Citadel Particle Drive

I have been collecting drive pedals, be it distortion, overdrive, fuzz etc, since the late 90s. I have maybe 50 + drive pedals. Maybe more. I don’t know, I would need to count. But I have collected all these in my pursuit of chasing tone. After living with this pedal for some months, I have concluded, that if I could only use one drive pedal out of all I have, it would be the Particle Drive.

Citadel electronics are a new company, and I became interested upon finding out about Santiago Alvarez’s involvement and design. His reputation precedes him, because this pedal does not disappoint!

I seldom write reviews, but credit where credit is due, and I fear that people might sleep on this pedal and indeed, this company, with there being higher profile competition out there from the big name manufacturers in the high gain pedal stakes.

I have tried, and indeed own, many of them, and after playing with this pedal for weeks and weeks, Santiago Alvarez seems to understand and get something about guitar tone and feel, that many manufacturers don’t.

The particle drive has the usual gain, tone, volume controls, but it also has a built-in noise gate. The noise gate is superb. Superb! Having had experience with quite a few different noise gates over the years, the particle drive noise gate, does not in anyway alter the sound nor chop notes off prematurely. There is a lot of gain on tap, and the gate keeps things absolutely quiet, without feeling like there is a gate on it at all. It’s a gate that doesn’t feel like a gate. It’s just magic which takes away the noise, leaving your tone in full, letting notes sustain freely. It essentially takes away everything you don’t want, leaving everything you do. It is well done.

This is the same gate, that Santiago designed for the Dynazero pedal, and must say it’s the best gate on the market.

It’s also refreshing that such a pedal offers the amount of gain it does. Many companies, and I have purchased many, boast high gain, but fall short. The particle drive, really delivers the gain that is perfect for single note soloing especially. Whilst also offering addictive crunchy rhythms, if you back the gain down. While it is cliched, for many companies to say, their pedal feels “amp like” or “amp in box” again, clever marketing sometimes falls short. What the particle drive excels at, is the FEEL. It genuinely has the response and feel of a valve amp. One of the very few solid-state pedals that does actually deliver this quality.

This is something that’s very important to me, and I imagine a lot of players, the particle drive doesn’t just sound great, it also feels great to play under the fingers.

There is a character selector switch, which revoices the pedal. Classic, Balanced, and Modern. This switch seems to shift the midrange. Not just post gain and clipping, but also it appears to shift the midrange before the gain stages. Classic, is more a Marshall voicing, Balanced (my personal favourite) has this lower midrange fatness, and Modern is much tighter, voiced for more contemporary metal styles.

I just leave mine in the Balanced mode. It also excels at a quality, I have been seeking for years. And that is, somehow it manages to keep the high strings, and high notes going up the fretboard, fat and warm sounding, yet it keeps the low notes on the low strings, defined without becoming boomy or muddy.

I have never experienced a distortion/drive/fuzz pedal do this before. Usually with most pedals, if you get the high notes to sound fat and warm, like on a fuzz, the low notes become too muddy and boomy. And if the low notes are articulate and defined, the high notes are too thin and screechy.

I don’t know how it does it, but the particle drive seems to balance this, making the tone even and balanced across the fretboard. In my experience, this makes the particle drive unique alone.

I can’t help but think Santiago’s design of Joe Satriani’s signature Marshall, and working on this very issue for him, as I know this was a problem Joe wanted solving, has gone into this pedal.

Overall, this is a very sophisticated distortion pedal. It’s more than a distortion pedal, in that, it’s really a high gain drive channel in pedal (a genuine amp in a box) that excels at being put in front of a very clean amp or DI’d ; easily being the primary gain and tone source. Yes, you can also use it to drive other gain sources or the front of an amp which already has gain. And that noise gate will come in very handy, if you do.

It has a rich harmonic tonal quality, which has made 99% of my drive collection obsolete. I have had the particle drive on my board since I got it. It ended up, kicking off a number of pedals, and it has remained ever since.

Not to mention, it is also one of the lightest pedals I own, owing to its aluminium design. It is strong and sturdy, yet extremely lightweight! A quality aesthetic design.

So yes…if I could only take one drive pedal to a desert island, it would be this one. This is a genuine review, and I am not affiliated with the company. This is simply something I have been passionate about for years and have a lot of experience in.

I have experienced so much frustration and disappointment with gain pedals over the years, so when one comes along, and seems to solve, not just one, but multiple tone problems, all at once, and delivering all that I had hoped for, then I believe it needs to be championed. Thanks.

I bought this as an afterthought, not really expecting much, but this pedal was a big surprise. I have used many overdrive and distortion pedals over the years, including some that are much more expensive than this one; but this beats them all. It's so good I bought two, and I now hardly use any other of my overdrive and distortion pedals. Here's why:

1. It has a HUGE usable gain range. The manual states that "the effective gain staging allows the pedal to deliver mild overdrives as well as full blown high gain tones." This is not an exaggeration. Some other high-gain pedals sound 'strangled' when the gain is set low. This one sounds great from almost clean to extremely high gain; and this is all from a single channel. I would say the maximum amount of gain available is approximately as much as the Friedman BE-OD pedal.

2. It sounds better than other distortion pedals. The gain is smoother and more consistent throughout the guitar's register. Very high notes sustain and sound thick. Low notes do not sound muddy or woofy. I would say it's best for lead playing, and any rhythm sound that isn't the ubiquitous agressive raw metal or 'chainsaw' sound. Although it still is an extremely high-gain pedal.

3. The noise gate works well but seems to have almost no negative effect, even on the highest setting.

4. The 'TONE' knob has a huge range. Even though it's only one knob, it can go from extremely dark to extremely bright.

5. The 'CHARACTER' switch actually works well. The three settings are noticeably different. Some other pedals' mode switches are so subtle that I can barely hear any difference between the modes. This one is different. The 'CLASSIC' mode is the brightest and is best for lower gain. The 'BALANCED' mode is darker and smoother and is a good all-round mode. The 'MODERN' mode is a little brighter and tighter.

Citadel Electronics is a new company that no one seems to talk about. There are hardly any reviews available of the Particle Drive. I think that if this pedal were made by one of the bigger companies it would be raved about everywhere.