Maxon Reissue Series OD808 Overdrive

I've had a bunch of Overdrive pedals and could have saved a lot of time if I'd ended up with an OD808 first.This is one of the easiest to use and most flexible drive pedals out there with a tube amp. All the controls are responsive, there are not many "bad" settings on the dials, and there are a lot of good ones. It seems like it should work well with a wide range of guitars and amplifiers. It does not have tons of noise or hiss either.On a clean/high headroom setup there are a bunch of good ways to set this pedal up with some gain coming from the pedal and/or some boost coming from the pedal. Step on it and you'll get pedal gain/dirt + a volume boost. You might find that this is not a good way to get a really high gain sound but that's not what this kind of setup is for.On a dirty/low headroom setup the common way to set it up is low or zero gain and lots of volume. This will shape the boost which tends to tighten up the bass and drive the mids & highs, causing the amp to distort differently. If you have a high gain amp this works amazingly well.This pedal has a medium level of compression. It does not get rid of all your dynamics but it does reduce them. Another really amazing thing about this pedal is on a multi-channel amp this is a very rare example of a drive pedal that can be setup in a compromise position and sound great with either channel. So if you have 2 channels with a footswitch you can have 4 sounds with the amp footswitch + this and all of them will sound good. It's about the only drive pedal I've seen do this so well.Highly recommended.

I've owned several when they had the ts10 buffer that were too bright. The new buffer brings it more in line with the ts9 sound.Standard bud box size which is great. Build quality seems good. Three simple knobs make it easy to set.It cleans up a little better than the 9 series because of the higher voltage cutoff of the diodes. It will still get the chunkier gain so versatility is increased. Volume is adequate. You can still push a non-master amp into oblivion.

There are a lot of pedals out there. But you can't go wrong with this. This should be a staple on every pedal board. I take a pretty minimalist approach to my rig: I run mine through a single channel 15w Orange Tiny Terror tube combo with a wah and clean boost in front and a delay/reverb behind it, and this thing can get every sound I need. Works well if you want more of a classic rock sound or even just a light to moderate bump on a cleaner setting. I play a lot of metal and stuff, so pushing the amp with higher volume and a reasonable gain setting with this on it sounds pretty nasty too, without sounding too hard-clippy or over saturated. Let's me easily get those squeals and pinch harmonics without comprising tone and having to crank the gain all the way up. High quality, natural sounding and versatile distortion pedal, and if you're like me and only have one channel to work with, the OD808 can help you take that one channel a lot of places. I highly recommend this for those just starting to mess with pedals and for journeyman axe slingers alike.

This pedal is critical for anybody who owns a Peavey 6505 or similar high-gain amp. Like many others, I was at first disappointed with my 6505; I found it muddy and unresponsive, nowhere near the tone I thought the amp was capable of... message boards are filled with how the 6505 is such a letdown as an affordable metal amp for this very reason.Enter the OD808.Night and day difference; the uberhigh gain of the amp is tightened into an EXTREMELY responsive range, allowing the metal guitarist to sound essentially like they are playing through a dual rectifier (albeit a roundabout way to rectify the signal). This allows for a very punchy signal and great harmonics (better square wave), and now the range knobs on the amp actually do something so you can SCULPT a tone, not just have to throw it together (you should be able to tell the difference between 5 and 6, whether it be bass, mid, or treble. that's the mark of a good amp, imho)I currently have the 808 sandwiched between a Boss CS-2 (compression/sustain) and a Boss NS-2 noise gate (essential for use with the CS-2; boss screwed the CS-2 up, and its hiss is so bad you need an NS-2 to use it) and it makes my Ibanez S series w/EMG 81/85's SCREAM through the 6505. Of course, even more impressive was my old Jackson with the seymour duncan SH-10 full shred in the bridge... with the sustain, I was reminded of the scene in spinal tap when they were talking about the les pauls...Overall, I am a very specific type of player (technical death metal) and this pedal has virtually cured my amp woes with the peavey 6505. Anybody having a similar issue should check out an 808 prior to selling their amp; the 6505 is the amp it is supposed to be ONLY with this simple addition.

This tube screamer is a notch above the Ibanez in that the low end of your guitar isn't as muddy. But the Ibanez is very good also.