Hello channel followers. I realized that in all the recent guitar reviews, I had stepped away from pedals that did one thing really well, so it struck me as a good time to fill that gap.

We often hear that the right number of drive pedals is at least one more. I certainly have bought, and sold, many drive pedals over the years. Sometimes I get rid of one because it no longer inspires me, but frankly more often is that it doesn’t deliver the sound that I want. I’m not really a pedal collector like my friend Darryl (he has every single Tube Screamer variant and in all the different colours), I just get caught up in tone. I realized that there was something missing in the tonal range, specifically with my Fender Blonde Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb. This is a terrific amplifier but I wanted some blues tones and some lighter overdrive than I could get with just the guitar and the amp. So pedals.

I had been using a BOSS Waza Craft Blues Driver. It’s a really nice pedal, but for this amp, I found that it was missing something and went muddy too quickly. It works fine with my Laney LA-Studio head, and as has happened before a pedal that works well with one amp, may not work well with a different amp. Given what I thought was missing, I embarked on a test for alternatives.

I thank The Arts Music Store very much for helping me with this little (and soon to be costly) project as they arranged to make two pedals available to me. I surely do not know everything and accepted a recommendation to try these two pedals from Josh. They are the Greer Lightspeed and the Xotic Soul Driver. I wanted great sounding pedals to use with the amp, and I wanted the ability to do some gain staging.

Greer Lightspeed

I had tried a Lightspeed in the past and did a short comparison between it and two other Greer pedals. All were very good, but none were purchased. I tried the Lightspeed because I liked the sound that Lee Anderson was getting in the videos when he used one. This time, I wanted to spend more time with the Lightspeed itself and really use it across the spectrum of its capabilities.

Greer Amps calls the Lightspeed an organic overdrive. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Carbon based? No GMAs? What it is is a simple box that delivers light to medium overdrive. I am not a distortion or fuzz fan, and this pedal is not for either. If you are, you’ll look elsewhere.

I find the clipping to be very smooth, without harshness or excessive bite. You can adjust the Drive so the sound is completely transparent, but crank it up to put some really nice harmonic overdrive into the overall tone. That’s what I was looking for. The other knobs are Loudness (volume) and Freq (tone). The case is a nice tough metal and the graphics are simple. Lightspeed pedals are available in a wide variety of colour ways. I had the choice of red, blue or silver. I chose red. The colour makes NO difference in the sound. The pedal is true bypass and runs on a 9V battery or if you have a proper quality pedal power supply can be run at 9v or 18v. Use of the higher voltage gives more headroom, and as I hate wall wart cheap ass power supplies, I used it at both 9v and 18v. I found it more versatile at 18v personally.

The range of overdrive is really wide and this appeals to me. It never gets into distortion which is enharmonic and that too pleases me, particularly when used with a digital modelling amp like any of the excellent sounding Tonemasters. My preference is to set the Loudness for unity gain, so a punch in doesn’t change the overall volume.

I’m going to buy it and put my MXR Duke of Tone elsewhere. The Lightspeed sells for $316 CAD MAP.

Xotic Effects Soul Driven

I wanted to try this pedal specifically because it had received excellent reviews and particularly when compared against the Waza Craft Blues Driver. I also have had great success with the Xotic Effects volume and wah pedals and the Xotic Effects RC Boost V2 is an always on pedal on my Blackstar Club 40 board. Even at unity gain it opens up the dynamics significantly.

The Soul Driven is “powered by soul” whatever the heck that means. It has four knobs. Gain controls the mount of overdrive, volume sets the output level, tone controls <surprise> the tone and Mid Boost determines the level of mid boost. There is also a DIP switch control inside the box that allows for default settings of none, 2.4dB or 3.6dB at 125 Hz. I hear bass just fine and for my own testing did not alter the switch settings. The device runs on a 9v battery or 9v - 18v power from a pedal power supply. Xotic offers a separate unit to boost a 9v supply to 18v as an option, but I prefer to use a regulated power supply. You do you.

Xotic calls this a creamy overdrive and I have to agree. It does all that the BOSS BD-2 Waza Craft does but with greater headroom, more openness and no tendency to get muddy on the Fender Tonemaster Blonde Deluxe Reverb. I like that the tone control appears to not just be a cut control and the variability of the mid boost allows for nice tuning for different pickups. It works really nicely with the Neve pickups in the superb Yamaha Pacifica Standard+ as well as with the #4 position on the Fender Player II Series Stratocaster. It took a bit more time to get a preferred tone with a bridge humbucker on either, but an Epiphone Les Paul Custom was easy to tune for nice smooth bluesy tone in all positions. It really sounds wonderful with the neck pickup and the pickup tone rolled off a bit.

So the Blues Driver goes back to the Laney LA-Studio and the Soul Driven goes on the deck for the Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb. The Soul Driven sells for about $230 CAD MAP.

Example Tones

For these short examples, I used a Fender Player II HSS Stratocaster and an Epiphone Les Paul Custom through the pedals and into my Fender Blonde Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb. Each section was recorded using the DI out from the amplifier into a Universal Audio Twin X interface into Logic Pro. There is a Strymon Volante providing light spring reverb on each example.

The first example is the Strat in the 4th switch position. The second is the Strat in the bridge switch position. The third is the Les Paul with both pickups. The fourth is the Les Paul with the neck humbucker and the tone rolled off to 6. The fifth is the Les Paul with the bridge humbucker.

Each example is the guitar clean, then with the Lightspeed and finally with the Soul Driven. I did not change the settings on the pedals for any of the samples, choosing a lower drive level for each. You can then decide if you like the tone of the pedal or not.

What I did not record, and regret not doing is using both pedals together. It takes a bit of tweaking to get them to sound good individually and then when both are active together. What I found was that if I used the Lightspeed with a lower amount of drive, i got a really nice tone, but the bottom end got a bit thin. By punching in the Soul Drive after the Lightspeed, I didn’t lose the really pleasing overdrive tone, but it thickened up the bottom and lower mids without getting muddy. It validated the premise that individually they are both great and that they work well together in a gain staging setting.

Wrapping Up

It’s pretty easy for pedal buying to turn into really bad G.A.S. but if a pedal inspires you to create and play music that interests you or helps you break out of a rut, I call that a good thing.

If you want one or both, please consider going to The Arts Music Store to get yours, or buy one online. This shop supports my work by helping me to obtain products for review. It is a real guitar store, with talented folks on hand to help. When it comes to pedal power, I always recommend the units from CIOKS. I have gone deep on pedal power supplies and none have been as flexible or as reliable as CIOKS. And you can get them at The Arts Music Store.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.