MAESTRO RANGER OVERDRIVE
One pedal – two drives
If there’s any pedal that can benefit from Gibson’s avowed two-pedals-in-one approach for the new Maestro series its the humble overdrive. Do we want a transparent low to mid gain overdrive or do we want something a bit gainier and amp-like? The Ranger sorts this by sort of giving you both, although it’s not just that one option has higher gain than the other. The Lo position of the toggle switch is where you’ll find the lower gain overdrive but there’s more to it than just that, as this setting also has a bit of your clean sound mixed in with it. There’s not much action until the Gain knob’s at 9-o’clock, (unity gain with the Output level at max), so it’s beyond that where you’ll start to hear any effect on your sound and can explore all the beyond-clean and just breaking up sounds through to a decent amount of raunch, all nicely retaining a touch of clarity with that clean element mixed in. The tone knob operating as a low pass filter will adjust the top end, maybe building in some brightness or rolling it back a touch to best match your amp sound. Get the dirt you want on the Gain knob and set the output level where you need it; once your Gain knob is beyond 9-0’clock you can use the Level knob to build in a boost for when the pedal is kicked in or to drive your amp’s front end. The Hi setting gets gainier, although not vastly so, but it does lose the clean element so the whole sound is driven. Nicely responsive to dynamics and guitar volume, this pedal’s two naturalsounding voices make it a versatile asset to have in front of your amp.