Nova drive .. any good ?

bluenose

Thinking of trying one out with my G-System as i'm limited to just my two amp channels, and it could give me a lot more flexibility.
Any opinions would be greatly welcome.

There is one on ebay at the moment ,thought unfortunately it does not appear to include the connecting midi y cable.
The cables are a bit like hens teeth, even TC no longer have them.

Some shops seem to have taken advantage of this just a tad.

https://www.woodbrass.com/en-gb/midi-and-digital-cables-tc-electronic-midi-split-cable-for-nova-drive-p167462.html

Nomad

I've got one and I like it. Not used in a G-system, just in front of my amp. I use it with the add-on 3-way switch, which gives banks of three patches (the pedal switches become bank up/down). The banks are assigned to guitars, giving each three patches: mild overdrive, medium drive (classic rock type), and heavy gain. The first two tend to be just the overdrive pedal, and the heavy gain is distortion pedal into overdrive. I also have a bank set up more as clean boosts to push the amp's drive channel to varying degrees (Blues Deluxe - pretty mild amp drive).

No reliability issues (bought new a few years ago, used at home only).

thomasw88

Ive owned one twice actuslly. Never really bonded with it found the drives rather bland

John_P

I used to have one when I used a G system.    I found it to be very flexible and really liked the sound of stacking the two sides of the pedal.  

english_bob

I doubt the cable would be a problem. Don't spend silly money on an "official" one. You could have anyone with a soldering iron and a swear jar knock one up.

normula1

I've got one and find them very flexible. I use MIDI footswitches to select patch number with CC control of which side is active and a couple of others to alter settings on the fly. I don't need the Y cable but it's a doddle to make one up.

gibsongretschfan

I really liked mine. The tube screamer type side especially 

bluenose

Thanks all for all the input , decided after much thought not to buy one based purely on the extra hassle of hooking it up. 
Presumed the g-systems onboard supply would power it , but no, that would be too simple.

gibsongretschfan

bluenose said:

Thanks all for all the input , decided after much thought not to buy one based purely on the extra hassle of hooking it up. 
Presumed the g-systems onboard supply would power it , but no, that would be too simple.

Yeah that was a major brain fart by TC

StefB

gibsongretschfan said:

bluenose said:

Thanks all for all the input , decided after much thought not to buy one based purely on the extra hassle of hooking it up. 
Presumed the g-systems onboard supply would power it , but no, that would be too simple.

Yeah that was a major brain fart by TC

Has anyone actually tried it though? Mine works fine on 9v power from my G-Lab GSC-2. I tried it on the off chance one and now have no need to use the Nova’s own PSU. 

monquixote

StefB said:

gibsongretschfan said:

bluenose said:

Thanks all for all the input , decided after much thought not to buy one based purely on the extra hassle of hooking it up. 
Presumed the g-systems onboard supply would power it , but no, that would be too simple.

Yeah that was a major brain fart by TC

Has anyone actually tried it though? Mine works fine on 9v power from my G-Lab GSC-2. I tried it on the off chance one and now have no need to use the Nova’s own PSU. 

In general the Nova pedals take an absolutely stupid amount of current so you have to be a bit careful with the power supply ou use.

One thing that not everyone knows is that the 12v Nova pedals can run on 9v (taking an even more stupid amount of current) although in this configuration they have reduced headroom it only really matters if you intend to use an active bass with them. 

Soundwise I've had a Nova and I thought it was pretty good if a bit generic. If you need a few analogue drive sounds integrated into a MIDI rig it's the best choice.

meltedbuzzbox

 I used to run a Nova mod pedal thing at 9v of a diago Daisy chain PSU (the smaller one) It worked fine with 5 other pedals

english_bob

meltedbuzzbox said:

 I used to run a Nova mod pedal thing at 9v of a diago Daisy chain PSU (the smaller one) It worked fine with 5 other pedals

Same, only mine ran off a One Spot, and I don't remember exactly how many other pedals there were (the only other digital pedal with any significant mA draw was a Boss DD20).

Nomad

Tried mine at 9V on my Strymon Zuma PSU, and it seems to work fine as well.

gibsongretschfan

See if I’d known it worked on 9v I’d never have gotten rid of it

bluenose

Sort of changes things a bit then if it could be powered by the G-Sytems onboard supply.
May buy one now if there's one going about cheap enough.