Been bitten by the overdrive bug, what in the world should I do? A rambling journey of some sorts...

Brio

Revival Drive Compact and Catalinbread's DLS and RAH rock my world. (Currently).

Sporky

Has anyone said Boss Metalzone?

Astoundingly flexible. 

stylesforfree

Sporky said:

Has anyone said Boss Metalzone?

Astoundingly flexible. 

I had a metalzone back when I had my very first solid state vox amp, indeed it is very flexible. I like simple 3/4 knob overdrives that sag.....but having said that, £60 might be worth a punt on one though, I didn't realise how cheap they were.

stylesforfree

Brio said:

Revival Drive Compact and Catalinbread's DLS and RAH rock my world. (Currently).

Checking these out now, the revival drive looks cool and from some demos it sounds pretty good, expensive pedal though! Maybe a bit too complex for my saggy low-end-dirty-60's-garage-chamber needs though.

DLS and RAH are marshall flavoured? Gonna check some demos now. I see catalinbread pedals pop up used a lot.

stylesforfree

roberty said:

Glad you're enjoying the Hudson Broadcast @stylesforfree. It's actually my favourite fuzz but it works just as well as an overdrive. I think it's quite unique in the world of pedals

Yeah it's just incredible, as a fuzz it really knocks. The bass cut is great too for taming a boomy amp.

Secret_Sam

Having spent lockdown auditioning dirt pedals, here's some advice I wish someone had given me about boost, overdrive and light distortion: 

The TC Electronic Mojo Mojo is as good as anything else. It's easy to find, sounds great, cheap, low noise, good tone stack, good ergonomics and very well made and designed.

For dirtier stuff, I used to recommend the Fulltone Mas Malo, but folks are asking up to $500 for it on Reverb.com, and no dirt pedal is that good.

stylesforfree

Secret_Sam said:

Having spent lockdown auditioning dirt pedals, here's some advice I wish someone had given me about boost, overdrive and light distortion: 

The TC Electronic Mojo Mojo is as good as anything else. It's easy to find, sounds great, cheap, low noise, good tone stack, good ergonomics and very well made and designed.

For dirtier stuff, I used to recommend the Fulltone Mas Malo, but folks are asking up to $500 for it on Reverb.com, and no dirt pedal is that good.

 I just checked a few demo's of the mojo mojo, damn that sounds incredible. Only £58 on Amazon too! Might have to check it out.

stylesforfree

So it's been about 2 years since I originally embarked on my overdrive journey and it's been a pretty wonderful rollercoaster so far.

I feel....maybe the journey is coming to and end as It seems that I have settled on the Hudson Broadcast and Lumpy's Class A Overdrive for now, I have scoped out a 2nd hand TC Electronic Mojo Mojo and I would still like to try out a blues driver-esque circuit and maybe another germanium overdrive....and possibly another FET overdrive....and I am still pondering the DOD 250.....aahhh shii.....I just checked a demo for that MXR Joe Bonamassa pedal...wow...

Well, you see where this is going, so I guess i'll be reporting back soon!

personalnadir

My favourite overdrive was Bigfoot Engineering’s Thunderpup hitting the ball preamp of an Origin Effects comp. Not sure what other combos would work 

has made me wonder a bit about other tones you can only get by one thing hitting another 

stylesforfree

Ha, here I am! taking another step on my overdrive journey!







I finally got my hands on a twin twelve. It's been a bumpy road, but I got there in the end. Long story short, it was on ebay so I bought it, but when it arrived it wasn't working properly, it crackled and hummed when engaged and it was pretty filthy so I opened it and noticed that the footswitch had a grounding loop on it with a weird looking washer that was very loose so I turned the weird washer upside down (or maybe it was the right way around) and tightened up the nut, removed the sticky dust/dirt covered velcro residue off the back and wiped it down. 

Job's a goodun! 

Very happy, sounds incredible, pure raw overdrive power! Sounds amazing going into the Supro Black Magick and the Fender Supersonic 22.
Putting it through its paces, it definitely sounds better with my tele than the SG, single coils really make it sing, humbuckers are a little woolly and lacks some definition in the lower frequency range. 

Added the Superbolt to my collection!! Sounds great in both modes, not too fizzy, great string clarity/definition/separation.  A nice clear and crunchy overdrive sound at lower gain, pretty open sounding, then turn up the drive and its all compressed, saggy, blown out speaker mode without the mush.

It's also super quiet, very low signal to noise ratio, sounds just as good as my Lumpy's Class A Overdrive, stacks well with the hudson broadcast too and sounds magical going into the Supro Black Magick.

Back on it!!!

stylesforfree

personalnadir said:

My favourite overdrive was Bigfoot Engineering’s Thunderpup hitting the ball preamp of an Origin Effects comp. Not sure what other combos would work 

has made me wonder a bit about other tones you can only get by one thing hitting another 

Thunderpup....I like that name. do you still use it? Looks like a relatively simple pedal that could provide some interesting drive, demos seem to be spot on too.

stylesforfree

Another update, how foolish was I to think that this journey would be anywhere near its end!



Now, originally the blues was on my radar because of the rangemaster circuit it was based on but then from checking more footage of it I realised it could also be a pretty gainy beast and provide some nice crunch. I had been looking for a cheaper alternative though but one popped up at discount on reverb, so I pulled the trigger. It can boost, it can crunch and it can drive, it sounds very good, from subtle to in your face edge of fuzz and the internal trimpot can be tuned to give more or less gain.

The accompished badger mkii piqued my interest from the description........ "the Accomplished Badger can be used as a sparkly clean boost, to just push an amp to breakup, or for a grittier saturated sound like a torn speaker or an overloaded recording desk tone"

I thought that this sounded quite familiar to the hudson broadcast description and so, as my undying love for the broadcast continues to bloom and blossom, I felt that I needed to add this small, furry short-legged omnivore to the family and find out just how proficient it was in providing those tones that I lovingly coax out of the broadcast. It definitely delivers and it's definitely on par. It feels like you can get a little more out of the badger with the internal dipswitches, it can definitely be just a tone sweetener and a clean boost that adds a sparkling quality while opening up the sound and it definitely does the ripped speaker/overloaded recording desk sound. Incredible.

jmf1928

I’ve become this person recently too! I have a spreadsheet of my pedal interest now, but my current funds require selling a couple things to do much in the way of adding. My general goal is to try out most of the different families that I’ve yet to play: screamer, bluesbreaker, ODR, fuzz face, Timmy, and surely many others. 

The most problematic so far is that my favorite has been a Cornish G-2, which implies I’m going to end up broke. 

TimmyO

jmf1928 said:

I’ve become this person recently too! I have a spreadsheet of my pedal interest now, but my current funds require selling a couple things to do much in the way of adding. My general goal is to try out most of the different families that I’ve yet to play: screamer, bluesbreaker, ODR, fuzz face, Timmy, and surely many others. 

The most problematic so far is that my favorite has been a Cornish G-2, which implies I’m going to end up broke. 

Nah what gets you broke is buying and selling things that you think might make you happier, then realising you were already happy with it. Ahem, allegedly, not that I’d know anything about that obv :-) 

roberty

TimmyO said:

jmf1928 said:

I’ve become this person recently too! I have a spreadsheet of my pedal interest now, but my current funds require selling a couple things to do much in the way of adding. My general goal is to try out most of the different families that I’ve yet to play: screamer, bluesbreaker, ODR, fuzz face, Timmy, and surely many others. 

The most problematic so far is that my favorite has been a Cornish G-2, which implies I’m going to end up broke. 

Nah what gets you broke is buying and selling things that you think might make you happier, then realising you were already happy with it. Ahem, allegedly, not that I’d know anything about that obv :-) 

Yeah I just got a Les Paul Studio back from someone I sold it to 5 years ago in search of my holy grail. The Maybach and Custom I have now are maybe a little bit nicer but there's nothing they do that the Studio won't. It was a fun journey though I guess, and no one died

guitarmanessex89

I’ve had so many drive pedals. One I miss the most is probably a G2D Creamtone. Awesome.
Currently on the board:

RYRA Klone - bought and sold and then bought again. Great.

Wampler Tumnus - similar, but slightly more of a drive pedal. Nice thickener to a single coil bridge pickup.

Wampler Dual Fusion - I don’t want to like it, but it stays together in a band and just works.

EQD Speaker Cranker. Organic, characterful. Much more musical than the wanky, lo-fi demos suggest. Great, musical overdrive. 

Old Marshall Bluesbreaker - really cool, lacks headroom. I’ve thought about consolidating this and the Klone into a Horsebreaker/Protein etc.

Keeley Aria - lovely compressor, fuzzy drive.

Things I don’t miss - TS9, original Zendrive, DS1, Xotic AC+ (Dual Fusion serves a similar purpose, but just better). 

Probably loads more, but I can’t think of them after 2 hours sleep. Quite fancy a few of the Thorpy pedals, Jan Ray etc. 

stylesforfree

jmf1928 said:

I’ve become this person recently too! I have a spreadsheet of my pedal interest now, but my current funds require selling a couple things to do much in the way of adding. My general goal is to try out most of the different families that I’ve yet to play: screamer, bluesbreaker, ODR, fuzz face, Timmy, and surely many others. 

The most problematic so far is that my favorite has been a Cornish G-2, which implies I’m going to end up broke. 

Oh boy, it's certainly a crazy rabbit hole. Im Having quite the adventure in overdrive wonderland.

Dare I check out the G-2? Pricey indeed!

Im intrigued to at least try out one tube screamer type pedal that isn't plumes and a Timmy. 

There's a cheap germanium fuzz face clone on eBay now that Im eyeing up but I really don't need another fuzz. But I want to hear how different it is to a tone bender circuit

Greatape

Right now, I'm diggin' on the Lovepedal SST. That thing is just lovely. 

TheBigDipper

I'm partial to the Wampler Pantheon Deluxe into a clean/ish Fendery channel. Not so much into a Marshally one. And another vote for the Mojo Mojo. 

LastMantra

I've came to the conclusion that they all (especially when 2 or more are stacked) they all end up sounding the same.