XTS Custom Pedals Winford Drive

The Winford Drive is an analog overdrive and distortion pedal from XTS Custom Pedals, also known as Xact Tone Solutions. It is built to cover a wide range of gain tones from one box: RockBoard's PedalPedia describes it as adapting to nearly every situation, "going from light overdrive on country stages, to big wooly distortion on the hardest rocking gigs"¹. When it was announced in May 2015, Premier Guitar reported the company's claim that it was one of the most versatile guitar effect pedals².

What it does

The pedal's central idea is responsiveness. according to RockBoard's PedalPedia, the Winford goes beyond the usual trick of cleaning up when you roll back your guitar's volume control: small changes in playing dynamics translate into a large palette of tones¹. The Gain knob alone covers tones from very light overdrive to monstrous distortion¹.

The controls are few but wide-ranging. Guitar Interactive Magazine's Jonathan Graham wrote that the pedal "allows access to a huge variety of distorted tones via its simple, but powerful controls"³. His verdict on its range: "Delivering everything from light grit to crushing grunge, the Winford Drive is a flexible pedal that has it covered for just about any OD tone needed"³.

For a player, that places it in the camp of gain pedals meant to stay on all night and follow the guitar rather than fight it. If you are comparing it with other gain stages, see the site's pages on Overdrive Pedals and Distortion Pedals for how the two effect types differ.

Power

The Winford Drive runs on 9V DC, center negative, and its circuit is analog¹.

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