The Dusky Electronics Toasted Drive is an overdrive pedal with a clean boost character. Premier Guitar's reviewer summed it up as "part clean boost, part medium-gain overdrive, and 100-percent useful." It sits in the territory between boost pedals and overdrive pedals: at lower settings it lifts the signal, and pushed harder it adds medium gain dirt of its own.1
How it works
The Toasted Drive does not use diode clipping, the approach behind most familiar overdrive circuits. Instead, it generates dirt with MOSFET gain stages. Premier Guitar's reviewer noted that "The Toasted Drive also uses MOSFET gain stages rather than diode clipping to generate dirt," and Delicious Audio's profile of Dusky's gain pedals described the circuit as "based on a pair of cascaded MOSFET gain stages."12
Because the stages are cascaded, one stage feeds the next, and the pedal can go beyond its own dirt. Delicious Audio noted that "the More knob can push your (actual) amp into overdrive," so with the volume turned up the pedal works as much on the amp's input stage as on its own circuit.2
Controls
The three knobs work together rather than independently. Premier Guitar's reviewer found that "The temperature (gain), more (volume), and color (treble boost) controls are very interactive with each other," which means many possible variations on the basic voice come from how the controls are set relative to one another. Players who like to explore a pedal's range will find more here than the three-knob layout suggests.1
Price and context
Premier Guitar reviewed the pedal at $175, noting that "At $175 the Dusky competes with many similar and very nice pedals."1 The review was published with a Soundcloud audio demo, so the pedal's sound can be heard directly alongside the written verdict.1
At $175, the Toasted Drive sits among many similar and very nice pedals, as Premier Guitar's reviewer put it. The review was published with a Soundcloud audio demo, and the pedal is described as part clean boost, part medium-gain overdrive.1
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Questions
How does the Toasted Drive generate its distortion?
It uses MOSFET gain stages rather than diode clipping to generate dirt. Premier Guitar describes the circuit as a pair of cascaded MOSFET gain stages, which is a different approach from the diode clipping found in many overdrive pedals and shapes the pedal's character as part clean boost, part medium-gain overdrive.
What do the controls on the Toasted Drive do?
The Temperature knob is the gain control, the More knob is the volume control, and the Color knob is a treble boost. Premier Guitar's reviewer found the three controls very interactive with each other, yielding many possible variations on the basic voice through control interaction.
Sources (2)
- Dusky Electronics Toasted Drive Review, Premier Guitar, 2022-01-30
- Dusky Electronics: More Me Boost, Toasted Drive And Octomotron Fuzz, Delicious Audio, 2017-03-23
