Emerson Custom Guitars EM Drive

The EM Drive is a guitar effects pedal from Emerson Custom, an Oklahoma-based maker of handbuilt pedals. It sits in the overdrive category, the family of pedals that push an amp into mild breakup, and it sits alongside the maker's other drives such as the Paramount Overdrive.¹

What it does

The EM Drive is an overdrive pedal, the effect type players use to add grit and sustain without changing the basic character of the guitar and amp. Emerson Custom builds its pedals by hand, and the EM Drive was featured on Pedal of the Day in May 2014, which put the young maker in front of a wider audience of players.¹

For players comparing drives, the EM Drive belongs to the same broad family as the Boss SD-1 and Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer, the pedals that set the template for the category. Where it differs is in its origin: it comes from a small builder rather than a mass manufacturer, in the same spirit as Emerson's later handwired designs.¹

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