DryBell The Engine Foundation Preamp

This is where The Engine enters the game.

With mostly British, non-master-volume amps in mind, we have created a foundation preamp which allows you to get that cranked Tube-like distortion sound on almost any amp, but without the need to play at ear-shattering levels. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing in your bedroom or a stadium arena, you’ll have that classic Rock sound ready to go at any volume!

The Engine consists of two fully analog sections.

Side A is very carefully tuned to capture the sound, feel and dynamic response of a real 60’s British NMV amp. It’s open sounding and very touch sensitive so the amount of dirt on tap is easily controlled by your pick attack. Besides familiar controls such as Level, Gain and Tone, we have added a special feature called Shape. It is a unique control which helps you adjust the overall character and level of the mid frequencies. It’s a key feature for adjusting the voice of your foundation tone and it can really help you fine tune the tonal details in your sound on any amp that you’re playing.


Side B‘s most powerful feature, Range(master) is our take on the Treble Booster from the 60’s. Range controls specific mid-frequencies whose complex overtones are great for pushing through the mix, whilst also adding some of the nicest sounding sparkle to your tone. Besides that, high headroom and distortion-free Clean Boost (thanks to the high internal power supply voltage) and versatile Low & High EQ will help you even further in tailoring your tone. For those of you who are familiar with our Unit67, think of this section as a Unit67, but without the compressor.


Both The Engine’s sections share a high headroom ultra-low noise buffer, designed to have no signal loss. Given that we use only long-life highly reliable components, your Engine will be running for years and years to come.


We wanted to give you that Tube-amp saturation which cleans up nicely with your guitar’s volume knob. Special attention has been given to the note separation and clarity at every stage of The Engine, even at its Hi-Gain settings. You will find that the signal-to-noise ratio is excellent for such high-gain tones.


Although The Engine has these two completely separate sections, it really shines when they are working together!


Stacking these two sides can yield some incredibly rich sounds. To help you answer the million dollar question: “Boost in front or after OD/Distortion?”, we created what we see as an essential feature called Order.


With the Order switch, you can choose the stacking order of the A&B sections. If you choose the right side B to go into left side A, the result will be much more distortion and complex overtones, depending on your settings. If you choose the left side A to go into B, the final result will be much more volume (if your amp has enough clean headroom) and much more sparkle and detail in your tone. It’s a really fun way to explore your tone with different settings and really helps in terms of pedalboard position.

Besides that, The Engine is an amazing platform for stacking with different types of effects, so let your imagination run wild!