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To my ear, the difference between hunbuckers and single coils is waaaaay more noticeable that most overdrives, especially in the context of a mix, which is what really matters in the end.
They also (pickups) react differently to pedals, even one humbucker to the next. Single coil vs humbucker is even more noticeable of course. I have a MusicMan Axis with Seymour Duncan's that sounds amazing with a few OD/Fuzz pedals I have that sound horrible on other guitars with humbuckers.
I respectfully disagree. The Wampler Belle, the Boss BD-2 or the OD-1, the Fulltone OCD, the Tube Screamer and the Klon are very very different in my opinion. And if you add how they react to pickups it's even more noticeable. That's probably why Brian and so many more people have a business haha
Brian's "breadboard" sounds better than the Tube Screamer. Why does that not surprise me in the least...? Such a great video. And, that breadboard video is priceless in and of itself.
The debate, to me, is not whether different components in a TS-type circuit sound different. It's more how some of these TS derivatives go for 4 times the price of an Ibanez. Add to that some vendors claim 'this is totally different than a TS' to get people to pay that upcharge, where switching out 2 resistors and 2 capacitors and maybe putting them on a switch would get you there. I admire the grift, but I'm glad that I've outgrown it (after years of experimenting with modding and developing my own PCBs).
Something that shocked me was how good a Rat style pedal through a Fender BF or Tweed styled amp can sound. You can get really interesting guitar sounds that sit well in a mix.
Compare the dynamics of a klon to a king of tone. Point proven and its night and day. No eq can change the touch sensitivity and reaction to your playing in unique circuits. And in the context of a mix the different overdrives matter in a huge way, ever notice how fuzz gets lost and a mid pushed pedal sticks out. Thanks brian you are totally right, and its worth having a wide range of overdrives for the differences. Love your pedals.
Regardless of the pedal, there’s always a sound in your head that you like and generally you always aim towards that, that’s me at least. There’s always going to be overlaps in some way but it’s their differences that make them unique
"make amp sound like its working harder" is pretty much the only thing OD is really for. Audience doesn't care, they think "ohhh yeah kick on the rocket boost!" whatever it is: fuzz OD distortion doesn't matter one bit to them its all the same = "more power"
You’d be surprised. That Pedal Show did an episode with a bunch of boutique drives, and a Blues Driver and a GE7. A lot of the time they could get very very close. As other comments have mentioned, thinks like specific clipping characteristics can’t be replicated just by eq, but I’d you’re not running much gain that may not even be a concern.
No, but their PURPOSE ~IS~ the same - to make the amp sound like it's working harder than it is, nothing more nothing less. The only two main variables are in the EQ and clipping type, followed by headroom, I/O level and impedance. Your pickups getting along with your speaker (the start and endpoint) always matter much more than your OD pedal or (clean) amp does, in fact.
I've determined that most people on guitar forums don't actually play their instruments that much, they just collect gear. If they spent more time playing (with people, at gigs, in a studio, etc...), they'll develop their ears and can actually start hearing the difference between these things.
They are not all the same.... However, you sure can make pretty much all of them sound close to the same if you want too... especially if you eq them...
I was kind of hoping you would have used the EVH5150 Over Drive pedal. I have the Ibanez TS9 and the EVH5150 and man are they so different. I would say the 5150 is closer to a distortion in sound. I'm no tech nerd. But I have some other over drives as well and they all sound similar, but slight differences. Some I cannot stand, like the DS-1. I really hate that pedal for some reason.
@@jfo3000 I understand back in my younger years the DS-1 was used a lot due to lack of options. I have one collecting dust on my shelf. No matter what amps I have ever owned and put them on, it just didn't get me the sound I was looking for. I love playing very clean tones, then hitting hard right to hard distortion, but I also love that edge of breakup and just kicking it over the edge as well. The DS-1 always seemed to leaving me wanting more, if that makes sense?
ALL overdrive/distortion/fuzz *adds* harmonic content that wasn't there, or at least wasn't there to the same degree. in the input signal. And the easiest way to produce more harmonic content is to put a "clamp" on headroom, using diodes. There *are* other ways to limit headroom and "force" a circuit to generate harmonics; diodes are just the easiest. Varying the kind and/or number of diodes will vary how much harmonic content is produced, how easily, and/or for how long post pick-attack. As well, even the very same amount of gain and number/type of diodes will yield different harmonic profiles, based on shaping the signal tone/profile *before* it gets clipped. The SD-1 is essentially the same as the OD-1, in terms of what gets done to the signal to generate harmonic content. But where the SD-1 has a variable tone control, the OD-1, as you noted early on, has a fixed treble rolloff. Personally, I prefer it over the SD-1, but that's me. (I did, however, mod it to have a toggle for adding more bass, or adding more bass with more treble cut). I have one of the Boss half-rack ROD-10 units, which has five different drives in it, plus a 3-band sweepable-mids EQ. Great little unit with 5 very different flavors to choose from. There are NO op-amps used in any of the 5 drives, which range from mild-n'-smooth to Superfuzz-like. Let me correct that, no *chips* used, but they do use *discrete* op-amps that use individual transistors. I would describe them as distant cousins of the Boss BD-2. Personally, I don't like the distinction commonly made between "soft" and "hard" clipping. I feel that clipping is clipping is clipping, but when diodes are placed on the output of an op-amp, going to ground, that can result in *double* clipping. The op-amp itself is limited in how much headroom it has. Apply more than 35-50x gain to the typical input signal (and even "mild" drive pedals can easily apply >100x gain), and you'll easily exceed how much the signal can be amplified before the chip's limits produce clipping. But then the chip's output, even in those circumstances, is likely to exceed the forward voltage of the clipping diodes going to ground, such that the signal gets "re-clipped" by those diodes. It's not quite the same as the way that a Big Muff has two cascaded clipping stages, but it's not all that far off, either. When the diodes are in the op-amp's feedback loop, ALL the clipping gets done there. It's not "softer" in any sense, just localized, rather than distributed to two loci.
I have the OS2 which I bought in 2002, and my friend also have the same which he bought in 2021.. When I put them together they're never sound the same, mine was better
The OD-1 was very transparent, which made it great on bass. It was the best sounding overdrive for bass due to it's lack of insane tone shaping and filtering like the TS.
12:45 sounds like a big muff screamer. Big Scruff? Tube Muffin? Muff Screamer sounds like an obscure childhood trauma, or a nightmare story of someone's first time with a woman.
Tubes tend to clip A-symetrically which is where you get the sparkly sound that the sparkle drive types try to emulate. The A phase is clipping and the B phase is not clipped or less clipped. This would be the SD-1 sound.
I put them in two different groups: ones where the clean signal also comes through, and ones that don’t lol. From there it’s just varying shades of gain and frequency emphasis. When the clean signal also comes through (tubescreamer and SD-1) I use into a dirty amp, when there’s no clean signal (blues driver and dumbler) I run it into a clean amp.
Speaking of nerdy stuff, I wanted to ask if we can infer some of these tonal differences from the spectrogram, but then realised that there is no way to visualise that easily. Too many variables (signal amplitude and frequency plus pedal knobs into a frequency distribution) to be useful for regular visualization…
I remember a guy wandering around the comments sections and forums a decade back telling everyone that the Klon was just an MXR Distortion+ because the heart of them were the same circuit. And like, OK but also no.
At this point, OG-1 would be a more appropriate name. 😂 Edit: Brian, think Boss and Dan Armstrong studied the same sources? The discrete opamp in the Red Ranger looks a lot like the Boss designs, just with NPN BJTs rather than Jfets.
I like the Boss Super Overdrive far better than the Ibanez TS. Those Boss old school OD pedals are okay but inferior to Super OD's but me myself like to crank distortion on the amplifier all the way set the levels on the pedal flat 12 o'clock for almost death metal tone by giving the maxed out amp distortion tone an Xtra edge with the pedal. Regular distortion pedals just override the circuit sounding terrible while overdrive gives it an edge
I have two DOD 250s built decades apart, and they sound different. Not radically, but a bit. And those 250s sound different than my late 80s DOD FX-50B Overdrive Plus. Not radically, but a bit. Then my Rocktron Sonic Glory sounds a bit like a DOD 250, but with a bit less crunch. Not radically different, but a bit.
I have an SD-1 and a Visual Sound Route 808 as my TS flavors. I typically set them for a slight gain boost and a slight volume boost. I swap them based on whether I want a more smooth or rough sound. Typically I prefer the SD-1 with British voiced amps and the 808 on American style amps.
Thanks for turning me on to PedalPCB , wow what a great resource. I recently reversed engineered the SOL Mini amplifier circuit and posted 3 videos of mods that diy'er can do to the amplifier.
OMG the Arion Tubulator was my first pedal! I keep debating buying it again- I guess I won't be able to now that you've shared it :) Happy memories of my Dad driving me to a shop in Tucker, GA to buy one. He was an engineer and explained what overdrive was. I just wanted to make noise.
Don't know if in the guitar realm this happens but it is often debated (not sure if true) that components rejected for one synthesizer were used for a drummachine (Roland Jupiter & TR-808). Stay awesome Brian 🤠
Love the uploads as always! I do think this one could've used more of what you did on the breadboard and less "these overdrives with different circuits sound...different." But I guess that does need to be pointed out to some haha. The sentiment I always see is "Oh, it has a 4558? It's a Tubescreamer." or "Oh it's a 2 transistor fuzz? it's a Fuzz Face." Would love to see more direct comparisons of stuff like that!
As a fan of your od pedals I want to know more about those bread board pedal you demonstrated. I play mostly teles and I like what it did when you engaged it!
Pedals are different. But having a graphic EQ after the drive section can do a lot to homogenize drive pedals to get to what you want. That’s no fun. Different pedals on tap is fun.
Not thru my nice headphones but thru my cellphone speaker, all these pedals sound almost entirely indistinguishable -- i.e., they are all clearly distorted sounding despite their frequency shapes being possibly different. So in nod to the Nashville pedalboard strategy in having an EQ pedal after the distortion pedals, seems a distortion+EQ pedal would make a lot of sense..?
I have a 40th anniversary BOSS overdrive and another of the same the model (Not sure the year) and the sound completely different at the exact same settings. The anniversary model has lower output level and has a noticeable cut in the high end frequency.
Brian this is why we love you..a good honest review in a language a guitar player can understand..oh yeah and thee Tumnus...lol..yes the Tumnus...Awesome
back in the day i watched from the drum throne guitarist with no pedels then a few then a lot, many gigs the bad wires they abandon the pedals and plug straight in still sounds loud and noisy lol nobody notices guitarist become nurotic over this, just listen, they are traumatised for sure
Whats funny is last night after a drink or two I watched your vid froma few years ago comparing the od, sd1 and od3. I woke up today with an order confirmation for an od3
Super nerd level is great - enough nerd that I can learn from without it all going over my head... a bit like when Beato talks about music theory, eventually something starts to sink in!
I always wondered, if there is no input buffer, the pickupcoils have more influence on the circuit behavior behind it. (especially if the first stage has feedback). With a input buffer the coil impandances should have less influence. So different guitars should influence the signal sound more without a buffer? Maybe same will apply to the amplifier connected if no output buffer is applied. What do you think?
Mine takes diesel, as did the one before that and the one before that, and so on… next one might be electric, depending on how far I can extend the life of the current one and what the used market looks like when it’s time to move on.
Thats actually a really good metaphor, cuz for most ppl yea, they look different and some might have a feature we absolutely require that another does not have, but in the end theyre all just designed to get us from point a to point b, and in the end they do it all the same.
It doesn't do so well on youtube, so I save the technical and "ultra nerdy" stuff for my Pedal Courses, that way I can dedicate time to answering questions and helping people understand better.
Gain can be thought of as “louder signal”, but often we use it to refer to what is actually called “clipping”. This is because when you increase the gain in a device when you run out of headroom it clips, which is the sound of distortion
I think of it as gain is amplification of your signal. We could call clean gain amplification of signal without artifacts like distortion, compression and clipping. When gain comes with artifacts (because we push the circuit providing that gain past its design limit), we get those artifacts we love like compression, overdrive, clipping and/or distortion. The circuit providing gain could be a transistor, op amp, preamp tube, poweramp tube, etc.
I think what most people are getting at is that most overdrives sound fairly similar, and certainly not so much better that they warrant an extra >$200 that some pedal makers charge. This video certainly didn't convince me otherwise. The obsession over these relatively minor differences in OD pedals, and guitar gear in general, is what is likely fueling this backlash against the idea that you need all these different pedals and equipment.
I have seen enough double blind tests to sufficiently convince me that any 2 relatively similar pedals can sound so close to each other as to be audibly indistinguishable.
Yup. People don't get it. I mean don't get me wrong, I've bought and sold pedal because they sounded similar. (such as some "hot rodded" Plexi style pedals). But I feel as if these same people are not taking their amp into consideration, too. That's the ONLY times I've had pedals that sounds similar is when the amp is overdriving. Otherwise, most sound different!
I think there are many pedals of the same type (name it overdrive, distortion, fuzz...) that they have a sweet spot in which you could dial them to sound the same. But not in the rest of the range.
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Talk nerdy to me lol. Love the geeky stuff from the legend himself. Thanks Brian.
To my ear, the difference between hunbuckers and single coils is waaaaay more noticeable that most overdrives, especially in the context of a mix, which is what really matters in the end.
Somebody is making a case for Parametric EQs and I support you sir!
They also (pickups) react differently to pedals, even one humbucker to the next. Single coil vs humbucker is even more noticeable of course. I have a MusicMan Axis with Seymour Duncan's that sounds amazing with a few OD/Fuzz pedals I have that sound horrible on other guitars with humbuckers.
To me all distortion pedals and high gain fuzzes sound all the same, like a complete mess
I respectfully disagree. The Wampler Belle, the Boss BD-2 or the OD-1, the Fulltone OCD, the Tube Screamer and the Klon are very very different in my opinion. And if you add how they react to pickups it's even more noticeable. That's probably why Brian and so many more people have a business haha
that's the most honest thing to electric guitar. as it is much closer to your strumming, strings, etc.
OD pedals are kind of like chocolate, which is a both food and a flavor. There is a commonality, but some are very different in wonderful ways. 🍫
Well said, good sir.
Yes but… germanium based Cocoa is better than silicone based Cocoa end of story!
That bread board circuit sounded great. I'm not a fan of the Tube Screamer style sound, but I'll have one of the former, please. :)
Brian's "breadboard" sounds better than the Tube Screamer. Why does that not surprise me in the least...? Such a great video. And, that breadboard video is priceless in and of itself.
The debate, to me, is not whether different components in a TS-type circuit sound different. It's more how some of these TS derivatives go for 4 times the price of an Ibanez. Add to that some vendors claim 'this is totally different than a TS' to get people to pay that upcharge, where switching out 2 resistors and 2 capacitors and maybe putting them on a switch would get you there. I admire the grift, but I'm glad that I've outgrown it (after years of experimenting with modding and developing my own PCBs).
Thanks you for going through the schematics! It is SO important!
Something that shocked me was how good a Rat style pedal through a Fender BF or Tweed styled amp can sound. You can get really interesting guitar sounds that sit well in a mix.
Compare the dynamics of a klon to a king of tone. Point proven and its night and day. No eq can change the touch sensitivity and reaction to your playing in unique circuits.
And in the context of a mix the different overdrives matter in a huge way, ever notice how fuzz gets lost and a mid pushed pedal sticks out.
Thanks brian you are totally right, and its worth having a wide range of overdrives for the differences. Love your pedals.
If you haven't obtained a Wampler Euphoria, I highly recommend one.
Cicci said it best: “The family had a lot of buffers.”
Love my tumnus
About 70% cover the same ground. Or maybe I am adjusting them to,sound the same….
Regardless of the pedal, there’s always a sound in your head that you like and generally you always aim towards that, that’s me at least.
There’s always going to be overlaps in some way but it’s their differences that make them unique
"make amp sound like its working harder" is pretty much the only thing OD is really for.
Audience doesn't care, they think "ohhh yeah kick on the rocket boost!" whatever it is: fuzz OD distortion doesn't matter one bit to them its all the same = "more power"
Can't we just use an eq pedal to make them sound nearly the same?
Maybe, but there are limitations of how far you can EQ.
Nope. Different pedals have different gain structures and levels of compressions. EQ can only change the EQ.
You’d be surprised. That Pedal Show did an episode with a bunch of boutique drives, and a Blues Driver and a GE7. A lot of the time they could get very very close. As other comments have mentioned, thinks like specific clipping characteristics can’t be replicated just by eq, but I’d you’re not running much gain that may not even be a concern.
That's good news to me, considering of my four pedals two are a GE-7 and BD-2. 😮
No, but their PURPOSE ~IS~ the same - to make the amp sound like it's working harder than it is, nothing more nothing less.
The only two main variables are in the EQ and clipping type, followed by headroom, I/O level and impedance.
Your pickups getting along with your speaker (the start and endpoint) always matter much more than your OD pedal or (clean) amp does, in fact.
Agree completely.
I've determined that most people on guitar forums don't actually play their instruments that much, they just collect gear. If they spent more time playing (with people, at gigs, in a studio, etc...), they'll develop their ears and can actually start hearing the difference between these things.
They are not all the same....
However, you sure can make pretty much all of them sound close to the same if you want too... especially if you eq them...
The cleaner the amp tone, the more different that different pedals sound.
I was kind of hoping you would have used the EVH5150 Over Drive pedal. I have the Ibanez TS9 and the EVH5150 and man are they so different. I would say the 5150 is closer to a distortion in sound. I'm no tech nerd. But I have some other over drives as well and they all sound similar, but slight differences. Some I cannot stand, like the DS-1. I really hate that pedal for some reason.
That 5150 is a distortion in my book.
Hate the DS-1 as well. Hard to believe top pros use that thing.
@@jfo3000 I understand back in my younger years the DS-1 was used a lot due to lack of options. I have one collecting dust on my shelf. No matter what amps I have ever owned and put them on, it just didn't get me the sound I was looking for. I love playing very clean tones, then hitting hard right to hard distortion, but I also love that edge of breakup and just kicking it over the edge as well. The DS-1 always seemed to leaving me wanting more, if that makes sense?
I hope not, just bought another last night
ALL overdrive/distortion/fuzz *adds* harmonic content that wasn't there, or at least wasn't there to the same degree. in the input signal. And the easiest way to produce more harmonic content is to put a "clamp" on headroom, using diodes. There *are* other ways to limit headroom and "force" a circuit to generate harmonics; diodes are just the easiest. Varying the kind and/or number of diodes will vary how much harmonic content is produced, how easily, and/or for how long post pick-attack. As well, even the very same amount of gain and number/type of diodes will yield different harmonic profiles, based on shaping the signal tone/profile *before* it gets clipped.
The SD-1 is essentially the same as the OD-1, in terms of what gets done to the signal to generate harmonic content. But where the SD-1 has a variable tone control, the OD-1, as you noted early on, has a fixed treble rolloff. Personally, I prefer it over the SD-1, but that's me. (I did, however, mod it to have a toggle for adding more bass, or adding more bass with more treble cut).
I have one of the Boss half-rack ROD-10 units, which has five different drives in it, plus a 3-band sweepable-mids EQ. Great little unit with 5 very different flavors to choose from. There are NO op-amps used in any of the 5 drives, which range from mild-n'-smooth to Superfuzz-like. Let me correct that, no *chips* used, but they do use *discrete* op-amps that use individual transistors. I would describe them as distant cousins of the Boss BD-2.
Personally, I don't like the distinction commonly made between "soft" and "hard" clipping. I feel that clipping is clipping is clipping, but when diodes are placed on the output of an op-amp, going to ground, that can result in *double* clipping. The op-amp itself is limited in how much headroom it has. Apply more than 35-50x gain to the typical input signal (and even "mild" drive pedals can easily apply >100x gain), and you'll easily exceed how much the signal can be amplified before the chip's limits produce clipping. But then the chip's output, even in those circumstances, is likely to exceed the forward voltage of the clipping diodes going to ground, such that the signal gets "re-clipped" by those diodes. It's not quite the same as the way that a Big Muff has two cascaded clipping stages, but it's not all that far off, either. When the diodes are in the op-amp's feedback loop, ALL the clipping gets done there. It's not "softer" in any sense, just localized, rather than distributed to two loci.
TL:DR = Harmonic Series is altered by clipping style: symmetry (or asymmetry) + emphasis of even/odd/all partials
I have the OS2 which I bought in 2002, and my friend also have the same which he bought in 2021.. When I put them together they're never sound the same, mine was better
Love your work. Great insights. I guess it's like making love, it's basically the same, but yet it's different with each partner.
The OD-1 was very transparent, which made it great on bass. It was the best sounding overdrive for bass due to it's lack of insane tone shaping and filtering like the TS.
12:45 sounds like a big muff screamer. Big Scruff? Tube Muffin? Muff Screamer sounds like an obscure childhood trauma, or a nightmare story of someone's first time with a woman.
Muff Screamer sounds like somebody's wife...
@@vorpalblades maybe even with a lisp, Muffes (abbrev:Mfs.)Screamer, Ted Screamer's wife.
Why hasn't anyone made a cooler version and called it an "I Screamer?"
I appreciate the OD-3, more and more as time passes.
Tubes tend to clip A-symetrically which is where you get the sparkly sound that the sparkle drive types try to emulate. The A phase is clipping and the B phase is not clipped or less clipped. This would be the SD-1 sound.
Enjoyed the video. Cause I'm into the nerdy stuff for sure. Curious to see how a Plumes would compare with your explanation.
I put them in two different groups: ones where the clean signal also comes through, and ones that don’t lol. From there it’s just varying shades of gain and frequency emphasis. When the clean signal also comes through (tubescreamer and SD-1) I use into a dirty amp, when there’s no clean signal (blues driver and dumbler) I run it into a clean amp.
Speaking of nerdy stuff, I wanted to ask if we can infer some of these tonal differences from the spectrogram, but then realised that there is no way to visualise that easily. Too many variables (signal amplitude and frequency plus pedal knobs into a frequency distribution) to be useful for regular visualization…
I remember a guy wandering around the comments sections and forums a decade back telling everyone that the Klon was just an MXR Distortion+ because the heart of them were the same circuit. And like, OK but also no.
Thank you for this,
A Mini-Masterclass in your art
Love my (slightly modified) SD-1 --> Traynor YCV40 amp
(I'm just a working guy :- )
At this point, OG-1 would be a more appropriate name. 😂
Edit: Brian, think Boss and Dan Armstrong studied the same sources? The discrete opamp in the Red Ranger looks a lot like the Boss designs, just with NPN BJTs rather than Jfets.
I like the Boss Super Overdrive far better than the Ibanez TS. Those Boss old school OD pedals are okay but inferior to Super OD's but me myself like to crank distortion on the amplifier all the way set the levels on the pedal flat 12 o'clock for almost death metal tone by giving the maxed out amp distortion tone an Xtra edge with the pedal. Regular distortion pedals just override the circuit sounding terrible while overdrive gives it an edge
I kinda see the young Chevy Chase comp, but not quite sure. Could you try comically falling down?
I have two DOD 250s built decades apart, and they sound different. Not radically, but a bit. And those 250s sound different than my late 80s DOD FX-50B Overdrive Plus. Not radically, but a bit.
Then my Rocktron Sonic Glory sounds a bit like a DOD 250, but with a bit less crunch. Not radically different, but a bit.
I have an SD-1 and a Visual Sound Route 808 as my TS flavors. I typically set them for a slight gain boost and a slight volume boost. I swap them based on whether I want a more smooth or rough sound. Typically I prefer the SD-1 with British voiced amps and the 808 on American style amps.
Thanks for turning me on to PedalPCB , wow what a great resource. I recently reversed engineered the SOL Mini amplifier circuit and posted 3 videos of mods that diy'er can do to the amplifier.
Hi Mr Wampler! I got your Pantheon Delux dual drive pedal. I thinking it's a great tool. Tools are good.
OMG the Arion Tubulator was my first pedal! I keep debating buying it again- I guess I won't be able to now that you've shared it :) Happy memories of my Dad driving me to a shop in Tucker, GA to buy one. He was an engineer and explained what overdrive was. I just wanted to make noise.
I want to thank the 👽👽👽 for giving us this wonderful technology to build pedals out of
Don't know if in the guitar realm this happens but it is often debated (not sure if true) that components rejected for one synthesizer were used for a drummachine (Roland Jupiter & TR-808).
Stay awesome Brian 🤠
Love the uploads as always! I do think this one could've used more of what you did on the breadboard and less "these overdrives with different circuits sound...different." But I guess that does need to be pointed out to some haha. The sentiment I always see is "Oh, it has a 4558? It's a Tubescreamer." or "Oh it's a 2 transistor fuzz? it's a Fuzz Face." Would love to see more direct comparisons of stuff like that!
As a fan of your od pedals I want to know more about those bread board pedal you demonstrated. I play mostly teles and I like what it did when you engaged it!
Pedals are different. But having a graphic EQ after the drive section can do a lot to homogenize drive pedals to get to what you want. That’s no fun. Different pedals on tap is fun.
Not thru my nice headphones but thru my cellphone speaker, all these pedals sound almost entirely indistinguishable -- i.e., they are all clearly distorted sounding despite their frequency shapes being possibly different.
So in nod to the Nashville pedalboard strategy in having an EQ pedal after the distortion pedals, seems a distortion+EQ pedal would make a lot of sense..?
I have a 40th anniversary BOSS overdrive and another of the same the model (Not sure the year) and the sound completely different at the exact same settings. The anniversary model has lower output level and has a noticeable cut in the high end frequency.
Brian this is why we love you..a good honest review in a language a guitar player can understand..oh yeah and thee Tumnus...lol..yes the Tumnus...Awesome
I respect your craft. You are extremely talented at what you do.
Great demo and explanation. I always learn something new. Btw, tumnus is the best sounding of its type. Especially high gain mode.
back in the day i watched from the drum throne guitarist with no pedels then a few then a lot, many gigs the bad wires they abandon the pedals and plug straight in still sounds loud and noisy lol nobody notices guitarist become nurotic over this, just listen, they are traumatised for sure
So true Brian. It's like guitars, you can get two exact same guitars. And they are not the same...
OH this video is what I have been looking for for years!! AWESOME!
Whats funny is last night after a drink or two I watched your vid froma few years ago comparing the od, sd1 and od3. I woke up today with an order confirmation for an od3
The more you talk nerd to me the harder I'm gonna click that thumbs up counter!
I can get pedals to sound similar. Yes there is a venn diagram effect. But it is the specialities of each pedal we buy.
Super nerd level is great - enough nerd that I can learn from without it all going over my head... a bit like when Beato talks about music theory, eventually something starts to sink in!
“Many Buffers died to bring us this information”
I respect how WampCat is low key plugging some DIY options for the people :)
OD-3 is my favorite overdrive pedal. So underrated
Makes me wonder if they bought one of those fake Bonsai pedals from Temu...
now I understand your answer in my comment from a couple of days ago 🙂 great video yet again, thanks!
I do I learned before, I went to Devry Institute of Technology..
I don't get it half what you say, but I always see the videos from start to finish becouse in the end, you get the point in anyway. 😁
I always wondered, if there is no input buffer, the pickupcoils have more influence on the circuit behavior behind it. (especially if the first stage has feedback). With a input buffer the coil impandances should have less influence. So different guitars should influence the signal sound more without a buffer? Maybe same will apply to the amplifier connected if no output buffer is applied. What do you think?
love how you went over the schematics, nobody else does this! But I love guitars and pedals and studied circuits so it is very interesting to me.
most overdrive pedals sound similar to my ear , like coke vs pepsi kind of thing .
I’d love hear more of and about the OD-2
Have you ever tried a hybrid fuzz driver from Skreddy pedals? It’s a glorious tone maker!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Hudson Sidecar
Od 3 is highly underrated
You got that right!
We need an OD-1 clone! Wampler please? Boss sleeping on the Waza Craft
I spent the entire video shouting "Turn them BOTH on!!!"
Yes they are.
Are all electric guitars basically the same ?
Yes they are.
I love the wampler triumph. Covers most of my needs.
Two TS-9's can sound different.
Which one do i use to sound like crowbar?
Brian, we knew we forgot to ask you a question during our interview!
Didn't Josh clarify that there's like 3 or 4 circuits, including the TS, the Bluesbreaker, Nobels, Klon, and I forget what else.
Josh mentioned that those were the most copied basically, but there are certainly WAY more types of circuits than that.
Some people are also stupid...
If you think all pedals are the same, then you probably think all cars are the same.
Well they all take gas and get you from point a to point b.😂
They don’t all take gas anymore.
Mine takes diesel, as did the one before that and the one before that, and so on… next one might be electric, depending on how far I can extend the life of the current one and what the used market looks like when it’s time to move on.
Thats actually a really good metaphor, cuz for most ppl yea, they look different and some might have a feature we absolutely require that another does not have, but in the end theyre all just designed to get us from point a to point b, and in the end they do it all the same.
cars are cars, and not anything like guitars - which is why they COMPLEMENT each other.
@@Ottophil you are awesome 😎
That od3 sounds great!
My wife definitely thinks so!
You should let yourself get way more technical / "nerdy"
It doesn't do so well on youtube, so I save the technical and "ultra nerdy" stuff for my Pedal Courses, that way I can dedicate time to answering questions and helping people understand better.
Great video
YES!!
🎛️-🎛️-🎛️-🤘👽👽👽🎸
Describe a buffer please.
It converts a high impedance signal into a low impedance signal
Can you explain what makes clean gain... clean gain please?
Gain can be thought of as “louder signal”, but often we use it to refer to what is actually called “clipping”. This is because when you increase the gain in a device when you run out of headroom it clips, which is the sound of distortion
I think of it as gain is amplification of your signal. We could call clean gain amplification of signal without artifacts like distortion, compression and clipping. When gain comes with artifacts (because we push the circuit providing that gain past its design limit), we get those artifacts we love like compression, overdrive, clipping and/or distortion. The circuit providing gain could be a transistor, op amp, preamp tube, poweramp tube, etc.
Who makes the pedal at 0:59?
It's a lovepedal eternity
Lovepedal - Kanji
You should have at least one Wampler overdrive/distortion in your arsenal!
I'd recommend a Tumnus, which Klon Centaur klone, which is a great overdrive many people only use as a dirty boost.
Wampler and JHS are two companies I gladly support. Stand up dudes.
@@djay6651 I totally support it you on this one; it sounds gorgeous!
@@vorpalblades I've got a few Wampler pedals - Plexi Mini, Ego Compressor and Reflection Reverb - all sound fantastic! I have not tried JHS though.
I think what most people are getting at is that most overdrives sound fairly similar, and certainly not so much better that they warrant an extra >$200 that some pedal makers charge. This video certainly didn't convince me otherwise. The obsession over these relatively minor differences in OD pedals, and guitar gear in general, is what is likely fueling this backlash against the idea that you need all these different pedals and equipment.
I have seen enough double blind tests to sufficiently convince me that any 2 relatively similar pedals can sound so close to each other as to be audibly indistinguishable.
HOW did you know I was wondering this only earlier today? Amazing timing!
Yes. Next video
Yup. People don't get it. I mean don't get me wrong, I've bought and sold pedal because they sounded similar. (such as some "hot rodded" Plexi style pedals). But I feel as if these same people are not taking their amp into consideration, too. That's the ONLY times I've had pedals that sounds similar is when the amp is overdriving. Otherwise, most sound different!
I think there are many pedals of the same type (name it overdrive, distortion, fuzz...) that they have a sweet spot in which you could dial them to sound the same. But not in the rest of the range.
0:02 thanks for coming
they kinda are