My favourite overdrive (at the moment)

mr_air

I just wanted to put in a word for my favourite overdrive (at the moment) as it seems to be quite under the radar (which might be caused by the fact that it's produced in a limited number). It's the MI Audio Crossover Drive and judged from it's physical apperance I can surely understand why it might not be so popular as it has a gnarly yellow-y-orange-brown colour that actually resembles baby poop pretty well. The written name and the "creative" pattern on the front is as uninspirring as is the colour of the pedal and the only reason this boring/ugly looking pedal ended up in my possesion was because a friendly shopkeeper in a pedalstore told me to try it out after I had tried a good handfull of other drive pedals.

What the Crossover Drive lacks in good looks and physical charm it totally makes up for in great tone. To my ears the pedal sounds very tube amp like (which seems to be the overdrive mantra these days). It's not an amp-in-a-box pedal, but it just has a great tonal quality and fell to it. The Crossover Drive is quite versatile and can go from gritty boost, to break up, to crunch, to quite gainy and almost ends up in fuzz teritory. Besides volume and gain the pedal has two tonal controls called balance and detail that lets you dial in a lot of different sounds. With low gain and the balance and detail dailed up you can get some jangly kinda AC 30 tones and if you dial the tonal controls back and bump up the gain you get a nice fat lead tone. The character of the Crossover Drive is unmistakebly vintage so if you're looking for a modern sounding drive pedal look elsewhere. But I can highly recommend the Crossover Drive to anyone who's looking for a versatile overdrive that can bash out some classic drive tones.

Sassafras

Most of those MI pedals look rubbish but all the ones I've played have been very good. I've still got a blues drive that gets a bit of use now and again.

I don't really care what an effect that very few people can even see looks like as long as it sounds good, which is what an audience is interested in.

mr_air

I haven't tried any of the other MI Audio pedals, but remember that the Neo Fuzz had me interested some years ago. I totally agree that tone is a lot more importent than looks when it comes to fx pedals, but in a market overflown with od pedals I'm mostly drawn to the once that looks interesting/a bit different and the Crossover Drive just looks plain borring to me. 

Sassafras

You've got a point there. I'm sure that if MI spruced up some of their designs they would be more popular than they seem to be at the moment in view of the quality of their effects.