Keeley Andy Timmons Muse Driver Overdrive Pedal Reviews
Designed in collaboration with Andy Timmons, the Keeley Muse Driver combines Robert Keeley's popular modded BD-style overdrive circuit with germanium diodes and expanded voicings. The result is one of the most sonically versatile dirt boxes you'll ever plug into. Indeed, the guitarists here at Sweetwater have found this stompbox to be equally viable as a clean boost, a treble supercharger, a chimey tube-style overdrive, and a germanium fuzz. The Muse Driver features intuitive Tone, Drive, and Level knobs, along with a Tone voicing switch that cuts or boosts your low end and a Drive voicing switch that alternates between asymmetrical silicon and dual-germanium clipping modes. Beyond that, you can toggle between buffered and true-bypass switching instantly with a tap of your foot. Finally, this guitar effects pedal boasts 9–18-volt operation, netting you dynamic range and headroom by the truckload. The Keeley Muse Driver flaunts a magical combination of red-hot JFET transistors, germanium diodes, and op-amps; once you taste its harmonic-laden overdrive, you'll never take it off your pedalboard.
Earn $9 back in Bonus Bucks† OR pay $8/month with 24 month financing*
$9 Earn $9.00 back in Bonus Bucks† on this purchase when you use your Sweetwater Credit Card without financing. Select your offer in checkout. Terms
As low as $8/month
with 24 month financing*
See all payment options
Customer Reviews
Customer Added Media
Share Your Thoughts
Help other music gear aficionados by sharing your opinions of gear you've purchased.
Questions about the MuseDriver?
Or call us at (800) 222-4700
Sweetwater's Sales Engineers are regarded as the most experienced and knowledgeable professionals in the music industry, with extensive music backgrounds and intense training on the latest products and technologies. They are available to offer you personalized product advice any time you need it.
Highest Rated Reviews
The sweet Muse Driver
Whatta peddle! This gives you any voicing of drive you can imagine at any level; and still allows your string attack to push it or clean it up. This thing elongates your sweet spot of drive; be it ultra clean, like compression, all the way to thick knarwly distortion to the point of fuzz! Something here for any style I would say. For even more fun play this with Keelys Nobel Screamer for a stacked tone that'll be sure to float your boat; or tail it to infinity and beyond with the Halo! I had to have all three! and no regrets, just well worn fingers. Thanks Joe for all the help while I struggled with my G.A.S. during these purchases... you're a saint!
Gets that sound
So I have been using a Vemuram Jan Ray to get that edge of breakup tone similar to Andy's and it works really , really well. The Muse driver is similar but has added options for tone tweaking and is not as refined. It gets Andy's semi clean tone very easily. I am using mine into a Keeley Halo and in stereo with a Suhr Bella and a Friedman BE100 set clean and into 2 212 cabs with V30 speakers. It sounds huge. The Muse driver is a bit on the bright side and can get a bit harsh and grainy. I have to set the tone at 9 o'clock or it gets super bright with my Tom Anderson Strat which is a fairly dark guitar. It will require some tweaking to get right. I have it set to get the same sort of clean tone Andy does, and it does it well. The way I have it set is almost sounding identical to my Jan Ray, but the Muse driver is a touch more forward in sound and a bit grainier. I think Andy uses a Carl Martin Compressor as an always on pedal before the Muse driver so maybe that adds some warmth to it. Also it is important to note Andy uses a treble bleed in his guitar which is a big part of getting his tones with this pedal. If you want that sound he gets, I recommend this pedal.
Love this pedal
I have had a Keeley mod Blues Driver BE-2 on my board for as long as I can remember. I am a big fan of Andy's sound…and his use of the volume knob and the way he can get a range of dynamics out of his guitar. Isn't this just a Blues Driver then? Mmmm, yeah kind of…but not really. There is a sweet spot and an art to dialing in the BD-2…it's very touchy, so once I had mine dialed in…I was afraid to make any changes. Then along came the limited run Keeley AT Super Mod which was really a tamed BD-2 that you could get a great sound out of no matter what setting. I don't know what they did to it but they basically stripped away everything that could or would make the BD-2 harsh and thin or unusable. No longer were you worried to touch the knobs…it was like they bottled the sweet spot of the BD-2 and then made it shapeable.
Enter the Muse Driver. This has more in common to the AT Super Mod than the Blues Driver…after all it's built with the AT Super Mod circuit and platform. The thing that makes this pedal even better is the added drive switch that switches to the germanium diodes that now allows you to get into fuzz territory. The drive knob really allows you to get a lot of mileage by sitting in the classic AT range of drive sound…to progressively more distinguishable as that real thick hearty fuzz sound.
I can see why Andy has two of these on his board. Which leaves me to my only critique: Why not have two stomp switches on here…with the other being a saved preset? This is the same form factor as the Keeley AT Halo pedal (which is amazing!) and it has two stomp switched on it…it would've been infinitely more versatile to add one here much like Strymon has done with some of their smaller pedals with the 'Favorite' labeled switch.
All in all though, this is a great pedal and so much more useable than a BD-2. This really is a desert island type pedal because of the amount of gain you can dial in…but then so easily control how much of it you use with your guitars volume knob…having that much control literally at your finger tips gives you so much versatility without bending over and tweaking or stomping/switching to another pedal. Great job by Keeley and Andy for bringing us the Muse Driver!
I'm not sure
I'm playing through a somewhat unconventional guitar amp, but I like the sound I get from it. I'm using a tube amp connected to a 15" speaker, with only a Halo paired with the Muse. I honestly thought I really liked it until I played clean, switched it off, and it brought back the warm lows I was missing from my amp's tubes. I adjusted the tone knob, but I still couldn't achieve the warm low frequency I had before turning on the unit. Even with RK selected, it didn't bring back enough lows to suit my taste. I'm considering either returning it to Sweetwater or selling it.
Noisy
The pedal sounded okay, but had significantly more noise/hum than anything else on my board. I don't know if I received a bad unit or if that's just how the circuit operates, but I didn't find the pedal compelling enough to try again.
