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wwhhhaatt « good boost, great for classic rock »
Published on 07/19/11 at 12:10The fulltone ocd is an analog overdrive pedal with a pretty wide variety of sounds. It has the standard 1/4" inputs and outputs, a dc jack that can take 9-18 volts, controls for volume, gain, and tone, plus a high pass/low pass switch. It has a single true bypass stomp switch.
UTILIZATION
This is a no-frills overdrive pedal that is a breeze to set up and get going. The controls are very simple and sound surprisingly good at noon which I love in pedals. It does take a bit of time to get the volume leveled out and figure a good balance with the tone knob and high pass/low pass switch. The manual is fine and not really needed after the first use.
SOUND QUALITY
I used this pedal in a couple different ways. When playing in my main band, which is mostly metal, I mostly used it to boost the lead channel on my framus tube amp. It's a pretty common trick where you keep the gain all the way down, tone just over noon, and crank the volume. This makes the guitar hit the first gain stage a bit harder and compress more. Combining this with the slight bass cut on high pass gives you a tighter distortion sound that is pretty much the standard for modern metal. On our lighter songs I used the pedal with more gain and less volume on my clean channel as a mid-way point between clean and crunch.
As a standalone overdrive it was sometimes great and other times I felt it was a bit grating on the ears. It was tough finding a good balance between too much high end and not enough where it became muddy. It can get a great classic rock sound but seemed to really need a loud amp. At lower volumes it was just too fizzy sounding. I preferred using the low pass when used as a standalone overdrive on clean.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall it's a good pedal to have around and once you get it dialed in it's right there with the rest of the overdrive world. There are many different flavors available these days and this is one of the better ones for me. It is somewhat similar to a tube screamer when used as a boost but a bit clearer. The one thing I do not like is how many different versions there are out there.I have played a version 2 and 3 as well and did not really find a lot of sounds you could not get out of version 1.
UTILIZATION
This is a no-frills overdrive pedal that is a breeze to set up and get going. The controls are very simple and sound surprisingly good at noon which I love in pedals. It does take a bit of time to get the volume leveled out and figure a good balance with the tone knob and high pass/low pass switch. The manual is fine and not really needed after the first use.
SOUND QUALITY
I used this pedal in a couple different ways. When playing in my main band, which is mostly metal, I mostly used it to boost the lead channel on my framus tube amp. It's a pretty common trick where you keep the gain all the way down, tone just over noon, and crank the volume. This makes the guitar hit the first gain stage a bit harder and compress more. Combining this with the slight bass cut on high pass gives you a tighter distortion sound that is pretty much the standard for modern metal. On our lighter songs I used the pedal with more gain and less volume on my clean channel as a mid-way point between clean and crunch.
As a standalone overdrive it was sometimes great and other times I felt it was a bit grating on the ears. It was tough finding a good balance between too much high end and not enough where it became muddy. It can get a great classic rock sound but seemed to really need a loud amp. At lower volumes it was just too fizzy sounding. I preferred using the low pass when used as a standalone overdrive on clean.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall it's a good pedal to have around and once you get it dialed in it's right there with the rest of the overdrive world. There are many different flavors available these days and this is one of the better ones for me. It is somewhat similar to a tube screamer when used as a boost but a bit clearer. The one thing I do not like is how many different versions there are out there.I have played a version 2 and 3 as well and did not really find a lot of sounds you could not get out of version 1.