Messiah Guitars Signature Eddie Haddad BoostDrive is a superbly versatile everyday gain machine
The Eddie Haddad BoostDrive is derived from everyone’s favourite green overdrive, while it quickly moves you way beyond its humble origins. At its core you have a supremely versatile screamer style symmetrical soft-clipping overdrive with amazing dynamics and fantastic guitar knob gain cleanup. On the other side a really smart MOSFET Boost - which takes you from totally clean, through elegant tone enhancer, and through to a sort of fuzzy Tweed style voicing - which I particularly love.
In terms of the overdrive side - you have the full gamut of screamer style voicings from elegant buttery smooth overdrive through Marshally crunch, and on to pretty imposing metal styles - when combined with the boost. The two Voicing Mode options - Silicon and LED give you even further range - where each has its own distinctive character. And the Tight switch adds edge and bite to the output.
I was fortunate to get one of the last of the Blackout Limited Editions of 150 I believe it was, while only the standard Army Green version is currently available as per the below visual.
Note that in the top visual I’ve spruced up my copy of the BoostDrive with my favourite Magpie Aluminium Knobs from Love My Switches - I just felt they further elevated the look of the pedal!
Controls - Drive, Boost, Level, Tight Switch (on side), Mode : Silicon (Green) / LED (Red), Low, Mid, High, Boost Footswitch, Drive Footswitch.
All the control knob tapers are even and predictable - meaning the pedal is incredibly easy and quick to dial in. For me it's somewhat reminiscent of the Jackson Audio Broken Arrow - which has a similar extended range concept of core screamer with 3-Band EQ and smart boost/s - while each of those pedals are pretty distinct in their own way, and have their own advantages. Generally the BoostDrive is a joy to deploy - and once you get a handle on the core voicings - really predictable and incredibly dynamic in how it reacts. And apart from throwing in a 3rd Asymmetrical clipping Mode option I don't feel there are any other obvious enhancements or improvements to be made here.
A good starting point in Boss-fashion - is having all the controls set to noon - and as the LED Mode can get somewhat more saturated you should start off in Silicon Mode - gradually ramp everything up, add Boost for extra pep, and then flip over to the LED Mode for even more Gain. This is an incredibly wide-ranging gain machine with several gears in its wheelhouse - and can be used in a variety of ways to deliver a variety of styles - including even some Fuzz-y voicings that I really like. There is some really clever engineering at work here - including especially how well the core Drive and MOSFET Boost complement each other and how well they stack.
Eddie has further done a superb job with suggesting useful and highly musical presets where the Maximum Overdrive, Tweed on Fire and Buttah Drive are particular favourites from the first set of 8 - with some slight adjustments needed for your own guitar and rig - but generally pretty much very close to those settings. These further underline just how versatile this pedal is and how many different flavours the pedal can deliver.
From the 2nd Set of recommended Presets - I particularly like Riffs of Rover, Thrash and Burn, and Clobber Drive. Those 3 give you further insight into how broad a palette we're dealing with here.
To add to those 16, I have a further one for my own preferences - which I call 'Max Harmonics' or 'Percolator' - it has the following settings - Drive, Boost, Level all @ 3 o'c, Low all the way back, and Mid and High @ Max - in LED Mode, with Tight Switch On - and both Footswitches on. This sort of doubles down on the Tweed on Fire setting - but where you need to dial back the Boost a touch from Max to 3 o'c otherwise you get too much compression - this setting is all about the harmonic content - and when you let the chord ring out you this kind of percolating oscillation which is really cool.
The Messiah Eddie Haddad BoostDrive is available for order right now (Standard Edition), from the Messiah Guitars Webstore - for $279.
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