Pettyjohn Electronics PreDrive is essentially a highly tailorable preamp in a stompbox format—a cool vehicle for a player that doesn’t like a ton of pedals. It’s designed to be the first pedal in your chain and the kind of pedal that you never turn off. For players that rarely dabble in high-gain tones it might be the only pedal they ever really need. As the plentitude of knobs suggests, this preamp can deliver overdrive, boost, and color to suit countless stage and studio situations.
Big, Burly Control Freak
The PreDrive’s relic’d enclosure is bigger and more tank-like than an average stompbox. The pedal’s extra size is not wasted, however. The three knobs along the top are for output volume, drive mix, and input volume. The center knob, which is significantly larger than the other knobs, controls boost gain, and there are two smaller knobs for low cut and high cut. Two mini toggle switches are for the mysteriously named—but powerful—Vari-Z and harmonic drive functions. At the bottom of the control panel are two footswitches for engaging the preamp and boost. The ins and outs on the top corner of the pedal comprise three outputs—output, direct out, and buffered tuner out—and a single input.
Previewing the PreDrive
To test the PreDrive I used an Ernie Ball/Music Man Axis Sport and a Mesa/Boogie Mark IV. I also checked out its compatibility with pedals including a Hermida Audio Zendrive and an MI Audio Tube Zone.
The PreDrive can do remarkable things in the simplest applications. My Mark IV sounds pretty great clean, but by engaging the preamp using a setting prescribed in the PreDrive’s user manual, I heard much greater detail, especially playing fuller, more harmonically intricate chord voicings. From this test alone, it’s easy to see why Pettyjohn touts the PreDrive’s potential to be an “always-on” pedal. It’s like having an engineer at a mixing desk candy coating your tone.
With a really lovely fundamental clean sound in place, I engaged the boost function and ran it through its full range, which maxes out at a considerable 11 dB of clean boost. Even at the highest boost levels, the PreDrive is among the most transparent boosts I have come across. It adds very little coloration to your tone. And thanks to the boost knob’s large size, the boost level can be fine tuned on the fly very easily.
More Tone Tweaks
The PreDrive’s sweepable EQ section has a broad spectrum. The tone shaping capabilities of the low- and high-cut controls alone is impressive and can help you coax new sounds out of an instrument that might otherwise lack versatility. The low-cut knob has a range from 20 Hz to 1 kHz, and the high-cut knob has a range from 20 kHz down to 1 kHz. Adjusting these knobs I was able to go from a sharp, bright attack for funk or Americana-styled open-chord strumming to a warmer, more muted tone for jazzy chord melodies.
More tone-shaping possibilities are available via the pedal’s two mini-toggle switches. The harmonic drive switch adds midrange and presence and is designed to be used in conjunction with the drive mix knob to add light grit and body. The Vari-Z control adjusts input impedance to accommodate different pickup configurations. Engaging this switch drops the input impedance from 1 to .5?, which can soften single-coil output that sounds too harsh and brittle.
Ratings
Pros:
Can really help fine-tune your tone. Great for mystery backlines and studio work alike.
Cons:
Pricey. Can take some time to tweak.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$599 (as tested, $399 PCB version also available)
Pettyjohn PreDrive
pettyjohnelectronic.com/
Pushing the PreDrive
The manual offers directions for a touch-sensitive overdrive setting. When I dialed it up I got a killer low-gain sound that’s a dead ringer for a vintage amp cranked to 10. The output takes on a raucous edge that’s perfect for rootsy and rocking rhythm parts. As advertised, it feels very dynamic, and puts overdrive shades from dirty to near clean at your disposal depending on your attack. I loved the considerable tone contrast between strumming open chords with a heavy hand and softly picking arpeggios.
Because the PreDrive is really a tone shaping preamp rather than an overdrive, to get searing leads (especially with low gain amps) you’ll want to add in a dirt box. And you can get absolutely killer lead and rhythm tones using the PreDrive to massage your output before it hits the dirt pedal and sculpt the tone of the dirt box itself. Stacking the PreDrive’s boost on top of a distortion or fuzz shifts your output into even higher gear.
The Verdict
As versatile as it is, the PreDrive’s effects are on the subtler side. It’s an adult effect, if you will, that will reward a discriminating ear more than a player looking to tear the roof off. It’s helpful to view the PreDrive less as an effect that will radically transform your tone and more as a tool that can shape your tone in very precise, specific ways. It helps get the best representation of your guitar’s sound through your effects and amp. It can also be a recording engineer’s dream, and the transformer-coupled direct out also allows you to record the guitar tone on a second channel so you can reamp the guitar sound, or mix it with an effects-colored tone from the guitar going through the normal output.
At $599, the PreDrive costs a considerable chunk of change, but it’s beautifully made and built with components more common in high-end microphones and outboard studio signal processing gear (and you can also opt for the PCB-wired, $399 version.) If you are looking to maximize the sonic potential of your existing gear both onstage and in the studio, the Pettyjohn PreDrive might be the answer. And while it costs a pretty penny, the splurge can take your tone a long, long way.
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.