Wampler Paisley Drive

Another excellent pedal by Wampler, and Brad Paisley’s signature overdrive.  Info about the original:

Since late 2009, we discovered that Brad Paisley was using Wampler Pedals. He started with the AnalogEcho, then got an Ego Compressor and then had the Underdog overdrive.


Everything was great until his tech at the time, Chad, mentioned to Brian that Brad still was not quite settled on the overdrive sound he was getting from his live rig… could Wampler maybe look at making a pedal …??


Brads requirements were quite “simple”… it needs to be clean but get crunchy with some “beef” to it. It needs to have a fluid tone when soloing. I needs to add a little hair to the tone but then but then has to be able to give flat out ball busting gain, oh… but please do not wreck the tonality. It needs to have everything, in a pedal format, but do not make it sound like a pedal…!


Over a period of months, Brian made some circuits and sent them off, there were a couple of “tweaks” here and there to be made and then finally, when official “proto #2” landed it went straight into the live rack and out on the H20 world tour.


That prototype has now been made into the Brad Paisley signature “Paisley Drive” and goes with Brad wherever he goes. When you see Brad live, or performing live on the TV, and you are blown away by his overdriven tone, it’s the Paisley Drive.


The truly great thing about this pedal is that it’s not only Telecaster style guitars that it works so well with, it brings the best out of your Strat or anything you may have loaded with humbuckers. You no longer need to have individual pedals for your guitars; the Paisley Drive will make each one sing.


The inbuilt tonal controls, the presence and mid contour switches, will make this pedal the single most versatile and complete overdrive pedal you have ever owned. In fact, we believe it might be the last one you ever buy…


Brad Paisley:-
“…we actually recorded this (pedal) in the studio, you know, trying it out. I turned up a Trainwreck Amp that I’ve got and compared the sound of the distortion and it was very, very similar. And that’s a very good test because any time a pedal can mimic a great overdriven amp then you’re on to something…”

And the bill of materials:

Group Name Qty
Capacitors 51p 1
Capacitors 100p 1
Capacitors 22n 1
Capacitors 220n 3
Capacitors 470n 1
Capacitors 1u 4
Capacitors 220u 2
Resistors 100R 3
Resistors 200R 1
Resistors 220R 1
Resistors 240R 1
Resistors 300R 1
Resistors 1K 4
Resistors 2K2 1
Resistors 10K 8
Resistors 511K 2
Resistors 1M 1
IC JRC4580 1
Transistors J201 2
Diodes 1N4148 2

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