NAMM 2020: Hamstead Soundworks launches the Subspace Intergalactic Driver

NAMM 2020: Hamstead Soundworks has launched the Subspace Intergalactic Driver, a versatile gain pedal that’s aimed at both guitar and bass players.

The pedal is based on Hamstead Soundworks’ Odyssey overdrive, but has tweaked the voice of the drive to focus on the midrange and low-end of the signal. This change in particular is for the benefit of bassists who’ve had issues with overdrives cutting out too much low-end. Hence the Subspace Intergalactic Driver has been designed with a flat response in mind.

The pedal’s controls are perhaps as complex as its spaceship-esque name would suggest, featuring knobs for Tone, Bass, Treble, Gain, Parallel and Level controls, and toggle switches for fine tuning the behaviour of the pedal’s EQ, clipping, and input gain.

The Parallel control which splits the input signal with a buffer, allowing the clean signal to run alongside the drive circuit, giving the option to boost and preserve the original clean dry signal and mix it with a driven tone – retain the clear, full sound of your clean tone while gaining some aggressiveness.

The Toggle switch that controls the clipping modes chooses between symmetrical, asymmetrical or dual clipping modes, allowing for the pedal to function as an overdrive, distortion or fuzz – and if you want a clean boost, the EQ toggle switch allows for the clipping stage to be bypassed completely. The other two settings of this toggle place the active EQ before or after the drive.

The input gain toggle selects how much boost is needed at the input stage: none, x2 or x5. This means the sounds of the pedal can remain consistent across a variety of different pickups with different output levels.

The Subspace Intergalactic Driver lists for £249/€299/$319, and will be on display at Winter NAMM 2020. Find out more at hamsteadsoundworks.com.