What do you want in an OD?

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:12 pm

Hold on a second. I said "flat freq response". You put in what you get out. WHY do you need a tone control with that? A properly designed pedal doesn't need one. And now you want a full three-band EQ? I cannot do that many knobs for this price. Knobs = higher cost.

Perhaps previous experience with shit pedals have made every one think they MUST have tone knobs on their pedals, but it is not necessary if it is done right. Most of the time tone knobs are set to a certain point and never touched again. I'm not saying HAVING an EQ pedal in the chain somewhere isn't useful, but it isn't necessary on every single pedal, and not one that is designed to have a flat response.

gaybear · Post by **gaybear** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:45 pm

that makes sense to me.

Post by **Doog** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:34 am

I still think pedals need decent tone controls- everyone has their own ideas of how bright/dark a pedal should sound, I know I wouldn't want my OD sound to be the same EQ-wise as my bypassed sound.

Sloan · Post by **Sloan** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:55 am

Put some lazer emitters in it.

gary · Post by **gary** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:31 pm

Doog wrote:I still think pedals need decent tone controls- everyone has their own ideas of how bright/dark a pedal should sound, I know I wouldn't want my OD sound to be the same EQ-wise as my bypassed sound.

+1

Although the pedal may be 'flat freq response' that doesn't mean the amp you're feeding it into is going to be. A simple example is that when you feed in an OD pedal with the volume on it all the way up, the preamp of a valve amp will generally respond more in the low end than it would if the volume control on the pedal was lower. Sometimes that'll be fine at low volumes, but then you crank up the master volume and put power amp saturation in the mix and you might find it's too bassy with the OD on, but fine running clean. So then you'd have to cut the bass on the amp - assuming your pedal has no EQ - leaving your OD sounding as you want it but your clean too thin.

I really liked the tone of my reissue MXR Distortion Plus. But so many times I'd use it thinking 'I wish it had more bass response on this guitar' or 'It's way too bright even with the tone down on that guitar'. Same thing with the Boss SD-1, OD-3, BD-2 etc... loved the stock tone, but the actual TONE control never had a 'sweep' that felt right and worked with my guitars as I liked. In the end I couldn't handle it and sold them all on.

But if you made a stock two-knob version of the pedal which cost $75, and one with bass/treb controls which cost $125, I'd pay extra. I'm sure I'm not alone here. At the end of the day though, it's your pedal to design as you like. We're just giving you pointers as you asked.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:33 pm

Chris is trying to keep these designs as simple and low-cost as possible. He's not trying to design the perfect handmade overdrive.

aphasiac · Post by **aphasiac** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:41 pm

Another feature that's important to me - if you turn the "gain" control to 0, the pedal should act as a transparent boost. No clipping whatsoever.

Thats the only problem i have with the Danelectro FAB overdrive - even with the OD knob totally off, it's still a bit fuzzy.

Post by **Doog** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:47 pm

Mike wrote:Chris is trying to keep these designs as simple and low-cost as possible. He's not trying to design the perfect handmade overdrive.

Don't get me wrong- I'm sure Chris has forgotten more about pedal making than I'd ever know, but I just don't agree with "A properly designed pedal doesn't need a tone control".

No biggie.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:52 pm

I know that, but at the same time he can't make everyone happy, especially when his aim is to make 1-2 knob pedals.

Personally I'd buy one for light grit if it had a flat response. I like thet jangly edgy sound on a bright clean tone.

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:16 pm

Well, I DID post this in order to get everyone's thoughts and wants, so don't get me wrong, I'm listening to this all and making notes. And front end of THIS one is based on a design I am also using in hurb's trem, for example, and THAT has bass and treble controls. I can, and possibly will later for higher price, do an OD with flexible tone controls, we'll see how this whole venture goes. I just did not want this to go the wrong way and have people expecting 4 knobs on a $30 pedal. Unless I find a place selling pots for $0.25.

What I was getting at, is that not all pedals need a tone control, and a properly designed one that is supposes to sound a certain way doesn't need one. The interfax original perc doesn't, but sounds great. ZVex SHO doesn't. MXR Dist+ doesn't (IIRC). Other's HAVE a tone control that is pretty much worthless, like the Rat2, BMP (Usuable for part of the sweep only), etc. Also considered is in the design, the freq response of the gain stage usually favors one band over others in order to not overload the opamp (Rat2 favors the high-to-mid band) which means no matter what you are dumping out it will still be lacking in certain frequencies. There's several thoughts in making, and one of them is that a pedal should just do it's part, like add grit to the signal, and not change anything else. That is what I'm aiming for with these pedals, they should do their jobs and leave changing tone to someone else.

Gary, I believe what you are referring to is the "darkening" of a tube amp the more you push it. This is true, but you cannot do a WHOLE lot in the pedal to compensate. However, different strokes and all that. That's why there's all these makers out here putting things out, and we all aren't using the same gear. For the goal here a tone control is not the aim of the pedal, the goal is a good sounding $30 pedal that just adds grit to what you put in.

Johno · Post by **Johno** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:26 pm

For me I'd have to say my Marshall Drivemaster all the way. The name Drivemaster is a bit misleading as the pedal is so much more than that.
I can use it as a boost for an almost clean sound, you can get subtle break up or nice nice & glassy or jangly od. When you crank the drive you get into RAT territory & beyond, you can even dial in a metal shredder tone. Add to that treble middle and bass controls. Seriously, you can pick these up for Â£20 second hand for that you should all give one a spin.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:29 pm

I find the RAT tone control really useful.

That's Andy, donkey and Chris, mine changes the sound all across the sweep. *shrug*

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:46 pm

Mike wrote:I find the RAT tone control really useful.

That's Andy, donkey and Chris, mine changes the sound all across the sweep. *shrug*

Mine goes from "not-shit" to "shit". All the tone control does is muffle it up, it doesn't make it sound low-end-y like it should, it just sounds like a blanket over the speaker to me.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:50 pm

Hmm. Mine just filters out more and high-treble as it goes.

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:58 pm

Mine does too. It's a low-pass filter, so it dumps out the high frequencies. But the design of that pedal is that the opamp feedback loop favors and amplifies the most a "hump" in the high-mids. So you are dumping out the frequences that the pedal is designed to put out, and thus the result, at least on mine, is dull shite. Mine is from 1986, though, so it might have been changed slightly since then.

Post by **Doog** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:45 pm

Mike wrote:I find the RAT tone control really useful.

+1

Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:54 pm

I don't know what I'd do without it - my Telecaster Deluxe and Jazzmaster react incredibly differently to the RAT2, and the amount of Distortion I'm adding also seems to have a big effect on the equalization.

Post by **Doog** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:01 pm

I don't like how on stock RAT2s, the distortion gets more and more upper middly as you turn the distortion down. Thank gawd for Reutz mod.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:21 pm

I don't even remember how each control interacted on the stock RAT. I kept it stock for like a day.

euan · Post by **euan** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:23 pm

Johno wrote:For me I'd have to say my Marshall Drivemaster all the way. The name Drivemaster is a bit misleading as the pedal is so much more than that.
I can use it as a boost for an almost clean sound, you can get subtle break up or nice nice & glassy or jangly od. When you crank the drive you get into RAT territory & beyond, you can even dial in a metal shredder tone. Add to that treble middle and bass controls. Seriously, you can pick these up for Â£20 second hand for that you should all give one a spin.

These days they are more likely to be Â£40. At least that seems to be the going rate. I love the jangly OD that it does though.

Thing is though this is more like a SHO take on an overdrive. It's simple and is meant to be transparent.

Thats how I understand it at least. I'm not interested in the OD really because I have enough OD/Distortion pedals to choose from. Too much really. The fuzz I am because you can never own too many different interesting fuzzes.

PenPen did the Skyripper ever get commerically made before the guy went bust? I always looked onto that pedal with an interested eye in building it but it always looked expensive.