I recently bought an Umbrella Company Hitchhike Drive pedal.
What do I think of it? Read on for my first impressions.
Table of Contents
- What Did You Buy?
- Why Did You Buy It?
- My Rig Today
- This Isn’t Voiced Like Other Tweed-Tone Pedals
- My Path To An Acceptable 5e3 Tone
- Does It Klon?
- Bassman And Twin Modes Are For Another Day
- Through A Real Valve Amp
- Final Thoughts
What Did You Buy?
I bought a Hitchhike Drive, by Umbrella Company. I got mine from the second hand market.
Why Did You Buy It?
I collect tweed-tone pedals.
No word of a lie: I’d never heard of this pedal until the day before I bought it. One evening, I sat down and compiled a list of all the tweed-tone pedals I could find on the Internet. This was one of the tweed-tone pedals that I found mention of on one of the guitar forums.
The very next evening, one of these popped up on the local second-hand market. I couldn’t believe my luck! I bought it straight away.
(Over the last few years, the second-hand market in the UK has changed quite a bit. There’s a lot less choice – a lot less variety – these days. If I see something that I’m after and I decide to pass, I’ll probably not see another one for a long time.)
My Rig Today
Today, I’m playing:
- my Fender Telecaster (aka Spot) and my PRS McCarty 594 (aka Deadnote)
- into my Axe-FX 3 (for the tuner, and for EQ toys)
- out to my pedalboard
- back into the Axe-FX 3 (for amp, cab, delay and reverb)
- out to my audio interface
- and into my DAW.
Spot is my old Fender American Deluxe Telecaster, fitted with Fender Custom Shop Twisted Tele pickups. These modern pickups are pretty close in sound to the 50’s era Telecasters that folks used through tweed amps. The bridge pickup is also pretty hot.
Deadnote is an all-stock PRS McCarty 594. It features a solid rosewood neck, which gives it a softer note attack than (say) a mahogany neck has.
On the pedalboard, I have the MP Audio Blue Brit and the Umbrella Company Hitchhike Drive in separate loops of my Gigrig G2. When a pedal isn’t in use, G2 takes it completely out of the signal chain, so that it cannot colour the tone in any way.
On the Axe-FX 3, I’m running my 57 Vintage pedal platform preset. As we get further down, I’m going to be making some changes to suit the Hitchhike Drive. I will make sure that they’re clearly explained.
All delay and reverb are from the Axe-FX 3. There is no post-processing in my DAW – except for one demo, which will be clearly explained. I will level-match all the audio demos before publishing.
This Isn’t Voiced Like Other Tweed-Tone Pedals
Struggles With My Usual Impulse Responses
Whenever I try a new (to me) tweed-tone pedal, I start off by running into my 57 Vintage pedal platform preset. I’ve designed this preset specifically for tweed-tone pedals. Regular readers have heard a lot of tweed-tone pedals through this preset before.
Here’s how Spot + the Hitchhike Drive sound through this preset. I’m on the bridge pickup on the guitar, and on the Tweed Deluxe mode on the pedal.
To my ears, that’s just not right at all. It sounds harsh, metallic, cold, and cutting. That’s not the kind of tone I’m hoping for.
Maybe it’s just voiced for blackface-style clean tones instead? To find out, I’ve switched over to my 65 Clean preset:
Oh no. If anything, that’s even harder to listen to, I feel.
Hrm. Is this voiced for a Marshall-style clean then? Let’s jump over to my JTM Pedals preset to find out:
In the room, it was a resounding ‘no’ from me. Listening back though, while I don’t think it sounds anything like my 5e3 Tweed Deluxe amp, I do think it sounds interesting. I think there’s potential there for future experimentation.
But today, I’m here for the 5e3 sound. Is there another way that I can get it from this pedal?
My Path To An Acceptable 5e3 Tone
Switching To My ‘5e3 Ideal’ Impulse Response Was A Good Start
Regular readers may remember that, last year, I built a new DynaCab impulse response setting for my Tweed Deluxe amp, inspired by my experience with the excellent UAFX Woodrow amp modelling pedal.
I wonder … will that do the trick?
To my ears, that’s a lot closer to the 5e3 sound that I’m chasing.
As well as switching impulse responses, I’ve also switched off the bright cap in the amp. That’s really helped to take some of the harshness out of the top-end.
Switching Amps Worked Even Better
By this point, I’m starting to think that the Hitchhike Drive has been voiced for quite a specific rig. The question is … what?
I’m not very knowledgeable about the Japanese guitar scene. What kind of amps are widely available or popular in Japan? Given their (trading) proximity and association with the USA, I’m going to go with Fender amps of some kind.
The obvious thing to try is a Deluxe Reverb of some kind. It has quite a different mid-range to the Princeton that I’ve been using so far. The Princeton is more mid-scooped, while the Deluxe Reverb definitely has some mid-range push to it (in comparison).
This isn’t an amp that I normally use in the Axe-FX 3. I mostly use the Princeton model, because it gets me much closer to how I remember a real Fender Deluxe Reverb Re-issue (DRRI for short) sounding. I guess it’s a day for trying new things!
Here’s my first attempt, using some of the Celestion impulse responses that I bought years ago:
While it lacks a little bit of my Tweed Deluxe amp’s aggressiveness, I think I’m getting closer to the sound I’m after.
I always find the Celestion IRs to be quite mid-heavy compared to Fractal Audio’s DynaCabs. This is easily sorted by a little bit of Pultec-style EQ in post:
Seeing as I’m already apply post-processing to that track, I decided to take advantage and also use the Pultec EQ plugin to take the edge off the top-end of the guitar tone. My very fatigued ears are incredibly grateful.
I do like the end result. I think that’s a usable Tweed Deluxe tone there from the Hitchhike Drive. It’s got a lot more vintage character than I’ve managed to capture from other tweed-tone pedals this year.
Perhaps it is a little too vintage for me?
Fractal Audio DynaCabs To The Rescue
Let’s stick with the Deluxe Reverb amp and pair it with some of the Axe-FX 3’s built-in DynaCab impulse responses. One happy accident later, I got this:
The “Happy Accident” was pairing a 1×10 Princetone IR with a 1×8 Champ IR. It wasn’t intentional at all – I accidentally enabled the Champ IR and didn’t notice for a few minutes.
But hopefully you agree with me that this has now added back in the upper-mids aggression that I was missing from just using the Celestion IRs.
I think we’re there now. It’s a little colder – harsher, perhaps – than the sound of the UAFX Woodrow. And definitely has nowhere the mid-range saturation that my Tweed Deluxe amp has (although I’m still convinced my amp is an anomaly there).
But I’d use this as a 5e3 Tweed Deluxe tone.
The Pedal’s Saturation Switch Is The Final Piece
For completeness, here’s the same amp and cab (DRRI + happy accident DynaCab IRs), only this time I’ve flipped the “saturation” toggle switch on the Hitchhike Drive.
Honestly, at this point, my ears are shot. I’m going to have to come back and listen to this later to hear what difference it makes. Because, right now, I can’t tell the difference.
I raise that because it’s important. The Saturation Switch seems to be there precisely to tackle whatever’s going on in the top-end that’s causing ear fatigue.
With fresh ears, it sounds to me that the Saturation Switch is a must-have to get that 5e3 tone out of the Hitchhike Drive. To my ears, it’s taken out the harshness, and the pedal sounds a lot warmer as a result.
Does It Klon?
My real Tweed Deluxe amp doesn’t like humbuckers very much. That’s why I like tweed-tone pedals: I can get tweedy tones with my favourite guitars.
I typically use Les Paul-style guitars in the middle position (because that’s where the magic is). With both humbuckers on, the guitar can lack a bit of clarity at times – especially if I’m using a guitar that doesn’t have what’s known as 50’s wiring.
A good example here is Deadnote: my PRS McCarty 594. It definitely doesn’t have 50’s wiring, nor (as far as I can hear) any sort of treble bleed circuit either.
Directly into the Hitchhike Drive, Deadnote sounds more usable than I was expecting:
Normally, I use my Klon KTR (or a klone pedal like the Ceriatone Centura) to add clarity and a bit of extra liveliness to a tweed-tone pedal. It’s not really needed in this case:
The Centura has added in a little more upper-mids emphasis to my ears. I think it’s subtle, but worth doing.
Bassman And Twin Modes Are For Another Day
Originally, when I struggled to get anything usable out of the Hitchhike Drive’s TD mode, I was going to focus on the Bassman and Twin modes instead.
- The Bassman Mode sounds instantly familiar. It brings the classic sound found in other tweed-tone pedals.
- The Twin Mode is very very clean. It sounds great when stacked after a primary overdrive pedal.
I didn’t capture any audio demos of these today. I’ll revisit them another time.
Through A Real Valve Amp
If I didn’t have a hybrid rig – and if the Axe-FX 3 didn’t have the DynaCab feature – would I be able to get tones that I like out of this pedal? I want to know.
I’m going to run the Hitchhike Drive through my Marshall DSL 20HR head into a pair of Victory 1×12 cabs. I have a Celestion A-Type in one cab, and a Celestion Blue in the other cab.
The short answer is: no, I don’t like the TD mode through a real valve amp at all. It sounds quite similar to the audio demos at the top of this blog post.
I wish I’d kept my Blackstar Studio 10 6L6, so that I could have tried the Hitchhike Drive through that. It’s a great blackface-voiced pedal platform amp; the pedal might have worked well with it.
Final Thoughts
Originally, I was going to put the Hitchhike Drive pedal into the same category as the Lovepedal Les Lius: best used last in the signal chain to flavour the tone, with an overdrive in front of it. I had a lot of fun using it like that for a couple of days.
Then my stubbornness got the better of me, and I had another go at getting a usable 5e3 Tweed Deluxe tone out of the pedal.
I found it a very challenging pedal to fit into my usual signal chain, at least in the TD mode. If I was still using just a single valve amp for my pedals, I’d have given up on this pedal completely.
Thankfully, I run a hybrid rig, and was able (through dumb luck, it has to be said!) to find a signal chain that gave me a pretty nice 5e3-ish Tweed Deluxe tone.
It’s a keeper – but I’ll probably reach for other pedals first, because they’re just far easier to use.
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