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wwhhhaatt « Great overdrive »
Published on 07/20/11 at 11:08The boss od-3 is a simple overdrive pedal with the standard boss single stomp box layout. It has standard 1/4" input and output jacks, 9 volt DC input jack, 9 volt battery snap under the bypass door, and controls for drive, level, and tone.
Housed in the tough as a brick boss box.
UTILIZATION
There are not any confusing controls on this box which is how I think overdrives should be. Just plug in your cables, power it up, and go. The manual is fine but if you have ever used any other pedal then you don't even need to take it out of the box. Another great thing is that this pedal sounds pretty good with the controls all set to 12:00 making it very easy to integrate into your set-up.
SOUND QUALITY
I used (I sold it once I started building my own overdrives) this pedal in a guitar set up as an overdrive for my clean channel and also as a boost for my lead channel. As an overdrive I was very surprised with how good it sounds. Some of the other boss overdrive/distortion boxes sound plain and boxy but this one held it's own against much more expensive pedals. There is a wide range of useable sounds from light drive to a classic rock crunch. I really enjoyed the sound of the gain about 3/4 of the way into an amp with a bit of breakup. It really kicked the sound up without getting muddy or causing too much noise. Single note lines were fattened and chords retained their clarity even with the added gain.
As a boost in the typical set up of gain on 0, volume an 10, and tone around noon it really tightened up my distortion sound. The pedal cuts out a bit of bass similar to a tube screamer but without the massive mid hump in the EQ. Using the pedal like this allowed me to get more modern metal sounds out of mid gain amps. I used it with some orange and budda amps and was surprised how metal I could get them sounding. In front of my Framus cobra's lead channel it provided that popular clear, tight, compressed tone you hear on many current metal albums. The amp can do that sound on it's own but I preferred having it set more moderately and kicking this pedal on top when needed.
OVERALL OPINION
This is a great pedal and I think anybody looking for an overdrive should check it out before dropping much more money on all the boutique pedals out there. For the price, especially used, you just can't get a better option and it holds it's own against the more expensive stuff. If I ever get tired of my current overdrive I will probably pick another one of these up.
Housed in the tough as a brick boss box.
UTILIZATION
There are not any confusing controls on this box which is how I think overdrives should be. Just plug in your cables, power it up, and go. The manual is fine but if you have ever used any other pedal then you don't even need to take it out of the box. Another great thing is that this pedal sounds pretty good with the controls all set to 12:00 making it very easy to integrate into your set-up.
SOUND QUALITY
I used (I sold it once I started building my own overdrives) this pedal in a guitar set up as an overdrive for my clean channel and also as a boost for my lead channel. As an overdrive I was very surprised with how good it sounds. Some of the other boss overdrive/distortion boxes sound plain and boxy but this one held it's own against much more expensive pedals. There is a wide range of useable sounds from light drive to a classic rock crunch. I really enjoyed the sound of the gain about 3/4 of the way into an amp with a bit of breakup. It really kicked the sound up without getting muddy or causing too much noise. Single note lines were fattened and chords retained their clarity even with the added gain.
As a boost in the typical set up of gain on 0, volume an 10, and tone around noon it really tightened up my distortion sound. The pedal cuts out a bit of bass similar to a tube screamer but without the massive mid hump in the EQ. Using the pedal like this allowed me to get more modern metal sounds out of mid gain amps. I used it with some orange and budda amps and was surprised how metal I could get them sounding. In front of my Framus cobra's lead channel it provided that popular clear, tight, compressed tone you hear on many current metal albums. The amp can do that sound on it's own but I preferred having it set more moderately and kicking this pedal on top when needed.
OVERALL OPINION
This is a great pedal and I think anybody looking for an overdrive should check it out before dropping much more money on all the boutique pedals out there. For the price, especially used, you just can't get a better option and it holds it's own against the more expensive stuff. If I ever get tired of my current overdrive I will probably pick another one of these up.