tc electronic NOVA DRIVE NDR-1, Analog Overdrive + Distortion

The Nova Drive is a dual-engine overdrive and distortion pedal from TC Electronic, released around 2009. It takes the analog drive circuit from the company’s Nova System multi-effects floor unit and puts it in a standalone pedal. The sound path is fully analog, but its controls are digital. That means you can store, recall and automate settings, and control drive, level and tone in real time with an expression pedal or MIDI. The two drive engines can be routed in different ways: overdrive into distortion, distortion into overdrive, or both in parallel and mixed together. The overdrive aims at the classic tube-amp breakup sound, from warm and subtle up to high-gain leads, and keeps chords clear. The distortion is fatter and more aggressive, with a raw, crunchy character. **Controls** Overdrive section Level: Sets the output volume of the overdrive. Tone: Shapes the brightness of the overdrive. Overdrive: Sets the amount of gain. Mix: Blends the dry signal with the overdriven signal for extra clarity, note definition and punch. Distortion section Bass and Treble: A two-band EQ for shaping the distorted sound precisely. The distortion section also has gain and level controls. I've captured multiple settings of the overdrive (OD) and the distortion (DS) individually plus some combinations. You will find the OD section captured with full mix (10) in order to capture as much of the character as possible and because you can easily reduce the mix of the NAM profile later on when using it. The DS section on the other hand has no mix control. Things are denoted in the file names as follows: OD: overdrive only DS: distortion only OD=DS: overdrive and distortion in parallel OD-_DS: overdrive into distortion DS-_OD: distortion into overdrive Caution: T stands for tone in the OD captures but in the DS captures it stands for treble and you'll also find a B for bass there. For all combinations of OD and DS I avoided to list all the parameters in the file names. Instead I tried to come up with more tone descriptive terms. Depending on your setup (e.g. TONE3000 plugin) you can easily route the individual OD and DS captures however you want instead. The combined captures are mainly useful when used on hardware units where NAM slots are limited. I used a guitar with moderate output pickups (Suhr Asato HSS Strat) when dialing in the tones. So you may have to play around with the input gain, despite the profiles being calibrated, especially if you have hot pickups. I recommend watching Vertex Effects' video where this pedal was chosen as the winner of programmable drives, compared to much higher priced recent competitors (see below).