for GAIN, TREBLE, OUTPUT and a two position toggle switch labeled CLIPPING. The clipping switch toggles between a pair of germanium or schottky clipping diodes.

Both sides can be used separately or stacked.

Product specs