Greer Amplification Lightspeed

The Greer Lightspeed Organic Overdrive is a compact overdrive pedal from Greer Amps, handmade in Athens, Georgia, and first released in 2013¹. Greer describes it as delivering "natural light to mild overdrive," and that is the whole idea of the pedal: it was built with the specific purpose of being a light to mild overdrive, one that can be set to sound like your original signal, which is what players usually mean by "transparent"²³⁴.

Delicious Audio calls it "a very transparent and touch-sensitive low gain overdrive that lets your original tone shine," with rich harmonics, complex but smooth clipping, and sensitivity to pick attack³. Premier Guitar's reviewer put the gain range in concrete terms: it starts crystal clear and maxes out somewhere in the mild drive range, so it is not a thick distortion pedal⁵. Guitar.com's buying guide characterizes it as "a hugely popular boutique overdrive that specialises in adding dirt without colouring your tone too much"⁶.

A low-gain, transparent overdrive

The Lightspeed sits at the clean end of the dirt spectrum. Where a Tube Screamer-style pedal pushes a mid hump and colors the sound, the Lightspeed is tuned to leave your amp's character alone and simply add dirt on top. Delicious Audio describes it as the kind of overdrive that makes your amp sound like itself, but better, and notes it can be set so the output matches the original signal³⁴.

Premier Guitar's reviewer found it works two ways: as a transparent boost, or as a tool to push a tube amp into breakup⁵. Pedal of the Day's Mike B, reviewing it in October 2014, judged it a great boost, tone enhancer and light overdrive, and a 2025 revisit by the same site notes it has remained a go-to overdrive for players across many genres more than a decade after it first appeared⁹.

The pedal has also found its way onto professional boards. Delicious Audio reports it is on tour with Peter Stroud, the guitarist known for his work with Sheryl Crow and others³. On That Pedal Show, the Lightspeed appeared in a 2018 overdrives episode, played first with a Gretsch¹⁰.

The controls

The front panel is deliberately minimal: three knobs and a footswitch³.

That is the whole interface. Pedal of the Day's original review walks through it plainly: "Drive, of course, controls the Drive," "Loudness is your volume control," and "Freq is your eq or tone-shaper"⁸. There are no toggles for clipping modes or separate bass and treble controls; the Freq knob carries all the tone shaping on its own.

Power and bypass

The Lightspeed is true bypass, so with the pedal off your signal passes straight through²³. Power comes from either a 9-volt battery or a standard center-negative 2.1mm power supply, the same arrangement as most pedals on the market, so it fits a normal pedalboard power supply³.

One practical detail from Premier Guitar's review: the battery compartment is not a snap-open door. Popping off the four back-plate screws is what gets you to the 9V battery compartment, so battery swaps take a screwdriver⁵.

History: a Timmy and Zendrive lineage

The Lightspeed first appeared in 2013¹. Aion FX, whose Celeritas project documents the circuit, describes it as "a stripped-down transparent overdrive inspired by circuits like the Timmy and Zendrive," and says the circuit "is very carefully tuned and has earned its spot on the pedalboards of many A-list musicians"¹. Guitar Pedal X goes a step further on the lineage question, reporting that the Lightspeed is "supposedly evolved from the same source" as the Timmy¹¹.

The pedal became the pedal that gave Greer its following. Delicious Audio has called the Lightspeed "a true 'sleeper hit' of the stompbox industry," the pedal mostly responsible for Greer's growing reputation¹². Its higher-gain sibling, the Southland Harmonic Overdrive, extends the same approach into more saturated territory, while the Lightspeed itself stays with the transparent, light and mild character players describe it by⁴.

The circuit has also spread beyond Greer's own enclosure, with other builders and DIY projects drawing on the Lightspeed's approach.

Versions and availability

The Lightspeed is available in a multitude of different color variations¹³, including the custom Gameday Black and Silver Britches editions with red LEDs noted above². Greer builds pedals to order, with current shipping within 1 to 2 weeks of order and payment². Two dated list prices exist: $200 as of June 2025³ and $249 as of March 2026⁷.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions