The Zendrive thing?

[Mark]

I have a friend who has a Zendrive and I really don't hear the "magic" from this thing. Mind you my friend does use it with a fender channel switching amp that is suppose to look like a tweed 1 X 12" amp.

I did try it through a D'Lite before I had the amp working well and to me it could have been any number of different pedals (not a fuzz face or other Ge devices.)

How are these things used to greatest effect?

[hairyandy]

I'm not a fan of the ZD. I think my old Rat slays it personally, the ZD just sounds too toppy and smooth to me. It's nowhere near as cool of a distortion as the dirty side of my D'lite.

My $.02,

Andy

[Funkalicousgroove]

I'm not a fan of the ZD. I think my old Rat slays it personally, the ZD just sounds too toppy and smooth to me. It's nowhere near as cool of a distortion as the dirty side of my D'lite.

My $.02,

Andy

I agree that pears are far superior fruit to apples or cherrries!

[tubedogsmith]

I've had two of them and I never got the first one to do what everyone said it would so I tried another. On this one I asked a friend what he thought of it. He told me the only way to get the Dumble thing out of it was into a fairly loud, clean fender amp and use the Zendrive on the brige pup of a humbucker guitar to approximate the RF/LC thing. I tried this and would have to say it works pretty good like that.

[Funkalicousgroove]

I have a Zen and I like it quite a bit, I use it as a grab and go, and can get my sound with it out of just about anything ampwise. Does it make me sound like robben ford? no. But I know for a fact that both Robben and Larry use them when they backline gear, and i can assure you that Robben sounds just like robben when he uses his, and larry sounds just like larry when he uses his.

The new "Distortion" pedal alf is making is far more "Juicy" and has a ton more gain as well as more edge, and sounds "right" at low volume, that may be a better candidate depending on your application.

[JD0x0]

i have a HAO Rumble MOD pedal its an awesome Dumble-esque pedal. the tone knob is similar to the OD trim pot in a dumble. all the way counter clockwise is crunchy high gain and bright while clockwise is more compressed warmer smoother and lower gain

[tubedogsmith]

I agree about the Rumble Mod. Both the pedals in this pic run through the clean channel of this Dumble came very close to the real thing. Very close.

[Bob-I]

The new "Distortion" pedal alf is making is far more "Juicy" and has a ton more gain as well as more edge, and sounds "right" at low volume, that may be a better candidate depending on your application.

Is that the one he had at the amp show last year, unnamed? If it is than I agree, excellent tone.... for a pedal. Hhe told me it was a high gain version of the Zen, I personally didn't hear the connection to the Zen, but it sounded great to me, far more versitle than the Zen.

[hairyandy]

I'm not a fan of the ZD. I think my old Rat slays it personally, the ZD just sounds too toppy and smooth to me. It's nowhere near as cool of a distortion as the dirty side of my D'lite.

My $.02,

Andy

I agree that pears are far superior fruit to apples or cherrries!

Point taken Brandon. I guess what I meant is that I can make my Rat (with the right amp and guitar) do what I hear in a lot of Zendrive clips. I've played a ZD before and it didn't impress me too much, it didn't suck---just not me.

Andy

[Mark]

Dear Andy

As far as Rat pedals go, I think the clones of them are often better than the real thing.

A few guys make boards etc of them, and they should work better than the real thing. I recently heard a friends new Rat and I don't think it sounded as good as my pedal, I have heard they are using some different chip now?

http://www.buildyourownclone.com/mouse.html


https://www.generalguitargadgets.com/in ... &Itemid=45

[bluesfendermanblues]

I bought a Zendrive ½ year ago, in order to have Dumble tones on my pedalboard, which I use at rehersals (where I play just any vacent amp in the room). However, It doesn't capture the complexity of tone from my Ovetone Dumble clone, at all. Rats are IMHO a great way to get marshall tones from a fender combo,

For great pedal blues sounds (think John Mayer or Doyle Bramhall) I prefer my old Fulldrive2 from fulltone........ It's not even close to dumble tones either, but, Its a good and usable and portable sound from a pedal - if you need a portable sound. I guess you build any of the tubescreamer clones from one of the above mentioned sources and get that kind of (Fulldrive2)sound. The Fulldrive2 use three different diodes for assymetric clipping, which produce tubelike overtones.

[fabiomayo]

I'm also having trouble bonding with my Zendrive... Perhaps it's the low volume thing, I don't know... (I'm a bedroom player FWIW). I'm not being able to get good sounds. With lighter picking it's better and presents some of that Dumble character on double stops.

Besides owning an original (recently purchased from Alf) I also built one from the schems on the web. I like this one a little better. It's brighter and grittier than Alf's but easier for me to get Dumble-like tones, more in the lines of HRM, Robben Ford 'Hard to please' tones than the LC smooth thing...

[Mark]

I did try a Hotcake with the D'Lite, it didn't distort the same as having the overdrive kicked in, but I thought it sounded quite good all the same.

[M Fowler]

If you are going to use pedals to get your tone, then start with a bass amp of high quality super clean sound. Then the pedals in front of the amp. No effects loops just pure raw clean power with your pedals driving the signal. Use combinations of a booster pedal and distortion pedal. I use my Zendrive set to lower gain with my Boss distortion pedals.

Mark

[butwhatif]

Zendrive--noisiest pedal ever? it's significantly noisier than 7 other boost pedals i own, it works in certain situations, but?