Teisco Overdrive Pedal | The best transparent drive pedal you’ve never heard of?! Review & Demo

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This is the Teisco Overdrive pedal!

Now, you might know the Teisco name from those zany 60s guitar from Japan, but the brand is back (under new owners BandLab) and they’re now making pedals (as well as the Overdrive, there’s a Boost, a Fuzz, a Distortion, and a Delay).

Find out more about the Teisco Overdrive here:

The catchily named Overdrive is a low to medium gain ‘transparent overdrive’… that is, a drive pedal that preserves that character of your guitar and amp’s tone. The pedal is designed to be harmonically rich and dynamic, and alongside its Level and Gain controls, it has a two-band EQ – courtesy of Treble and Bass controls – and a Kick switch, which gives you a juicy gain and mids boost.

Now, I love my transparent drives – I’m always going on about my Greer Lightspeed, my Paul Cochrane Timmy and my Wampler Pantheon – but the Teisco is a little different. It’s very much an under the radar find, and I’m very happy to have discovered it. It looks unusual too – it’s a different size and shape to other similar pedals, and it comes in a zinc housing – and it’s priced well, at about $130/€150 depending on where you are.

But, how does it sound? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out! In this video, I put the Overdrive through its pace with single coil pickups (in my Fender Tele) and humbuckers (in my Epiphone Les Paul) and we check out how the pedal handles pushed clean tones and everything from pop and indie to classic rock, hard rock, punk, and even a little bit of metal. And after that, I do a loop with each guitar where I tweak the pedal’s controls to show you all the extremes you can get with it.

Here’s the links to the various playing samples and info bits:


00:00 Hello!
00:16 Introduction to the Teisco Overdrive
01:31 Controls
02:02 How I heard about Teisco
02:27 Today’s rig

Pushed Clean Sounds
02:58 Clean reference tones and turning on the Teisco Overdrive
03:30 Atmospheric open indie pop chords
03:58 Poppy barre chords
04:29 60s pop rhythm tone
04:51 Country lead sound

Low to Medium Gain Drive Sounds
05:07 Groovy classic rock riff
05:33 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
06:06 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
06:40 Greta Van Fleet inspired rock riff
07:05 Airbourne inspired classic rock riff
07:28 Southern rock picked arpeggios
07:49 Indie rock rhythm tone
08:20 Edgy indie rock chords
08:48 Indie octave chords riff
09:17 Choppy indie barre chords

Medium to Higher Gain Sounds
09:36 Classic hard rock riff
10:11 Hard rock riff
10:45 Glam rock riff
11:14 Garage rock riff
11:44 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
12:20 Alternative rock riff
12:46 Green Day inspired punk rock riff
13:16 Pop punk melodic lead sound
13:49 Pop punk riff w/palm muting
14:16 Punk rock power chords
14:45 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
15:18 Modern hard rock palm muted riff (Drop D)
16:07 Hardcore chugging riff (Drop D)
16:39 Hardcore punk riff (Drop D)

Amp on Crunch Channel w/Teisco as a boost
17:12 Hard rock test
17:54 Hardcore chugging riff (Drop D)

18:38 Fender Telecaster indie rock loop
21:15 Epiphone Les Paul hard rock loop

23:43 My thoughts and how I’ve grown to love this pedal
25:04 What I like about the pedal
27:32 What I don’t like about the pedal
28:32 My conclusion on the Teisco Overdrive


My setup was as follows: I ran the Teisco Overdrive straight into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head. That went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Oh, and I used my TC Electronic Ditto Looper to play the loops.

Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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H&K Black Spirit 200 head:
TC Electronic Ditto Looper:
Focusrite 4i4 (this is the newer equivalent of my 2i4, which they don’t make any more!):
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Enjoy!


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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Teisco #TeiscoOverdrive #TransparentOverdrive #OverdrivePedal #TeiscoGuitar #TeiscoGuitars


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