First try with an OCD last night.

relic245

oops moved to correct section now....

The guy at our rehearsal studio turned up with an ocd last night and i got to play with it for 10 minutes after we finished.

Have to say it was fantastic played into my blackstar artisan set to clean. I use a blackstar dist pedal for my main dirt sound now which I thought was a pretty big sound but the ocd was just way fatter (or it it phatter? I'm too old for this new lingo stuff)

So I have a couple of questions.

How do they stack if I set it to low/med gain, can i hit it with a tubescreamer for more dirt?

The bottom end on it was HUGE, only thing that worries me, I usually turn the bass down on my amp to stop clashing with other frequencies, with all that bass will the ocd cut through?

And last one, I assume it was a V4 as he bought it new about 6 months ago but it had nothing written on it to say which version is there any way I can tell visually? It had 3 knobs and a toggle switch marked HF and LF

Cirrus

If the knobs have arrows circling round them and the LED is Red, it's most likely a V4 though if you want to be sure you've got to open it up and check the serial number. I think within V4 there are some minor revisions.

The OCD is a good pedal in the right situation. It's dynamic, relatively transparent and is a pretty "full" sounding pedal.

The limitations are there, though. All my opinion of course but for me it's got too much bass and it never quite cuts through a mix if it's sitting alongside say a Rat, TS or whatever - there's a bit of a broad midrange scoop going on. Nothing as dramatic as a big muff but it's there. Also, it's got a strange output impedance thing going on where the amount of pedals/ cable etc you have between the OCD and the amp can make a big difference to its tone.

For example, if you have Guitar->TS->OCD->Clean Boost->20ft cable->Amp, if the clean boost is true bypass then you might well find that the OCD sounds great on its own when the output is being loaded down by the length of cable, then you click on the clean boost and suddenly the OCD gets WAAAAY brighter because now it's only loaded down by the patch cable between it and the clean boost. I found that pretty annoying, because on my pedalboard it'd happen when I turned on a bit of delay... the OCD suddenly got louder and brighter.

Also, I remember it really hated being stacked with a rat in front of it - the sound got really grindy and farty - but it was ok with a tubescreamer.

So I guess it's a good pedal but it depends on what's going to be plugged in either side of it.

thomasw88

My setup for a long time was a Klone Centaur clone into TS808 into a OCD v4.   Really liked that setup for a long time.

However, obviously being a pedal nut, and eternally looking for a pedal to improve my crap technique I now no longer drive any of those pedals..

monquixote

Should this be in classifieds?

I'm going to move it to the gear section.

crunchman

I had a v1 OCD for years which sounded great in isolation, but the mids are even more scooped (or less boosted) on that than the later versions, and it did tend to disappear in the mix.

The V4 definitely has more going on in the mid-range, although I'm not sure it's quite as dynamic and tranparent.

I've got a Madbean board, and most of the bits to build a V4.  I'm just waiting on the PCB mount pots to arrive as I mistakenly ordered the wrong ones the first time.  (If anyone wants pots for a genuinely hand-wired OCD build let me know).

My V1 did stack well with several other pedals.

relic245

monquixote said:

Should this be in classifieds?

I'm going to move it to the gear section.

Doh - thanks. I thought I'd done that but but obviously moved it to the wrong place. It's been around a bit this post.

johnhe

I love the bass on the OCD, and I have to say that at I have no problem cutting through the mix. I agree that the OCD has quite a flat eq, rather than a mid boost, but it still cuts through superbly. The OCD is also one of the most pedal friendly pedals I've ever played. I sounds good being boosted by almost every pedal I've tried. It is also very god when running into other overdrives. The big drawback is the output impedance issue, which seems to cause a conflict with a small number of other pedals, but I've come to think that this impedance issue is an integral partocf what he pedal sounds so good, and I've learned to live with it. I run a non true bypass pedal after the OCD and that solves any problems.

Kebabkid

I have the OCD V.4 and think it sounds great and stacks really well with Keeley TS808 (non-true bypass), Pork Loin or Liquid Sunshine V.3 (true bypass). Sadly, I found it doesn't 't stack well with another OCD! It takes boosters really well e.g. Xotic EP. The sockets can be crap and I had a repair to mine ? came away from board/become loose and on the old place, there was talk about the Fulltone build. IIRC, @ICBM mentioned what was wrong with the build, but a great and versatile pedal nonetheless.
I prefer HP mode, gain range is good, but this thing can do a really nice, low overdrive at 7-8 o'clock with single coils =perfect for light crunch and nice, thick leads can be had with gain at 1 o'clock, hence, trying and thinking 2 OCDs were the way to go. Individually, yes. Stacked, no.

Drew_TNBD

I have one, but in all honestly I only really use it to boost the front end of my amp. As a distortion sound itself, it isn't very good.

ragingben

I have a clone of an OCD (the Karma FX one) so can only speak with experience of that, but I find it seems to work well as a overdrive into my Blackheart Little Giant, with all the knobs set to 1 o'clock. Don't really dig that setting into my bigger amps, but for some reason that sounds killer and has got me through a few smaller gigs as my main dirt.