Rory Gallagher’s Boss DB-5 Driver

In a 1989 interview, Rory mentioned that one of his main pedals is a Boss BD-1 Drive, which he has used basically from the beginning.

About the first one I got was the Boss BD-1 Driver, which I still use. It’s a big green box (rather like the old Boss CE-1) with three settings: Distortion, Fuzz, and a third which is almost straight -a plain graphic and overall volume boost, which is the setting best suited to me. It can really change the character of your guitar.

Rory Gallagher A Question of Taste

However, what’s confusing is that there doesn’t seem to exist such a pedal.

To figure out what’s going on – in the quote above, Rory mentions that the unit in question resembles a CE-1 (photo below) and that it’s green. Of course, scouring the internet for vintage Boss models returns no results, nor does there seem to exist something called a BD-1.

So, most likely what happened is that the interviewer misheard Rory, or that there were some errors in transcribing the interview because there is a big green Boss pedal that Rory used. But it wasn’t a BD-1, it was a Boss DB-5 Driver.

Given the similarities in the naming scheme (Boss Blues Driver versus Boss Driver), this seems like the most likely possibility.