Favorite overdrive pedal

Fulltone OCD! Low Peak and High Peak modes sold it for me 😄

changes the mid-bump from lower to upper mids by swapping a few cap and resistor values... very similar to the subs switch on some z-vex pedals or the 'bump' switch on the mxr custom-badass OD

have to agree with gchiaren, i love my ocd the low peak with drive around 9 o clock gives it just a little bite and thicken up my sound, i really like my vox bulldog "valve" pedal, it hase a valbe in it but it has a really trebly vintage distortion and gives a good dirty clean lead sound

and for the record right now my favorite pedal for low to mid gain dirt is the discontinued TC NovaDrive (though it also does great full bore distortion and borderline fuzzy tones)... a voodoo lab sparkle drive type TS9 thing with a modded proco ra, all analog, buffered or true bypass, digitall controlled so it has presets and can respond to MIDI messages and the drives can be stacked parallel or series in both directions. Its great when you start running them side by side with some clean blend into an amp that's just breaking up. You cna kinda add dirt and boost to real specific frequencies so it'll push an amp that's already breakin' up real well. If you don't have a tube amp you won't get o much mileage out of it and you're ebtter off with one of the many amp in a box pedals available now that can make any ampifier sound pretty rockin', but if you are running a loud non-master amp of the old style and want to go from a little hair into a well focused dirt that doesn't drop your low end then the Nova Drive is the shit. You cna really dial it in to suit, save the repset and forget about it. Even without a MIDI system you can have that push as well as blast off solo sound set up in rpeset mode on the 2 buttons so you can swap ebtween them and bypass and have 3 solid sounds going. I've not used anything better when it comes to various levels of dirt from one box. Wish TC still made this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Xh6PocUyk

Wish I could afford some of those pedals I've heard some walrus audio demos and they sound amazing.

most pedal demos sound amazing, get a good microphone, speakers, amp guitar and player all set just right and you're off... I will say this, overdrives sound pretty damned good these days in general and there's nothing wrong with old designs to begin with, the new ones are mainly riffs on the old ones anyway. The OCD is absed on the Voodoo Lab OD (not the spekle drive, the dscontinued OD). And that's not so far off from a DS1. Each version gets a little cleverer then the last and the component values get dialed in a little better for a response that jives with more amplifiers well... quite a bit of Walrus and EQD stuff in teh dirt camp is reptty openly based on other designs, just teaked or with tons of options. If you can wield a soldering iron it might behoove you to buy a bucket of parts and soe bud boxes and throw some pedals together for yourself.

The iron horse version 2 is great for distortion, however again its expensive like all of there pedals. Look at spending a cool 200 for a brand new one. Again, a good amp distortion can't be beat although you may have to drive your amp in order to find that sound.

while there are somemaster volume amps that sound good for amp drive, most sound ebtter with the amster wide open or damned close to it like the JCM800... so your almsot ebtter off just cranking something 50 watts or less comapred to channels switchers where both channels suffer unless you really trn up to get great dirt and wind up with a not-so clean channel... that's been my experience anyway. Unless you're talking Soldanos or soemthing simialrly expensive. But for that money I am happier with a Matchless. Fairly functional master if you nhave no choice, half pwoer switch, etc. If you need a cleaner tone you can run 2 amps and switch or use soemthing to add some hair out front and a little gain boost as most guys do. In that department I am really intot his whole aprallel thing and like the TC I emntioned. Given my druthers I like to use my ehad switcher with a whole scad of different amps hooked up like an IRL Line 6 POD LOL. Still haven't gottent o do that in a band setting, too much hassle to lug all thsoeamps.

whatever floats yourboat

I'm seeing a lot of positive things from the Horizon Precision Overdive

I'm a big fan of JHS's stuff. My two current favorite OD pedals are the JHS Morning Glory V4 (based on the Marshall Blues Breaker) and the new Kilt V2 (based on the Bixonic Expandora). I can have up to 4 overdrive stages with just these two and their Red Remote switch. Josh and team are doing a lot of great work recently.

I ahd an expandora V1 int eh 90s for a while... did so much that itw as overwhelming... kinda like a mesa rectifier... there are tones int ehre somewhere but who ash time to find them, I want to play... if I want to do sound design I'll use a synthesizer

East city drive