# Les Paul and ? Overdrive



## JimiGuy7 (Jan 10, 2008)

Hey guys I am on the prowl for something new in the overdrive pedal department for use with my Les Paul. My TS9 and TS808 are'nt bad but I want something a little (not much) less transparent. I have a Keeley Blues Driver, and it is also pretty good but i prefer to set it for my Fender guitars as it kicks ass with a Fender and I am not 100% on that one with my Paul either. Just looking to hear what you guys are using for your Pauls. I want that classic Marshall tone in a pedal basically.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Fulltone OCD. It's been the only overdrive I've kept over the last 2 years. Give you instant Marshall awesomeness and sounds great with a Lester.


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

I had some good times with the MI Audio Crunch box. This thing is awsome with a Lester!


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2011)

Any Canadian builder with that tone?


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## Swervin55 (Oct 30, 2009)

hollowbody said:


> Fulltone OCD. It's been the only overdrive I've kept over the last 2 years. Give you instant Marshall awesomeness and sounds great with a Lester.


+1. Great pedal. Great tone with humbuckers or P90's.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

The Dirty Little Secret is known to be a pedal that will give a tone like that or maybe a Wampler Plexi-Drive.

SolidGoldFX is Canadian, their Super Drive might do it for you.


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## The Kicker Of Elves (Jul 20, 2006)

hollowbody said:


> Fulltone OCD. It's been the only overdrive I've kept over the last 2 years. Give you instant Marshall awesomeness and sounds great with a Lester.


What he said (I have the v4).

A similar sounding pedal (in my experience) is the Digitech Hardwire CM-2 Tube Overdrive.


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

hollowbody said:


> Fulltone OCD. It's been the only overdrive I've kept over the last 2 years. Give you instant Marshall awesomeness and sounds great with a Lester.


I concur..I've tried around 20 differents ones in 2 years..from boutique to full production..and it's the best for my LP..


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## Petey D (Sep 8, 2011)

hollowbody said:


> Fulltone OCD. It's been the only overdrive I've kept over the last 2 years. Give you instant Marshall awesomeness and sounds great with a Lester.



Hell yeah! OCD rocks _hard!_ Radial's London Bones is a good Canadian alternative, not as good as the OCD though.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

JimiGuy7 said:


> Hey guys I am on the prowl for something new in the overdrive pedal department for use with my Les Paul. My TS9 and TS808 are'nt bad but I want something a little (not much) less transparent. I have a Keeley Blues Driver, and it is also pretty good but i prefer to set it for my Fender guitars as it kicks ass with a Fender and I am not 100% on that one with my Paul either. Just looking to hear what you guys are using for your Pauls. I want that classic Marshall tone in a pedal basically.


The recommended MI Audio Crunch Box - whose circuit you can see here: http://diy.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/crunchbox1.jpg - has some of the attributes of a TS, some of a Rat, and some of a Distortion+/DOD250.

The components shown as R3/C5 provide the same 720hz bass rolloff found in the TS series. Cutting back the bass (where much of the signal lives) provides for more evenly distributed clipping (i.e., bass isn't clipping that much more than mids). R3 and the Gain pot in stage 1 provide for up to 101x gain in the first stage. The second stage has a fixed gain of 100x, and a treble rolloff (set by C6 and R5) starting around 1.5khz. That sounds low, but with max gain of 100x101 (over 10,000x), I can assure you that plenty of treble makes its way through; enough that both C8 and C9 are needed to keep it reined in.

The use of LEDs for clipping means that the clipping threshold is set fairly high, but even with the Gain control set to 7:00 (Min), stage 2 has a gain of 100x so you'll still never quite get a clean sound out of the circuit. Given that it uses a 9v battery supply, you're probably getting clipping from the op-amp chip itself well before the clipping LEDs kick in, anyway.

The easiest way to get your desired tone in a TS format is simply to add 2 more diodes in the clipping circuit. This board ...
http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/kazuhee/ts9modAd1.jpg
shows a pair of 1S1588 diodes near the chip. Desolder one end of each diode (doesn't matter which), and solder in a 1N914 or 1N4148 diode in series with each of those existing diodes. Make sure that correct polarity is observed (if the freed-up end has a stripe, connect it to the _non-stripe_ end of the additional diode, and the reverse if the freed-up end is unstriped).

This will raise the clipping threshold. The result will be a less compressed sound, less clipping at max gain, and a MUCH louder output, which will drive the amp harder.

This pic shows a different issue board - http://www.planeteleven.net/tubescrmr/images/ts9mods_graphic.jpg - but the diodes in question are in pretty much the same place.

Whether this gets you "a classic Marshall tone" is something I leave to your tastes, but if you more or less like your basic LP+TS tone but want a little more nuance, more bite and less mush from it, the suggested mod will do it just fine. If you're near Ottawa, bring the pedal on down and I'll be happy to mod it in 5 minutes.


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## ThePass (Aug 10, 2007)

Have you ever tried a Jekell & Hyde from Visual Sound?

I LOVE mine through my HRDlx, the thing kicks ass. It's basically two pedals in one, simple O/D and distortion side by side. I dial the O/D to a simple blues like setting and on the other sustain for days with the distortion. Sounds Marshally enough.

VS do an excellent job of their site's sound samples as well, IMO......

http://www.visualsound.net/index.php/products/guitar_effects_pedals/v2_jekyll_hyde


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## kellythebastard (May 3, 2006)

I use the Ocd v4 as well, with or else a behringer eq pedal maxed out (actually the best sounding OD I have tried, funny that) I use these with a 81 jcm 800 2203 or a soldano hot rod 100+ with a budda super drive 45. P90's and humbuckers slay through this setup.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

My Les Paul sounds great with my new Empress Effect Distortion--all my guitars do, but it really works well with my Les Paul...


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## Loudguitars.com (Jan 29, 2011)

I will venture outside the Boutique realm and suggest trying a Marshall Jackhammer, lots of control and will give you rip to smooth drive. Also very good is the Blues Driver Allums MOD.
Peace


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## Steve Adams (Dec 31, 2009)

For inexpensive low to moderate gain the gfs blues drive is nice or their twin high gain for raunchier stuff.


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## Petey D (Sep 8, 2011)

I've tried the Jackhammer too, and found the OD pretty good, but I wasn't impressed with the distortion side of the pedal.


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

OCD is the one I keep going back to. I have 2 v3's at the moment.


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## noman (Jul 24, 2006)

OCD for me as well..........I have a version 4 but had a v3 a while back. Both great imo.......


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