T-Rex Hobo Drive

     This pedal is one of the better overdrive/distortion pedals I've ever played.   It's basic sound is like the gain channel of a high-end tube amp.   It's got some of the most tube-like, textured drive sounds of any pedals I've ever played, especially for a solid-state pedal.   At $280.00 street price, it's a bit pricey.
     It's got four knobs.   One for preamp, one for master, one for tone, and one for boost.   It also has a toggle switch, it switches between pre and post, and controls the order of the boost in regards to the overdrive section.   The preamp knob controls the gain, and ranges from a light overdrive to a medium gain distortion.   The break-up is refined and grainy, with the touch-responsive, tactile sound of a tube preamp, although this pedal is a solid-state pedal with no actual tubes.   It bristles with complex harmonics and has a chewy, tube-like reaction to your playing.   The master controls the overall volume of the overdrive/distortion and has enough range to overdrive the front of your amp or, with it backed off, to offer unity gain settings with no problems matching levels.   The tone knob offers a wide variety of sounds, from a warmer, wooly tone to a bright but not screechy slightly thinner tone.   All of the available settings are useable and sound good.   The boost knob goes from unity gain all the way counterclockwise, up to a huge bump in volume all the way clockwise, and it's engaged when the boost footswitch in on.   The drive and boost functions work alone or at the same time.   With the toggle on pre, the boost is placed before the drive.   With this setting, the boost is less noticeable volume-wise, and increases the gain depending on the setting.   The higher the boost, the more gain and overall volume.   With the toggle in post, the boost doesn't increase the gain any, but the increase in volume is cleaner and more noticeable.     The footswitch on the left turns gain channel on and off, the footswitch on the right turns the boost on and off.
     This pedal is definitely a unique sounding and complex-sounding overdrive/distortion, but buyer beware: while the pedal was designed in Denmark, it's manufactured in Taiwan.   Despite this fact, they still have a normal street price of $280.00, which IMHO is kind of a rip-off for an Asian-made pedal.   I got mine for $100.00 from Musician's Friend, but the special price is no longer available.   It was a decent deal at that price, but anything over that is too much to pay for an import pedal, especially when there are plenty of US-made pedals available for around that or less, or even just a little more...