Comet Effects Hyperdrive

The Comet Effects Hyperdrive is an overdrive pedal built by Comet Effects, a new company making custom stompboxes from the workshop of builder Shane Brooks in Devon. MusicRadar's review team described it as "a darkly good-looking overdrive number": a chunky enclosure in a metallic blue and black paint job, with a bright blue operational LED on top¹.

What it does

The Hyperdrive carries the familiar trio of overdrive controls: level, tone and drive¹. Its range runs from a gentle touch on a clean amp to a full-bodied drive sound. MusicRadar found that "with the drive control set to minimum, the tone of our initially clean amp was slightly warmed up", while at maximum it delivers a fat overdrive that adds girth and heat and responds well to guitar-volume manipulation, letting players clean up or open up from the guitar itself¹.

That low-drive behavior is the classic Tube Screamer trick, and MusicRadar made the comparison directly: "As with the Ibanez Tube Screamer, we find it a pleasant surprise that, with the drive control set to minimum, the tone of our initially clean amp was slightly warmed up"¹. Players weighing the Hyperdrive against the well-known green boxes can see how the two approaches compare in Boss SD-1 vs Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer.

Power and practicalities

The pedal runs on a battery, which means taking off the base plate to swap it. MusicRadar noted there is also "an input of an optional PSU if removing the base plate to access the battery becomes too much of a chore", so a standard power supply saves the screwdriver work on a pedalboard¹.

A name to know apart

The Hyperdrive shares part of its name with the Interstellar Audio Machines Octonaut Hyperdrive, a separate pedal from a different maker. Premier Guitar's press release called the Octonaut Hyperdrive a "transparent overdrive"², and Vintage Guitar's review described it as designed to add low to medium overdrive, not high gain³. The two pedals are unrelated beyond the name, but both sit in the same low-to-medium overdrive territory.

What reviewers said

MusicRadar's verdict on the Comet was positive on both sound and flexibility: "It offers great tones and open-ended versatility." The review team added that it has "real potential for numerous pedalboards"¹.