OD pedal shootout Sunday

fretfinder

Wired this lot together today and had good fun with my elder son trying them out with a Les Paul Junior, R8 and a Strat, through a Princeton Reverb and a Rift Tweed 15 (fitted with 6L6s hence 20 watts). Conclusions? Well, at anything above 2 on the volume dial, the Rift was deafeningly loud in the man cave, so most of the playing was through the PR. Our main conclusion was that all OD pedals are great but some are greater than others! 

https://i.imgur.com/CFMuTEV.jpg

monquixote

I usually have an existential crisis after about 30 minutes of this sort of thing and decide that they all sound the same and I should concentrate on learning to play better.

I after a day or two I realise the error of my ways and buy another overdrive pedal.

Hootsmon

Where did the Zendrive come out?

fretfinder

monquixote said:

I usually have an existential crisis after about 30 minutes of this sort of thing and decide that they all sound the same and I should concentrate on learning to play better.

I after a day or two I realise the error of my ways and buy another overdrive pedal.

Haha so true. Although we didn’t think they sounded the same at all. We’d switch one in, tweak it, and think oh yes great sound. Then we’d switch it out and kick in a different pedal and think oh not sure I like that as much, then tweak it a bit and think oh wow great sound. And so on.

But the ‘great sounds’ were all a bit different and some very different from each other. E.g. one was fatter, another was punchier or smoother or crisper or softer or crunchier etc. I guess this kind of shootout will never produce a clear result because we weren’t trying to find as similar a sound as possible from each of the pedals and then compare them, we were trying to find the best sound, in our opinion, from each pedal. Great fun though and there were a few standout conclusions. 

fretfinder

hootsmon said:

Where did the Zendrive come out?

Very good and possibly the victor ludorum - if you could have just one, single footswitch OD pedal...

NorthernStomps

monquixote said:

I usually have an existential crisis after about 30 minutes of this sort of thing and decide that they all sound the same and I should concentrate on learning to play better.

I after a day or two I realise the error of my ways and buy another overdrive pedal.

You’re saying what we’re all thinking!

djspecialist

How much tweaking did it take to determine that "all knobs at 12 o'clock" was the best setting for every pedal?

builttospill

I’ve been trialing my board through my L6 Amplifi 75 and I’m convinced the boss drives sound better through the amplifi than my PRRI - totally stumped! 

fretfinder

djspecialist said:

How much tweaking did it take to determine that "all knobs at 12 o'clock" was the best setting for every pedal?

Haha! I took the pic before we started. Obviously I should have taken one immediately after the session, with the knobs in their tweaked places. They were very different to all at 12 o’clock, believe me. 

djspecialist

Nice looking board - most of the major food groups are present (*).  Could you share some of your findings?

(*) And highlight some gaps in my own collection - hmm ...

fretfinder

djspecialist said:

Nice looking board - most of the major food groups are present (*).  Could you share some of your findings?

(*) And highlight some gaps in my own collection - hmm ...

They were all really good in their own way, if you twiddled a bit to find the sweet spot. The most immediately usable with minimum twiddling were the Zendrive and the Fulldrive, followed by the KoT if you whacked up the drive knobs, and the OCD if you like more of a ‘rawk’ sound, and the gold Klone (by @4114Effects) if you want mainly a boost. The Analogman Maxon TS9 Silver Mod is a kind of a ‘Mr Reliable’ but a bit ordinary compared with the others, while the Timmy was surprisingly hard to get a good punchy sound out of, but when you got there it was fat and sweet.

I might try it again through a Bad Cat Cub and a Deluxe Reverb and see if the results tally!