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The Fulltone Full-Drive 3 upgrades the famous drive pedal for an evolved & more natural sounding design. Featuring 3 clipping styles, switchable boost with GE dynamics, & Order toggle.
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The FD2 has been a tremendous hit for me since it came out in 1993, but I’ve always wanted to expand on it and create the ultimate overdrive/boost pedal, which I’ve accomplished with the Full-Drive3. Although it may look similar to the FD2, the FD3 is a much more evolved and natural-sounding design offering a vast array of both clean and distorted tones. Unlike its cousin, the FD3 uses both a JFET input and a JFET opamp, which helps give it the most tube-like sound you can get out of a tubeless pedal. Along with great sound, these JFET’s give the FD3 an ultra-high Input impedance which allows the pedal to mate with any type/gain of pickup and react extremely well to changes in your guitar’s volume control.
Fulltone FD3 Overdrive Boost Pedal Features:
Plug into the FD3, set the pedal’s 3-way CLIPPING toggle switch to 90’s and you’ll get the familiar 1990s FD2 smooth, symmetrical clipping with ample midrange. Set the switch to WIDE ASYM (wide asymmetrical) and more sweet highs and lows come through, along with chimey, Class-A style even harmonic overtones. Lastly, there is COMP-CUT mode, which is a popular Fulltone invention offering a not-so-clean Boost that’s pure opamp-overdrive, with no diode clipping assistance. Aggressive, cutting, and (be careful) capable of a huge volume boost to slam the input of your amp.
While the FD2’s BOOST mode merely offers an increase in distortion, the FD3 has completely independent OVERDRIVE and BOOST channels, with an ORDER toggle switch placing the BOOST channel before or after the OVERDRIVE channel. The range of tones offered by this ORDER switch will effectively knock 2-3 pedals off pedals off of your ‘board. The BOOST channel is also an extremely transparent, high-headroom 100% JFET-powered circuit, and (serial# 2548 and higher) is now Buffered-Bypass (instead of True-Bypass) so the FD3 will always drive long cables, be isolated from other effects, and always retain the highs and “feel” of your amplifier whether the pedal is turned ON or OFF!
Turning up the BOOST channel’s DYNAMICS knob (a Fulltone-exclusive Germanium diode Limiter circuit) alters the feel of the notes being played as well as subdues transient spikes which can overload your amp’s input. Those spikes can be fatiguing and damaging to the ears, the amp, and its speakers! Similar to using a limiter on the mixdown of a song in the studio, the DYNAMICS knob helps you keep your place in the live mix..like a very smart compressor. This feature can make even a stiff amp feel responsive and juicy, and sweeten the treble frequencies. Tip: Try the FD3 with a great quality (regulated)18 volt DC power supply like the Fulltone FPS-3 for an even bigger sound with more headroom. Do not use “switching type” adapters that automatically adjust from 100-240 votls, they are noisy.
I hope you get a lot of use out of your new FD3, I sure had fun designing and enjoy making it, and I believe it truly pays homage to the Fulldrive legacy while raising the bar for overdrive pedals in the process!
Unlike its cousin the FD2, the FD3 uses both a JFET input and a JFET op-amp, giving it the most tube-like sound you can get out of a tubeless pedal. Along with great sound, these JFET’s give the FD3 an ultra-high Input impedance which allows the pedal to mate with any type/gain of pickup and react well to changes in your guitar’s volume control.
3-Way CLIPPING Toggle Switch:
Discrete Channels:
Unlike the FD2, the FD3 has completely independent OVERDRIVE and BOOST channels, and the ORDER toggle switch allows placing the BOOST channel* before* or after the OVERDRIVE channel. The BOOST channel is also an extremely transparent, high-headroom 100% JFET-powered circuit.
Buffered Bypass:
Serial# 2548 and higher FD3 pedals are now Buffered-Bypass instead of True-Bypass, so the FD3 will always drive long cables, be isolated from other effects, and always retain the highs and “feel” of your amplifier whether the pedal is turned ON or OFF. Do not confuse the hi-quality JFET op-amp buffer in the FD3 with the simple single transistor buffers on other pedals. The FD3's buffer sounds rich and fat, not thin.
DYNAMICS Knob:
A Fulltone-exclusive Germanium diode Limiter circuit circuit that alters the feel of the notes being played as well as subdues transient spikes which can overload your amp’s input. This feature can make even a stiff amp feel responsive and juicy, and sweeten the treble frequencies.
The Icing on the cake? The housing is about 20% smaller than the traditional FD2
Controls:
