What happened to the Full-Drive 2?

[HomespunEffects]

Mod Drew-

I cleaned up a few posts in the beginning of this because that's exactly how threads turn into political debate stuff, even if that wasn't the intent of either poster and they exited the light back and forth like gentlemen. I just don't want someone else without the same capacity of containing themselves to pick up an ember later on.

I did try to be as tangential as possible. Just didn't do it well.

 

[TubeStack]

Mr. Fuller made some greatly misunderstood comments on social media. I think talking about it would violate rules.

He fell out of favor due to that but the brand is now licensed to Jackson Ampworks.

“Greatly misunderstood” is a stretch.

Regardless of what he said (it’s actually irrelevant to this point), you don’t know what he meant and you don’t know how every person understood it.

Totally unnecessary and slightly inflammatory, could have just said “comments on social media” or even “controversial comments” and made a more accurate point, free of the personal/interpretational angle.

 

[HomespunEffects]

“Greatly misunderstood” is a stretch.

Regardless of what he said (it’s actually irrelevant to this point), you don’t know what he meant and you don’t know how every person understood it.

Totally unnecessary and slightly inflammatory, could have just said “comments on social media” or even “controversial comments” and made a more accurate point, free of the personal/interpretational angle.

K.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Having owned a few, and played a bunch, Fulltone are extremely well built, but ultimately mediocre-sounding pedals.

 

[TubeStack]

Having owned a few, and played a bunch, Fulltone are extremely well built, but ultimately mediocre-sounding pedals.

Yeah, I’ve never actually kept one, now that you say it. Deja Vibe lasted the longest, but even that moved on.

 

[metropolis_4]

Having owned a few, and played a bunch, Fulltone are extremely well built, but ultimately mediocre-sounding pedals.

What I always found with them was that they weren’t the best sounding pedals when I was just playing alone or at home, but in a live setting they sat perfectly in the mix.

 

[EOengineer]

In a lot of ways I think fulltones success had a lot to do with being early to the party or at least one of the first guys through the door in the boutique pedal space.

His 69 and 70 pedals were great because he kept the core circuit (fuzz face) intact but incorporated many common sense mods like the input rolloff and mid boost that overcame limitations that exist in the original implementation.

A lot of his stuff was like this. Fulltone didn’t really cover novel ground, he just extended common designs and added things like true bypass and some switchable options to allow compatibility with a broader range of rigs.

All that said - the shine isn’t there anymore. It’s a crowded space and he’s not really innovating where others are. If I want a TS or Sd1 style drive I have an almost overwhelming number of options available in the market.

 

[metropolis_4]

In a lot of ways I think fulltones success had a lot to do with being early to the party or at least one of the first guys through the door in the boutique pedal space.

His 69 and 70 pedals were great because he kept the core circuit (fuzz face) intact but incorporated many common sense mods like the input rolloff and mid boost that overcame limitations that exist in the original implementation.

A lot of his stuff was like this. Fulltone didn’t really cover novel ground, he just extended common designs and added things like true bypass and some switchable options to allow compatibility with a broader range of rigs.

All that said - the shine isn’t there anymore. It’s a crowded space and he’s not really innovating where others are. If I want a TS or Sd1 style drive I have an almost overwhelming number of options available in the market.

The FD2 stands out to me because it was such a staple for so long, and then it just vanished.

 

[gonzoknife]

I don’t think size helped and not sure if many people used the boost. There are so many other TS variants in a smaller footprint it probably simply lost out. I have the mosfet version somewhere but never use it.

 

[EOengineer]

The FD2 stands out to me because it was such a staple for so long, and then it just vanished.

I actually wouldn’t mind having a full drive in part because (as you say) they were a big deal for a period. I dont recall it sounding bad but I’ve been so enthralled with the Green Rhino for those sounds I haven’t looked around much.

It did seem the prices shot up for a bit when he was shutting things down, but I see them around again and pretty affordable.

The Deja Vibes are still expensive as hell.

 

[Sascha Franck]

What I always found with them was that they weren’t the best sounding pedals when I was just playing alone or at home, but in a live setting they sat perfectly in the mix.

No idea about the FD2, but this perfectly describes the OCD for me (I only own Mooer's Husky Drive V1 clone but I couldn't distinguish it from the original in a direct A/B comparison). It's a "just works" pedal.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Never played a full drive. Bought and ditched several OCDs, not sure what’s wrong with me lol. Ironically I like the HX model more than any of the real ones I’ve owned

He’s also just been quadrupling down with the kind of “comments” he’s been making lately. Dudes always been a massive tool before any of it got political

 

[dronerstone]

Never played a full drive. Bought and ditched several OCDs, not sure what’s wrong with me lol. Ironically I like the HX model more than any of the real ones I’ve owned

He’s also just been quadrupling down with the kind of “comments” he’s been making lately. Dudes always been a massive tool before any of it got political

Not a fan of the OCD either, dunno why, since everyone seems to enjoy them. Borrowed two different versions over the years, both sounded stiff and sterile.

Very similar experience with a FB-3 that I had for a few years, never got to bond with.

FB-1 and Ultimate Octave on the other hand -> AWESOME sauce.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

The FD2 stands out to me because it was such a staple for so long, and then it just vanished.

Probably just became readily apparent it was really big for what it did? As people got into "I need at least two flavors of overdrive and one boost; maybe a fuzz" and a lot more single pedal sized "surely this sounds better than the $89 Ibanez boxes", I can see why it would have faded.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I don’t think it’s that. He was widely disliked for a long time before that and the OCD remained popular

The Supra-Trem has also remained pretty standard.

Mick from TPS had a full-drive on his board some in the very early days of that show, but it pretty quickly disappeared to never really be seen again (despite them talking about plenty of other Fulltone pedals) and I'm pretty sure The Last Big Incident happened well after that period. So I'm in agreement with you that the fall off of the Fulldrive happened before/for different reasons than that.

The used prices is probably just a function of how many of them are out there from when it was so widely used.

 

[dronerstone]

I just checked the local used market, for some reason Fulltone listings mainly consist of OCDs (150-500€ depending on version/builder) and Fulldrive 2's (100-150€).

The price difference actually surprises me. Seems like the Fulldrive really was "forgotten", while with the OCD, Mike's antics don't seem to impact at all.

On the other hand, I guess many players over here aren't active on gear forums etc., meaning they probably have no idea.

I know a few guitarists who watch YouTube reviews to listen to gear, but never frequent any of the usual places, because of the language barrier: "it's all english, and that's difficult to understand".

And german-language forums, imho, are a bit... mehhh?