In the wake of the quite superb recent Olbia Super-Klone - which is my favourite Drunk Beaver Overdrive to-date as well as by far and away my favourite evolved Klon sound. I thought I should do a roundup / overview of my other favourite Drunk Beaver Overdrives too.

This listing and visual is roughly in order of my preferences - where fortunately - the first 5 pedals listed are mostly on general release. Vitalii has made 26 Overdrives so far by my count. Actually there’s a couple of earlier ...

So this Fluff Drive is evidently Screamer derived but heavily modded for mostly going in front of High Gain Amps. It’s similar in scope to the Drunk Beaver Vatra and Frost Giant Mourningstar I recently covered on this site.

It’s interesting that Warm Audio bring out another Screamer derived circuit so soon after their also ’green’ Tube Squealer which is also another relative expansive circuits. I always wonder about the degree of cannibalism that happens - when you have 2 pedals largely in ...

What we have here is a Dual-Voice Boost / Overdrive derived from the Ibanez TS808. The toggle switch selects the two voicings - where the Upper ’Smereka’ Mode is a classic TS808 style Tube Screamer. Flip the switch Down to ’BUK’ MOSFET clipping Mode for a grittier, louder, thicker, bassier and punchier voicing.

The classic Smerek voicing is pretty much exactly as you would expect - and you have the classic 3 x screamer controls - Level, Tone, and Drive.

For me the ’Buk’ Mode is a ...

Metal Players have for years been using mid-hump overdrives into the front of their high gain amps - and Frost Giant has kind of gone to town here - in delivering 3 different voicings for maximum impact. Takes on the TS9 and SD-1, as well as a 3rd supercharged ’Mourning Star’ variant which ups things to another level!

Controls - Volume, Gain, High, Mid, Low, Mode : TS9 / Mourning Star / SD-1.

I feel this is a really great mid-hump overdrive on its own - while it’s seemingly mostly been ...

DOD is obviously a company that doesn’t do things by half - and rather than just a straight-up reissue cash-in on that JHS hype. Instead DOD went back to the drawing board and massively re-designed the circuit to make it even more powerful and versatile!

The original circuit controls were - Level, Low EQ, High EQ, Gain. And the new pedal ups the ante with 3 separate parallel blendable circuits - Behaved, Bad, and Badder - where the 3-way switch allows you to target 2 of those at a time - ...

Another super busy month for me - particularly towards the end - with numerous large scale articles out this week. That also coincided with my busiest week of the year for my other day job. Meaning that I was up until 4-5 in the morning every day - just to keep up with my commitments.

I was already somewhat shattered and burned out before I even got to this super busy period - and it’s a relief that all that work has now been completed on schedule.

I’m especially proud of my work on the Bucket ...

So - Susumu Tamura first developed his Tube Screamer Circuit for Maxon back in 1979. It came two years after the Boss OD-1, and was in part inspired by that circuit, but since Roland owned the patent for Asymmetrical Clipping - Susumu was  compelled to go with the softer Symmetrical Clipping (which proved to be the more popular!). He also added a tone-stack to bring it up to 3 controls. Boss then copied the Tube Screener back to a degree with their SD-1 - making their own overdrive circuit ...

So the somewhat oddly named Portafilter Multi-Drive is one of those smart analog circuits with digital controls. Which empowers you with incredible versatility here - where we essentially have 6 x total overdrives, 2 x distortions, 2 x three band EQ’s. And you have 6  onboard Presets and 20 via MIDI to make it all work for you!

The 3-Band EQ consist of the fully variable Bass and Treble controls, and a 3-way Mid control - with Flat / Scoop / Boost options.

Controls - 2 x Bass, Treble, ...

I’ve been highly critical of Warm Audio in the past - culminating in my red-line critique of some serious Trade Dress violations - for its Mutation Phasor II, ODD and Warmdrive pedals - those were definitely out of line, and over the line! And contrasted significantly with their opening flurry of Centavo, Jet Phaser, and Foxy Tone Box - which I felt were sufficiently differentiated - making for proper Tributes and Riff-offs of those original themes - versus more of a Rip-Off for the Phasor II, ...