# What is your favourite mild-med Overdrive pedal?



## blaren (May 6, 2006)

Sure is nice being able to say favourite and not favorite all the time. 
THANK YOU for being a CANADIAN forum.
*Now...99.999% of this is me thinking out loud and typing a lot of nonsense. 
Feel free to just read the parts in bold.*

*OK so ANYWAY...
What do you use? Is it a TS-9 (or variant like an Ibanez 808 or a Maxon od9 or 808)? A Boss SD-1 or OD-1 or OD-3 or whatever? Is it a BD-2? Is it a boutique pedal like maybe a Timmy or Klon/Klone or a FD2 (yeah some aren't really BOUTIQUE but..)? Do you build your own?*

It's RIDICULOUS how saturated the market is. 
There has never been a better time to be a guitar player..well except for back in the day when you said..I'm in the band and the girls said...Oh? WOW! Here, let me get that for you ;-) ...and now it's I'm in the band! EWWWWWWWWWWW GROSS..PIG. Get AWAY from me!!! ...but if you consider whats out there and the prices?
Back in the '60s and '70s if you didn't have a Fender or Gibson you had a usually unplayable Sears special. There were Gretches and Rickis and stuff but I was a kid then. And a theory of mine is that the only reason Fender and Gibsonn are household names is because they were the only playable guitars back then..not anymore. We were on tour (in like '76 when I was 12) and we stopped-in at Music City in North Bay and behind the counter hung a new ES335. :-O Angels, harps, clouds separating ... it was $2000.00. Guess what fellas, today a new ES335 can be had for LESS than $2K. Back then a real guitar was gonna cost you a month or two in wages. Now it costs a week or two's wages.

Back on track here.... so NOWADAYS a very acceptable overdrive pedal, that if I would have had back in the early/mid '70s would have made me GOD, is a $45 BOSS SD-1.

Maybe the "best" (ymmv and all that) OD on the market is the famous Paul Cochrane Timmy. If they had been discontinued like the Kloon Centaur was, the Timmy would be fetching $1500 too!! A NEW one is $129US.

Have you tried a CMATMODS SignaDrive? OMG!! SERIOUSLY good handmade-in-the-USA overdrive with (like the Timmy) 3 switchable clipping sections... $135 all day NEW!! He'll even throw-in a free T-Shirt. And another FYI, his Brownie (BSIABii) is a STUPID good med-med/high gain box.

Have you tried a Klone? I haven't. Nor have I tried or seen in the flesh a real Klon Centaur. They say a Timmy is fairly similar. a very transparent mild OD. Or can be used as a decent clean boost. 

I fell into over a dozen great high end pedals in a trade deal a few months ago.

My absolute favourite was...and at the time my board had either a modded SD-1 or a modded TS-9 or OD9 AND a Dingotone BSD or a Boss BD-2, ....a Lovepedal Eternity!! :-O
It's pretty much a bufferless TB stripped-down TS-9/SD-1 with more output than either and less of that TS mid hump and WAY less of that TS bottom end SUCK. Turn down it's gain and it is a CLEAN clean boost. PRISTINE clean. Leave the gain low and turn up the Glass (tone) knob and it's a T-Booster.
I had been a TS guy for years and years. Not after trying the Eternity boueeee!

HOWEVER... there was also a CMATMODS Signa Drive in the dozen+ pedal pile and since the whole idea in the first place was to sell everything I received in trade for the guitar I gave, I had to sell the more expensive pedal.
The Lovepedal Eternity is discontinued and they can fetch like 200 bucks.
The CMATMODS is still being (hand)made and is $135 NEW...less used of course. And the SD sounds really really really great. Almost as awesome as the E.
Sold the E and kept the SD.
But the E haunted me for weeks.
Decided I would build one and the rest is history.

*My ODs are my Eternity clone and the CMATMODS Brownie for the crazy stuff.
I have parts coming for a few Klone builds. I don't even think I'll like the Klone but I'm SO curious and the layout I'm using is apparently the BEST most accurate Klone out there.

So, while trying to keep it WAY shorter than I just did.... what is YOUR main OD pedal??*


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## Farbulous (Dec 8, 2009)

One of the longest lived pedals on my board is the NOC3 Pure Drive. It can run the gamut of mild to wild tones. Still my go to OD, and I've gone through MANY.
Timmy was on the board for a long time, but ultimately I just didn't need it with my setup (stereo amps: VOX AC15 & silverface Fender Princeton)
I had the CMATMODS Butah, and I would highly recommend it for a lower gain application. I will most likely pick up another one at some point if I don't decide to go with one of the many Blues Driver variants out there. I've also had the SignaDrive and it is a wonderful pedal.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I have a Timmy and a Gain Changer that are my favorites.
I also like the RetroSonic Eight 'o Eight.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I've never tried an Eternity, but it's on my list of pedals to get around to one day.

My main drive sounds come from my Carl Martin PlexiTone, but I usually use another drive _into _it first to get some variations on the plexi theme. Usually that ends up being the Timmy, but these days it's a Klon KTR. Both pedals give me the option of having a warmer sound than the bright Plexi sound I get from the PT. However, the Klon is a LOT better at this than the Timmy. Mainly because the Timmy is a transparent pedal and ends up letting the PT do it's thing but _more _which is the best thing about the Timmy. If you like your sound, it will give you more of exactly that. The Klon definitely has a character of it's own and it's really very nice.

The Crunch channel of the PT alone isn't bad either, but those gain knobs are SOOO finicky that it's hard to dial in just the right amount of gain on the PT, which is why I've made the Klon my base-sound and then I click in the Crunch or High Gain channels of the PT to add more dirt as needed.


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## keto (May 23, 2006)

Hugely depends on what amp. Marshall style amps, for me nothing better than a stock cheap SD-1 (and I did a 10 OD shootout a few months back if you look hard enough you can find it). With my YCV50, I prefer the OD-808. Another really good one is the 4-knobber Spark Booster - it's just as quiet as quiet can be in terms of added noise, has bass and treble knobs and a 3-way tone shift switch. I use it in the loop when pushing the front end isn't what's needed, adds more volume when in the loops and need a boost.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

I use a Hermida Zendrive for my low-med gain OD. I sometimes stack it with a Timmy or a Barber Direct Drive LG.


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

I only play clean. I don't know how to use distortion or overdrives.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Gone through so many - generally clones or originals that I made - that it's hard to keep track.

I kinda like the first issue OD-1 I made, but maybe more because I modded it. I recently made an Eternity clone, with a bass adjustment, a la Timmy, that's kinda nice, as is the KoT clone, as is the EHX Hot Tubes. I'm partial to things that use the 4049 invertor chip, which includes the Hot Tubes, the Red Llama, and my own 49_er design. I recently came up with a simple circuit I called the Aefea Drive (Almost Everything For Everybody....Almost), that nails a lot of different medium drive tones. Finally, there are a bunch of surprisingly nice little single-transistor units from Love pedal, like the Led Like, and Fred Briggs' 60's Vox circuit that deliver up nice grind, without being too saturated.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

I like my OCD. I don't crank the gain. I just use it to give a little "gank" and mild boost.


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## JerS (Jun 16, 2014)

+1 to Mark Hammer's comments on the single transistor units from lovepedal, etc. I have been enjoying the many variants on the Electra Distortion circuit lately as they can really enhance an already good tone from a nice guitar and amp without getting in the way too much.

Having said that, the Eternity is nice, as is the Klon (or at least the Klones I have played!). But the thing that really turns my crank is using a Rangemaster inspired dirty germanium booster to pump up my already dirty tube amp. These things just seem to deliver in a way that no overdrive has for me. ...so not exactly an OD pedal, but similar in application for me.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I've made a couple of Rangemasters, and sold the best one to the former owner of Retrotown Music here in Ottawa, foolishly thinking if I made one I could easily make another. Sadly, the germanium transistor in it (taken from a Mitsubishi transistor radio I bought with my summer job money, picking berries foir the government in 1965) seemed to have been special, and I've never been able to nail that quality of tone again.

This one from Fred Briggs, that I mentioned earlier, is really nice. Thankfully, it's not quite so fussy about what transistor you use as the Rangemaster is.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

yeah, for me its a germanium rangemaster clone.
ive put together a few of them, i use an extra pot to control
which frequencies get boosted.
one uses a mullard oc71, a couple others use cv7003 (oc44)
all of them sound different.
ive found different transistors like different bias voltages- i just set them where they sound best to me.
im into small, cranked amps- so the rangemaster suits me perfectly.
they dont really shine unless the amp is cranked.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Plus, you need to feed the Rangemaster directly from the guitar, and feed the Rangemaster to a tube amp directly. Plugging your guitar into a bunch of Boss and Strymon pedals, then into a Rangemaster and then into a Gallien-Krueger (which is a nice SS amp, but still SS) is unlikely to deliver the magic.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Mark, I'm in town this weekend and may need a different OD for my amp. You should lend me a few so my bandmate and I can see what we like without the hassle of a store. And then I can be booteek too!

the only od i have experience with is my modded ts9 (808+ freq change for more lows) and i used it to boost a crunch channel.


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## georgemg (Jul 17, 2011)

I have two boards. On the smaller one I use a Retro Sonic 808 for mild/medium overdrive, and on the larger board I use a Rockett Blue Note for mild and a Rockett Animal for medium. I've gone through a lot of pedals and these are all keepers. They're all basically 808-based pedals with a bass adjustment, which seem to be the key for me to getting a sound that works well for me with my amps.



blaren said:


> Have you tried a CMATMODS SignaDrive? OMG!! SERIOUSLY good handmade-in-the-USA overdrive with (like the Timmy) 3 switchable clipping sections... $135 all day NEW!! He'll even throw-in a free T-Shirt. And another FYI, his Brownie (BSIABii) is a STUPID good med-med/high gain box.


I actually had both of these at one point. I liked the Brownie for that style of overdrive but I didn't get along with the Signa Drive at all - I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. Mine was really bright. A lot of people speak highly of them though, so I kind of got the feeling I may have gotten a dud.


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## pattste (Dec 30, 2007)

Hermida Zendrive through a rather clean sounding amp.


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## Judas68fr (Feb 5, 2013)

Xotic BB preamp through a loud fender amp for me


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I've probaby told this parable before, but it bears repeating.

So a decade back I made myself a TS-808 clone. JRC chip, tantalum caps, yadda yadda. At the time, my main guitar had a preamp in it. Nothing spectacularly hot, but a voltage gain of about 4x. I was eagerly awaiting having a Tube Screamer, and I ended up hating it. I thought "What the dickens is all the fuss about?", and set the pedal aside as simply one of those mistakes that was happily inexpensive.

Then I picked up another guitar, and left it passive, with a weaker output. Tried the TS and fell in love with that circuit. The thing came alive, and the difference was the signal level I was feeding it. The secret to a decent TS-type sound is to keep a reasonable distance between the peaks of the signal and the clipping threshold. Indeed, one of the things that people like about the many different TS derivatives, be they Xotic boosters, Zendrive, Timmy, Lovepedal, or other, is that they raise the clipping threshold high enough that it is much easier to dial in a gain level that rides the clipping threshold, rather than always exceeding it. If you can do that, you elicit the additional harmonic content during the pick attack, but very little after that. 

It is that extra little bite during the pick attack that adds emotion to the sound. PLus, it is something you can voluntarily hold back on, by the way you pick, permitting the player to inject more bite on a notewise basis when called for.


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

mhammer said:


> Plus, you need to feed the Rangemaster directly from the guitar, and feed the Rangemaster to a tube amp directly. Plugging your guitar into a bunch of Boss and Strymon pedals, then into a Rangemaster and then into a Gallien-Krueger (which is a nice SS amp, but still SS) is unlikely to deliver the magic.


yeah for sure. im not ever running a bunch of pedals myself.
its either a rangemaster into a cranked tube amp, by itself,
or a wah / fuzz face into a cranked tube amp.
the rangemaster is useless in a lot of situations-
i just dont get myself into those situations.
in rare moments its tremelo/ delay/reverb combinations, but then ill use the cranked amp and guitars volume knob if i want dirt.
thats why i dont have any sort of organized pedal board-
i just plug in what i feel like using at the time.
im a non- gigging, mostly original tunes guy- i can do as i please lol.


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## Jaybo (Jun 3, 2010)

Suhr Koko Boost for me. The boost and mids are dialed in just right for pushing cleans and making dirty dirtier.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

fraser said:


> yeah for sure. im not ever running a bunch of pedals myself.
> its either a rangemaster into a cranked tube amp, by itself,
> or a wah / fuzz face into a cranked tube amp.
> the rangemaster is useless in a lot of situations-
> i just dont get myself into those situations.


Do yourself a favour and read this, if you haven't already. Provides some technical insight into how to best use it (though it sounds like you have a firm handle already). www.geofex.com/article_folders/rangemaster/atboost.pdf


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

thanks mark- great article.
i used that to build my first rangemaster.
i always meant to try some variations using easy to find npn's-
but really, ive got a few rangemasters and a hornby skewes treble boost, all using germaniums.
i dont need any more boosters lol.


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## noman (Jul 24, 2006)

I swear by anything Kingsley.......currently use a Kingsley Jouster and Minstrel. Both great for any application.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i'm not the tone seeker that some of you seem to be. i use a blues driver for most things, and an od-1 as a clean-ish boost. of course, if i was playing at greater volumes, through a better amp, i might (or might not) decide they wuddn' cuttin' it. 
i see alot of people out there using them in a professional setting, so although some might consider them dated, they still do the job. the keeley ones are popular, but i haven't tried one yet.


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