Mozztronics EX-1 Expander Drive

Peerless Music is proud to be an authorised dealer for Mozztronics: Effects pedals for guitar and bass, hand made in Australia by electrical engineer and musician Andrew Macdonald.

EX-1 Expander Drive

There are many variants on two common designs. The tube screamer uses diode clipping around an op amp feedback loop. The distortion + has diode clipping to ground after the main gain stage. Often the distortion stage is followed by a low pass filter to smooth off the sharp clipping caused by the diodes. While these designs sound good, there are some features you can’t “dial in” with these types of pedals. Some people use different diodes with different forward voltage to get a different sound.

So this is the Mozztronics take on this style of pedal. We use the diode clipping to ground arrangement, but we have added adjustable asymmetry, and an expansion control which will control how much the character of the distortion changes as you push the guitar harder.

GAIN controls the amount of gain from the first stage

TONE controls the amount of treble in the output, from treble cut to treble boost

VOLUME adjusts the overall volume out of the pedal

EXPAND controls the amount of signal expansion (subtle but audible)

ASYM controls the asymmetry of the clipping.

This is great for crunch rhythm tones, and gives nice drive sounds when driven hard. This is great in combination with the TD-1 tube driver for a really smooth lead sound. We suggest using the EX-1 before the TD-1 in the signal chain and set the EX-1 for crunch rhythm, and the TD-1 for lead, but there are no hard and fast rules. Experiment with the order of your effects to find what you like.

Mozztronics uses the industry standard Boss style 2.1mm centre negative 9V DC socket for this pedal.

Mozztronics want to make their contribution to a greener world by keeping 9V batteries out of landfill. For this reason Mozztronics pedals do NOT have space inside for a 9V battery. If you do not already have a suitable power supply such as a Boss wall-wart, One Spot, PP2 etc we can supply a Mozztronics PS-2 power supply with your order for an additional $26. Please include a note with your order if you wish to add a power supply.