Featuring a newly-voiced circuit with more compression and versatility, these pedals are hand-crafted in Los Angeles for durability.
Messiah Guitars custom shop has launched a pair of new pedals: The Eddie Boostdrive Session Edition and Lil’ Ed Session Drive.
The two pedals are full-size and mini-sized versions of a newly-voiced circuit based on Messiah’s successful Eddie Boostdrive. The two new “Session” pedals feature more compression and versatility in the overall tone, and showcase Messiah’s ongoing collaboration with Nashville session guitarist Eddie Haddad.
The new Session Boostdrive schematic includes a fine-tuned EQ section (eliminating the need for the Tight switch on the earlier Boostdrive) and two independently operated circuits: a single-knob booster, and a dual-mode drive featuring a 3-band EQ. The booster consists of a single-stage MOSFET transistor providing boost ranging from -3dB to 28dB. At low settings, the boost adds sparkle to the tone, while a fully cranked setting will send your amp to a fuzzy territory. Thebooster engagement is indicated by a purple illuminated foot switch.
The overdrive contains a soft-clipped op-amp stage, inspired by a screamer-style circuit. The pedal includes a classic Silicon clipping mode (when activated, the pedal’s indicator light is blue)and an LED mode for a more open, amp-like break up (indicator light is red).
The active 3-band EQ is highly interactive and capable of emulating many popular drive sounds. Although both effects can be used separately, engaging them simultaneously produces juicy tones that will easily cut through the mix. Both new pedals accept a standard 9V pedal power supply with negative center pin.
“I love my original Boostdrive,” says Haddad, “but I wanted to explore the circuit and see if we could give it more focused features. This would make it more straightforward for guitarists who prefer simplicity in their drive pedals. The boost is super clean and loud in all the right ways…it can instantly sweeten up an amp and add more heft and sparkle to the drive section.”
Like their custom guitars and amplifiers, Messiah’s pedals are hand-crafted in Los Angeles for durability and guaranteed quality.
The Lil’ Ed Session Drive pedal includes:
- 5-knob controls, a 2-way mode side switch
- Durable, space-saving cast aluminum alloy 1590A enclosure with fun artwork
- True bypass foot switch
- Standard 9V/100mA pedal power input
The Eddie Session Edition pedal features:
- 6-knob controls, a 2-way mode switch; space-saving top-side jacks
- Durable, cast aluminum alloy 125B enclosure with fun artwork
- Easy to see, illuminated optical true bypass foot switches
- Standard 9V/100mA pedal power input
The Eddie Boostdrive Session Edition retails for $249.00, and the Lil’ Ed Session Drive for$179.
For more information, please visit messiahguitars.com.
Eddie BoostDrive and Lil' Ed pedal review with Eddie & Jax - YouTube
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Joe Glaser has been a pillar of Nashville's guitar community for decades. He's a man that dreams in mechanical terms often coming up ideas while deep in a REM cycle. Through his various companies he's designed, developed, and released a handful of "blue water" solutions to age-old instrument problems making the tolerable terrific. In this comprehensive visit to Glaser's home base, we get up close and personal with several of the products that enhance intonation and playability without disrupting the guitar's integrity.
In addition, Music City Bridge CEO Joshua Rawlings introduces us to a couple software ventures. Shop Flow helps increase productivity and efficiency for guitar builders and repair shops, while Gear Check aims to help guitarist's keep track of their collection and its history. Join John Bohlinger as he goes inside this inconspicuous six-string sanctuary.
If working on your own instruments sounds intimidating, this issue’s cover story may be the gateway you need. And yes, Ted has a troubled history of repairing his own 6-strings.
A few decades ago, my mother-in-law found an old Japan-made guitar at a yard sale for $5. It played pretty well for a guitar with a baseball-bat neck, and sounded decent in a junkyard-dog kind of way. But the tuning pegs were rusty and pretty lazy about staying in tune, no matter how much I encouraged them to do their job.
I hadn’t been playing all that long, but figured I could cure the issue. I got some replacement tuning pegs. I noticed they were a little snug going in, but I screwed them in place, and they seemed to work. At least for a few days, at which time little hairline cracks began radiating from them, and growing into larger and larger crevasses, until the headstock had multiple large canyons and the guitar became unplayable. The instrument sat around for a couple months, and I decided it was likely financially burdensome to replace or repair the headstock, so I tossed the guitar in a dumpster.
In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t thrown it out. I think it was a Teisco, for one thing, but this was years before I knew who Hound Dog Taylor was. Today, I want a Teisco! At the least, I wish I’d soaked the guitar in lighter fluid, gone to a pond, lit the beast, and set it to sail. It deserved a Viking funeral. After all, it had already traveled around a good portion of the world and likely had adventures before it ended up in a Rhode Island yard sale and in my poor custodianship.
“I wish I’d soaked the guitar in lighter fluid, gone to a pond, lit the beast, and set it to sail. It deserved a Viking funeral.”
I told you this story as evidence that I am the world’s worst guitar repair person. More evidence: Years later, when I was ripping around the country in a minivan with my raucous Mississippi hill country blues inspired outfit Scissormen, I used to carry everything I thought was necessary to make emergency repairs—an array of tools and supplies including wrenches, screwdrivers, wire, a replacement humbucker, duct tape (the miracle worker!), and a soldering iron. Trouble is, every time I had to make a solder because of a bad connection to a pot or some pesky wiring issue in an amp, it would come undone in about a week … tops. Even replacing the selector-switch cap on my Esquire reissue was a disaster. It popped off during a particularly heated set, and I ended up carving a three-inch ditch on the lower part of my right hand with the exposed toggle. With blood smeared across the face of the guitar, at least I felt as cool as Pete Townshend for a few minutes.
I’m penning this confessional because this is our annual DIY cover, spotlighting the story “You Broke It; You Fix It.” After many years and with the insight from DIY articles in guitar magazines (including PG and especially Jeff Bober’s now retired “Ask Amp Man” column), from the luthiers who’ve befriended me, and practice, I can now make some basic fixes to my amps, guitars, and pedals. But in past issues, we’ve run some DIY stories I’d never attempt, like building a Leslie-style cabinet with plywood and Styrofoam, among other materials, and re-creating the Thurston Moore drone guitar. These are great projects, but they are beyond the needs and perhaps the grasp of a lot of us. I think focusing on basic repairs and mods is generally more helpful for most players, and the heavy lifting can be done by skilled repair techs or the more ambitious and mechanically coordinated. (By the way, I’m sure everybody ever featured in “Reader Guitar of the Month” is hands-down better at guitar building/fixing/etc. than me.)
So, when I asked Nashville-based luthier Marshall Dunn to write this issue’s cover story, I requested that he focus on correcting simple guitar injuries that could happen to any instrument on any given night: a bent or loosened tuner, a divot in the body or a fret, a jack slipping into the body. And to showcase the assortment of tools we’d need to make these easy but potentially intimidating fixes ourselves. These small injuries can be caused by something as simple as a guitar falling, or a burst of especially exuberant onstage expression—like the night I ended a set with wailing feedback and slid my Les Paul across the stage toward my Marshall 4x12, where it stuck between the cabinet and the floor, making even more feedback and divoting a fret. (The next day, the late, great luthier Jim Mouradian gave me the scolding I deserved when I sheepishly took the guitar to his shop.) Be sure to check out Marshall’s video online, too, where you can see him in action as he talks you through the fixes.
So, consider this a “gateway” repair story, for those intimidated by the work or, in my case, past failures. Start here and maybe the next step will be that Thurston Moore drone guitar.