The Fulltone Fulldrive 3 (also written Full-Drive3) is an overdrive pedal made by Fulltone, with a boost section built in12. What sets it apart from a plain overdrive is that the order of its two stages can be flipped with a switch on the top panel, so the boost can either feed the overdrive or sit after it.
What it does
As an overdrive, the pedal pushes the guitar signal into soft clipping for warmed-up, break-up tones; the boost section then adds level or gain on top. The order switch is the working heart of the design23:
- Overdrive first, then boost: the boost comes after the overdrive and gives an overall lift to the whole signal, with a bit more gain3.
- Boost first, then overdrive: the boost drives into the overdrive stage, which compresses more3.
On That Pedal Show, Mick and Daniel described the two routings exactly that way: "you can either have OverDrive first and then boost or boost then overdrive," with the boost-into-overdrive order compressing more and the boost-after order giving an overall lift and a bit more gain3.
The pedal also has a third clipping mode, which the same review described as asymmetrical, giving three different types of feel in total3.
The Fulldrive 3 sits in a long Fulltone overdrive line. If you are comparing, earlier versions of the same design include the Fulltone Full-Drive 2 V2 and the Fulltone Fulldrive2 MOSFET.
In demo
In it, Mick and Daniel walk through the overdrive/boost order switch and the asymmetrical third mode, and demonstrate how each routing changes the feel of the pedal3.
Videos
Sweetwater
Jordan Brewer
Joby
Sources (3)
- Full-Drive3, Fulltone USA
- Full-Drive3, Fulltone USA
- That Pedal Show, That Pedal Show (YouTube), 2016-03-25
