Tallon Electric Dual Drive

The Tallon Electric Dual Drive is a two-in-one overdrive pedal: two complete overdrive circuits in one enclosure, each with its own footswitch and its own controls. One side is inspired by the Marshall Blues Breaker, the other by the Klon Centaur, two of the most copied overdrive circuits in the pedal world¹. That pairing gives a player two distinct flavors of drive that can be used alone or stacked, with a toggle to decide which one feeds the other.

The pedal arrived from Tallon Electric in 2023, following the company's flagship pedal, The Hog Overdrive, which Pedal of the Day reviewed earlier that year².

Two classic circuits in one box

The left side of the Dual Drive borrows its roots from the classic "breaker" style circuit, the soft-edged overdrive design that traces back to the Marshall Blues Breaker pedal². The right side is what Delicious Audio describes as "a high powered, hard clipping machine based on a very expensive pedal that dons a man-horse hybrid with a pension for archery," which is to say the Klon Centaur¹. Pedal of the Day likewise calls the right side a hard clipping circuit².

Each side departs from its inspiration in ways that matter to a player:

• The Klon side adds a Low control that is missing on the original units, which only feature Treble, Gain and Level/Output knobs¹.
• The Blues Breaker side keeps the classic knob configuration of Level, Drive and Tone, and adds an extra toggle for soft or hard clipping¹.
• The left side also has a high-headroom output stage, which Delicious Audio says gives you enough clean gain to push your amp's input over the edge¹.

The Klon side feeds what Delicious Audio calls "a carefully tuned two-band EQ section," with a HIGH control that applies a shelf boost or cut to treble frequencies¹. Pedal of the Day describes that EQ as "primed and ready to achieve optimal tonal balance in all scenarios"².

The controls on each side

The two sides are laid out as separate pedals sharing one enclosure. Here is what each control does, as described by Delicious Audio¹:

The transparency toggle on the left side is worth a closer look for players who stack drives. Pedal of the Day calls it "a unique transparency toggle" that gives you extended control over chord clarity and picking dynamics², which is the kind of adjustment that decides whether a stacked overdrive stays articulate or turns to mush.

Order switching and stacking

A toggle switch lets you reverse the order of the two circuits, so you can run the Blues Breaker side into the Klon side or the other way around¹. Pedal of the Day puts it simply: "Use the Order toggle to flip-flop the two circuits to your liking"².

Order switching is a feature the Dual Drive shares with several other dual overdrives. The Finding That Tone Ámbar Dual Overdrive uses a two-position selector switch to choose the stacking order when both sides are active³, and the Keeley Tube Drive Twin Triode Dual Overdrive swaps its order when you hold down the Drive footswitch for two seconds⁴. The Cornerstone Centurio Dual Overdrive takes a different approach to the same idea, putting two Klon-style circuits in one pedal⁵.

Power and bypass

The Dual Drive runs on 9V DC from a 2.1mm center negative power supply and draws 28mA¹. Delicious Audio is emphatic about polarity: "This pedal accepts 9VDC CENTER NEGATIVE power supplies ONLY"¹. It does not accept batteries¹.

The pedal uses Soft Click Buffered Bypass rather than true bypass¹. That puts it in a different camp from dual overdrives like the T-Rex Alberta II Dual Overdrive or the Mythos Extra Hot Dual Overdrive, which use true bypass switching⁶⁷. A buffered bypass keeps a buffer in the signal path when the pedal is off, which some players prefer on long cable runs and others avoid on principle.

What reviewers said

Pedal of the Day reviewed the Dual Drive in September 2023 and came away positive about how it fits into a rig²:

Writing about the Tallon Electric Dual Drive, the source describes its left side in terms of a transparency control: "A unique transparency toggle gives you extended control over chord clarity and picking dynamics"²

The same review called it "a serious 2-in-1 pedal" and "a two-sided beast," and credited the two-band EQ on the right side with being ready to achieve optimal tonal balance in all scenarios².

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