Vein-Tap Holy Driver

The Vein-Tap Holy Driver is an overdrive and boost pedal in one box, made by Vein-Tap. The maker describes it as "the only overdrive and boost pedal you will ever need," cramming two pro-level pedals into a single chassis¹. The overdrive side carries the same circuitry as the Vein-Tap Angel of Blues, while the boost side uses the Little Horn v2.0 boost circuit, giving up to 24dB of clean gain¹.

What sets the Holy Driver apart from most two-in-one pedals is the Pre / Post Boost switch, which lets you decide whether the boost drives the overdrive harder or simply lifts the finished overdrive sound in volume¹. Both sides are true bypass and fully independent, so you can run one, the other, or both at once¹.

The controls: modes, clipping and boost order

The overdrive side of the Holy Driver carries over the feature set of the Angel of Blues, including its Modern / Classic tone profile switch and a diode clipping switch¹.

The Pre / Post switch is the pedal's distinguishing control. As Vein-Tap's Ben explains in the maker's buying guide, the switch "lets you choose whether the boost cascades into the overdrive, or vice versa"². In the Pre position, the boost feeds the overdrive circuit, so a high boost setting pushes the drive into a harder, more saturated sound. In the Post position, the boost sits after the overdrive, which is the arrangement to reach for when you want the same driven tone, just louder, for a solo.

The clipping switch changes how the overdrive's diodes shape the waveform. Symmetric clipping cuts both halves of the wave equally, while asymmetric clipping treats the top and bottom differently, and the switch lets you hear the difference between the two without touching anything else¹.

Circuits from the Angel of Blues and Little Horn

The Holy Driver is effectively two existing Vein-Tap circuits in one enclosure. The overdrive side is the same circuitry as the Angel of Blues, including its Modern / Classic profile switch¹. The boost side is the Little Horn v2.0, a clean boost the maker originally launched in 2014 with "up to 24dB of high quality, transparent boost"³¹.

The v2.0 revision matters for noise. Vein-Tap says the Holy Driver uses the Little Horn's v2.0 boost, so "the noise to gain ratio is far less thanks to advanced power conditioning"¹. The boost also has a very high input impedance, over 5MΩ, which the maker says keeps the sparkle in your pickups¹.

The Little Horn circuit is versatile on its own. Vein-Tap describes using it in the preamp position to push an amp harder, or in an effects loop to make an existing tone louder without changing its character⁴. The maker's buying guide puts it more colorfully: the Little Horn "can embiggen your tone and push your tube amp into sweet, tight, musical overdrive"⁵.

The Holy Driver sits in a family of similar two-in-one pedals from the same maker. The Holy Roar pairs an Angel of Rock-based distortion with the same Little Horn boost, which can also act as an always-on buffer at zero setting⁶. The Holy Ghost pairs an '78 IC Muff-based fuzz with the same boost section, with the boost following the fuzz in the signal chain⁷. The Holy Driver is the overdrive version of the format.

Classic and Modern tone profiles

The Modern / Classic switch on the overdrive side selects between two voicings¹:

• Classic: a mellow, smooth overdrive with a boost in the mid frequencies, which Vein-Tap positions as suited to blues or gentler rock tones¹
• Modern: a flatter, more aggressive, bass-heavy tone aimed at modern rock¹

Because the two profiles change the midrange character and the low-end response, the switch effectively gives you two overdrive voicings. The Classic profile is a mellow, smooth overdrive with a boost in the mid frequencies, while the Modern profile is a flatter, more aggressive, bass-heavy tone for modern rock¹.

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