Ultimate Drive : Excellent pedal easily comparable to its much more expensive peers

The Ultimate Drive can very much be thought of in the same league as the Fulltone OCD rather than a 'mid heavy' drive such as a Tubescreamer. It's certainly much more transparent than a TS type pedal allowing more low end through compared to the rather narrowly filtered mid freq response of a TS.

Where this pedal really excels is, possibly surprisingly, low gain sounds - another feature shared with the Fulltone OCD - and this is what I primarily use this for. My Fender Thinline into a vintage Fender amp via this pedal yields a wonderful break up which is easily controllable with the guitars controls.

The build quality of the unit is incredibly high on the whole and the switch feels like it will take many years of hard gigging! A pleasant surprise, especially if you are keen on pedal mods, is the use of through board components (i.e. not surface mount) which is very unusual for pedals in this price bracket. Reassuringly this also makes any potential repairs much easier although I can't really see much that can go wrong.

The only real negative to this pedal, in my eyes at least, is the artwork but this is entirely subjective!

If you're in the market for a reasonably transparent, non-TS style, drive then I would strongly suggest you try one of these out before dropping more money on a more expensive option.