GEAR SPOTLIGHT
FRIEDMAN
MOTOR CITY DRIVE
REVIEW BY S.P. BURKE
STREET PRICE $299.99
Friedman Amplification
doesn’t have its own
Wikipedia page yet, but
it does however come
up under the page for
“Boutique Amplifiers,”
and that couldn’t be
more fitting. Founder
Dave Friedman got his
start modifying Marshall
amps for Eddie Van Halen
before finally founding his
own amp company, and
the company’s reputation
of quality has only grown
from there. Although
famous for hand-wired
masterpieces like the
BE100 and the company’s
various signature models,
it’s recently started
expanding into guitars,
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GEAR SPOTLIGHT //
pickups, monitors, and
of course effect pedals,
which is where the Motor
City Drive comes in. so Friedman’s extensive
international clientele
are not left out or
inconvenienced.
Rather than the solid-
state sounds of most
pedals, the Motor City
Drive does its damnedest
to emulate the sound
of real tube distortion,
running on 12AX7A
preamp tubes at 220
volts, similar to EVH’s
souped-up Marshalls.
Despite the high-quality
innards, the pedal is
light as a feather, housed
in a simple gunmetal
gray chassis. It also
comes with every power
adaptor under the sun, Plugging in my trusty
humbucker-equipped
Strat, I started as I
normally do with the EQ
flat and the Volume rolled
down to test the power
from the ground up. Like
an actual amplifier, it
didn’t give me anything
with the gain rolled all
the way down because
I was only running on
power volume and not
preamp volume. I’m
sometimes disappointed
by overdrives that don’t
let you go just for volume
Friedman Motor City Drive