Until relatively recently, I wasn’t ever really into overdrive pedals.
Really, they just seemed like overkill to me: as soon as I could, I invested in a great tube amp, and that had the kind of overdriven sounds I wanted. I’m a big fan of thick, natural-sounding tube saturation.
I’d dial in tones like my 70s hard rock heroes: lock in a lead tone on the amp with the guitar’s volume knob on 10, and dial it back with the volume knob for my rhythm sound. It worked for Angus Young and Jimmy Page, why not for me?
Besides, I didn’t like the way that the overdrive pedals available to me changed my sound. I had a good guitar and a good amp: why would I want anything to color that tone?
Since then, I’ve had cause to realign my thinking. So-called transparent drives, mostly modeled on the legendary Klon Centaur, work to boost the driven signal of the amp without coloring the sound. The result is typically a more organic-sounding boosted sound.
Top 3 - Transparent Overdrive Pedals
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These days, we have plenty of transparent drives to choose from, and they all sound far better than the cheap entry-level overdrives I was exposed to as a kid. Read on to learn more!
What is “Transparent” Overdrive Anyway?
A recording engineer once remarked to me that guitar players have an annoying habit of describing sounds using other senses. Chief among these is the visual palette: Edward Van Halen’s revolutionary distorted tone was called the “Brown Sound,” and early overdrive and distortion pedals were often described as “coloring” the guitar’s tone.
Any kindergartener will tell you that sounds don’t have colors, but in reality, it’s a convenient way for guitar players to describe the varying ways that overdrive pedals affect their sound.
When you crank an old-school tube amplifier, at some point, the sound coming out of the speaker changes. Once upon a time, amps were built to stay clean at the loudest possible volume. American-style amps, like those built by Fender, are famous for this.
However, as guitar music evolved from clean, crisp jazz and early rock and roll tones into more adventurous sounds - largely thanks to rock and roll pioneers like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton - the sound of vacuum tubes under duress became more appealing.
I remember, as a teenager, asking a player why he called cranking the volume on his amp “running hot.” He told me to place my hand on his amp: you could have fried an egg on it!
Once you push the amp’s tubes beyond its capacity to produce a clean, high-fidelity sound, the sound compresses. Nonlinearity in the amplifier creates harmonics that aren’t in the original signal, significantly beefing the sound up. That’s why two-note power chords comprising only the root and the fifth sound so much better with a distorted sound than clean.
This became a popular sound in the 70s. Guitar players using the high-wattage amps of the day pushed their 100-watt Marshalls far beyond the pain threshold to achieve this glorious tone.
Of course, not everybody could push their amplifiers into this territory, and not everybody had an amp that achieved overdrive at a usable volume, or at all.
Enter overdrive pedals: early models like the Ibanez Tube Screamer and MXR Distortion Plus were designed to add preamp gain to the signal, achieving a distorted tone at lower volumes.
These early drives, however, fundamentally changed the guitar’s sound: most of the time, they shaped the midrange frequencies of the tone, either scooping or boosting the mids. This is what the term “coloring” refers to: the overdrive pedal adds its own personality to the tone.
Some players, like Kirk Hammett of Metallica, loved this sound, and used it to help their guitar cut through the mix in solos.
Others, like me, preferred the natural sound of amp-like drive.
This led to a market appetite for “transparent” or “colorless” drives that only boosted the guitar sound. It’s the most amp-like of pedal-based overdrives.
The flagship model for transparent drives is the legendary Klon Centaur, which, at this point, is far too expensive for most guitar players, including me.
However, there’s no shortage of transparent drives that echo the dynamic response and range of the Centaur, often affectionately called Klon clones, or Klones for short. There’s the awesome Wampler Tumnus, as used by Foo Fighter Chris Shiflett. Other transparent drives like the Fulltone OCD use different circuits for the same result, and avoid the association with the Centaur accordingly.
There’s even some not-strictly-transparent drives like the EHX Crayon that can color your tone (as the name implies) and have the capacity not to color it at all, too.
In this list, I’ll be going over my favorite transparent drives on the market today.
5 of My Favorite Transparent Overdrive Pedals
1. MXR Timmy
At this point, the story of the Timmy drive is well-known. Paul Cochrane built a pedal designed to dirty up a guitar signal that retains as much of the clean (or less driven) sound as possible.
MXR Timmy
The demand, predictably, far outstripped supply, so Cochrane eventually partnered with MXR to mass produce this gorgeous overdrive.
I prefer the Timmy for smoother, lighter drive sounds. I tend to use it in front of high-headroom American-style amps for driven tube tones.
I find the Timmy’s overdrive character to be sweeter than most other drives. It’s one of the clearest pre-amp drive sounds I’ve ever played: I find that I retain all my pick articulation and the subtle nuances of my vibrato even at higher clipping levels. Softer playing yields sweeter, bluesier sounds. Harder playing leans into more Texas blues or country-rock territory.
The ultimate test of a transparent overdrive is how well I can hear individual notes within a chord. With the Timmy, even denser extended jazzy chords played Oasis-style as open as possible don’t go into unwanted phase and mush. I can make out every note in a chord, clear as day.
The EQ knobs aren’t overly coloring, although they do add or remove frequencies reasonably well. Most useful is the bass knob, which can help add definition or warmth to the distorted tone without becoming flabby or inarticulate.
Overall, for lighter, bluesier drive sounds, it’s hard to argue with Timmy.
2. Greer Lightspeed Organic Overdrive
The Greer Lightspeed is a useful low-gain overdrive. It’s appreciably small on a pedalboard, about the size of a compact Boss pedal.
Greer Lightspeed on the pedalboard.
As I expect for a transparent drive, the controls are nice and straightforward: Loudness, Drive, and Frequency.
These controls actually reminds me more than anything of the Proco Rat! Having once owned, toured, and recorded with the Rat, I was excited to use these familiar controls.
Loudness is really just the output of the pedal. It’s self-explanatory.
Drive is the amount of gain the pedal offers. The pedal doesn’t really add gain or preamp fizz until past twelve o’clock: to the left of this position, it really just adds poweramp-like compression and saturation. It’s almost like an AC/DC adjacent sound. Turning it up, even cranking it, adds noticeable gain, but not enough to go into full-bore distortion. It stops turning up at sounds reminiscent of 2000s garage-rock overdrive.
The Frequency knob acts as a filter for either the low or high end. I used this in front of an edge-of-breakup amp, setting the knob to filter out low-end flab, and it nicely tightened up the sound.
The Frequency knob is great for taming working with the natural sounds of the amplifier it’s playing through. While it doesn’t work fully transparently, as removing or adding frequencies is the very definition of tone coloration, the ability to set the Frequency knob to highlight those frequencies best represented by a guitar-and-amp combo really does bring out the best in any given guitar tone.
It actually reminds me more than anything of the low-gain overdrive of Marshall’s combo amps! Dynamic response is pleasingly sensitive, really inviting nuanced, expressive bluesy playing.
I’d tend to use this as an always-on low-drive pedal or as a “sweetener” for solos. I think it sounds best as the base level of drive for a full set, or as the source of drive for solos against a clean guitar tone.
3. JHS Morning Glory
The JHS Morning Glory is one of the most popular transparent drives out there. I’ve been attending and playing gigs for my entire adult life, and I’ve seen the Morning Glory on more pedalboards than I can count.
JHS Morning Glory
I’ve heard the Morning Glory best described as the ultimate “amp plus” pedal, and I’m inclined to agree. I love it in between my Marshall Plexi and my Les Paul. It simply boosts and adds to that distinctive combo without taking away any of its character.
I find the Morning Glory very touch-sensitive. As I’ve written previously, I tend to ride my guitar’s volume knob live when switching between lead and rhythm tones. The Morning Glory accommodates this very well: at full blast, it’s smooth, pleasing overdrive. Rolling my guitar knob down to six takes away the teeth and leaves me with a versatile, still driven rhythm tone.
I tend to play old-school hard rock and blues-rock with this pedal, although it excels at modern rock-infused country, too. The Drop D riffage of Luke Combs or Jason Aldean sounds great with this pedal.
Similarly, I find that it reacts very well to picking dynamics. Harder picking yields a more aggressive, distorted sound. Softer picking comes out sweeter and cleaner, if not totally Fender-amp clean.
It’s a great base-level drive, and can be used as a starting point for pedalboard gain staging, John Mayer style. It’s rare for me to say it, but in this case it’s warranted: believe the hype. The Morning Glory is everything guitar nerds claim it to be.
4. Caline Pure Sky
At this price point, it’s worth picking up the Caline Pure Sky just to try it.
The housing is a little bigger than the standard Phase 90 MXR size, a little smaller than a Boss enclosure.
Caline Pure Sky
Curiously, although this pedal claims to be based on the Timmy, I found it much more useful for higher-gain applications than the Timmy.
At lower gain levels, around the edge of breakup, the pedal is a little too transparent. It became slightly harsh and edgy. Rather than smoothing out the edges of my clean sound as the volume went up, it exaggerated them! The EQ knobs did little to tame this tendency.
However, at grittier gain levels, this harshness subsides. I used it in front of my Marshall with the Marshall already pushed into overdrive, and the resulting higher-gain sounds were much more usable.
I actually found it much more useful as a lead-guitar boost than as a base-level rhythm guitar drive. It’s not quite as responsive or dynamically rich as the Timmy. It compresses well enough, however, so I tried out a few Gary Moore blues licks as found in “Still Got The Blues” and was very impressed with the sound.
It’s not exactly Marshall-in-a-box territory, but it does a good enough job of adding drive to an already pushed amplifier. In that way, it’s an excellent lead boost, and if, like me, you prefer to keep your guitar tone intact for solos, that’s a good thing.
5. PRS Horsemeat
Generally, I like my guitar builders to build guitars, my amp builders to build amps, and my pedal builders to build pedals. I wouldn’t go to a plumber for carpentry, after all.
The PRS Horsemeat might be the pedal to change my mind.
PRS Horsemeat
The name, which reminds me of the local delicacies I tried in Sicily, implies that PRS wants to eat other Centaur clones for breakfast.
It’s certainly big enough to: it’s by far the largest pedal I’ve tried, particularly given its relatively sparse control array. That does make it easy to dial in settings as I experiment with it. No fiddling between close-knit knobs here.
The Horsemeat, to me, feels like a transparent overdrive on steroids. With the Gain control lowered, and the Level control increased, it’s a very loyal clean boost. It almost feels like accidentally stepping on a volume pedal!
Slowly turning up the Gain knob, however, has a nice even taper, bringing the sound from clean boost into rocking overdrive and even the brink of full heavy metal worthy distortion. This is more gain on tap than any transparent drive I’ve ever tried, and all the sounds are usable.
It’s versatile enough to use as the sole source of overdrive and distortion in a pedalboard, assuming you don’t need to play anything heavier than, say, Deep Purple or Dio.
The tonal goodness applied just as well to all my guitars.
My Les Paul, by far the highest-output guitar I own, pushed it into full-powered hard rock territory. Searing leads, powerful rhythms. It was really satisfying to rip into some high-speed solos and hear all my hard-earned alternate picking loud and clear.
Similarly, my 335 worked well for a range of drive tones, especially at lower gain levels. Even my friend’s Stratocaster I borrowed yielded some awesome Southern rock sounds.
If transparent drive isn’t enough, the Bass and Treble EQ knobs work very well to highlight or remove certain aspects of the guitar’s tone. Tube Screamer-esque mid hump is achievable here as well as Klon-like transparency.
PRS really knocked this one out of the park: I’m very impressed with their foray into pedal design.
Transparent Overdrive: Your Tone, Just Bolder
Guitar players, myself included, can talk about the intricacies of transparent overdrives for hours. Dynamic range, touch sensitivity, gain on tap, and the all-important retention of the beautiful relationship guitar and amp are very important to me when trying out a new pedal.
In this article, there’s no shortage of awesome transparent overdrives that behave a lot like a naturally pushed amplifier. There’s never been a better time to love playing transparent drive.
Warm audio centavo
Octonaut hyperdrive
Keeley Red Dirt [slightly coloured]