Multiple channel drives or dirt?

Reverend

I was wondering if whether, instead of taking a distortion and a lead boost, I could get a decent pedal that had more switch to different settings?

I know of the Tech 21 Double Drive, and was wondering if anyone had suggestions of a similar type?

monquixote

The Jekyll and Hyde is decent if you like TS types for a boost.

The TC Nova Drive is extremely flexible if a little bland.

The Deucetone rat can do a cleanboost as well as every variant of RAT.

The GT500 is an obvious one, but I didn't really like it.

octatonic

I currently use an Analogman KOT.

monquixote

octatonic said:

I currently use an Analogman KOT.

Oh yeah good shout, the KoT is brilliant.

Probably not my pick for metal though.

jpttaylor

I can't say I've ever used one myself, but the Boss SD-2 has a crunch and lead channel which can be switched between with either the pedal or an extension switch.

MattG

They're quite expensive and a sod to find but my stampede SOV1 is the best sounding overdrive i have ever heard and ive had some cracking ones and the built in boost is great although unfortunately it cant be used on its own.

theres always the HT dual although i dont think it sounds big enough and for a while i had a Mojo hand FX rook royale which was great it just didnt work with the rig i had at the time.

and ive heard alot of good things about the JHS double barrel

robinbowes

Wampler do a few double pedals, ie. drive with boost. R.

english_bob

Barber have several flavours of double-dirt pedals. There's a German(?) company called Rodenberg who make several double-dirt pedals with some cool switching options.

The one I use is the Foxrox ZIM- two truly independent channels (many "dual" drive pedals are really one dirt pedal with a built in boost that you can only use with the main drive engaged) with switching jacks on the back so you can run the two channels effectively as two pedals- they don't have to be adjacent in your signal chain and they don't have to be guitar -> Ch.A -> Ch.B -> amp. Ch.B also has a very interesting EQ section that uses phase cancellation to thicken or er... thin-en your tone.

They also have a facility for you to swap the circuit boards inside the pedal to set them up as different types of dirt pedals- several tubescreamer variants, Si Fuzz Face, Big Muff and Octavia cards, a distortion that's meant to be somewhere in the RAT / Distortion+ ballpark, a transparent clean boost and a couple of less TS-like low/mid gain ODs. The pedal isn't cheap but the ZIMcards are, and the ones I have ("boutique" TS, low-gain OD and Fuzz Face) are all very good at what they do IMO.

Sassafras

Twinstomp S-21 overdrive.