DOD FX69 Grunge
Reviews
Trusted musician and artist reviews for DOD FX69 Grunge
Based on 10 Reviews
It's all in the name.
It is one of the most obnoxious pedals ever. The distortion is so nuts that at times you don't even know what your're listening too. But some times when I'm all alone I crank it up and then instantly turn it down cause I don't wanna mess up my speaker. It's funny to play with but I honestly don't think I would ever use it seriously.
It's a alright overdrive like fuzz pedal.
I don't really buy many effect pedals but this one stood out to me i've always seen my dad have it and i knew i had to have it so i went to a flea market found one and bought it for around $15 and I honestly like the feeling of it. I know a lot of famous people used it such as kurt cobain etc, the more i looked into the more i had to have it!
wow, we live in an era where dads were using this pedal... I remember being in highschool whenit came out and me and my guitar friends were all snickering that they slapped grunge on a dirtbox, I mean grunge was like a big mudd or a DS1, not hard to come by at the time or even now LOL
andno, kurt didn't use the grunge, he did however take them ons tage and throw them into the audience once I'm told.. its not like kurt had aspectacular guitar sound or anything, that's not why we all liked nevermind in 92
my dad was in college in the early 90s, and kurt did use it that show and throw it in the crowd. mocking that grunge can't be a effect.
Gain city bitch, gain gain city bitch
This pedal is... I don't know what to do with it. I can't dial it in in any way that I enjoy. The gain is ridiculous. It's a unique, screamy pedal and I've used it in a noise-band jam session to make my feedback outrageously powerful so I could manipulate it, but as far as serving the purpose it was created for? ehhhh...
its an 80s opamp big muff circuit with a very different frequency response due to the 2 band tonestack... the big muff is not for everyone, the op-amp version is for an even smaller group of players and the stock grunge pedal is for no one.... but they were kinda funny when they were first released when I was a kid. EVERYTHING was 'grunge' back then.
you can mod these though... there are 2 pairs of back-to-back diodes creating hard clipping distortion marked on the board as D1 thru D4.... try removing D1 and D2 to make it into an op-amp driven supa tonebender with treb and bass controls (this can sound pretty cool, your distortion will be a bit more open and fuzzy with more output from the 'loud' control and the pedal will clean up a bit better with your volume knob)... you can also make the diode clipping assymetrical at either diode pair by clipping one leg of one diode from a pair and then soldering another diode (typically a germanium diode like on the boss SD1 and fulltone pedals) between that leg and the board (or you can replace one of the silicon type diodes in a pair with a higher or lower clipping threshold diode like a germanium diode or LED)... the rest of the pedal's faults are based in cheap components and its a lot of trouble to upgrade things without burning the traces off the PCB and even then, its more cost effective to just build a BYOC large beaver kit or something
great
it was my 3rd pedal. I use it on "Rebel Girl" originally by Bikini Kill, and Pat (our rhythm guitarist) used it for the rhythm riff for "Complaining in the Key of A Minor". it has been a pedal notorious because, well, its name tells you what it sounds like, and that is why I use it.
piece of shit!!
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A real tone shaper, you can duplicate lots of memorable sounds with this box of rock, besides kurt cobain's main distortion.
A real tone shaper, you can duplicate lots of memorable sounds with this box of rock, besides kurt cobain's main distortion.
I am pretty sure that kurt was a DS1, DS2 and sansamp guy and never actually had the grunge in line, though he had it on stage as a joke once or twice... the gronge is an opamp bigmuff circuit with 2 band tone controls, more of a smashing pumpkins thing
Bad guitar pedal
This was my first pedal I bought way back when I first was learning guitar. Even then I knew it was kind of junky. Although, years later, I'd mess with it on a bass guitar and discovered it was a lot better being a bass distortion pedal than a guitar distortion pedal.
To the ebst of my knowledge its circuit is the op-amp big muff of Siamese Dream fame.... just witch vastly inferior componentry (not that an 80s muff is anything to write home about in that dept) and a baxandall/james type tone network (treble and bass, flat in the middle, stock muff tone knob @5 sound available with the treble and bass up for those scooped mid tones heard on early mudhoney, pumpkins, etc)
like an actual big muff I feel like its a better bass effect stock, and then its still cheesey.... if you go into it and look at the board you will find 2 pairs of clipping diodes. If you clip the 1st pair (marked D1 and D2) you will get less compression, more output and a more interesting sustain (in my opinion). You will also hear more of the opamp stages clipping eachother than just squared off diode clipping making it sound more fuzzy in a 60s sense of the word. The old Supa Tonebender used this topology only with discreet tranistors like most big muffs and in my opinion sounds VASTLY superior to the big muff.
Solid Sound
Very solid, crunchy, fuzzy sound. Sounds great paired with amp overdrive and/or Metal Zone distortion.
edited 12 months ago
Budget Distortion
This was my first effect pedal. Primarily, I got it because my Fender Frontman 15W amp didn't have very impressive gain. However, I don't own the Frontman anymore and this thing is collecting dust.
Anyway, it sounds decent, but not great. It doesn't have the warmth I was hoping for, but it works for 90's style rock and metal with heavier distortion. The build quality is good- the pedal has plenty of heft and feels well-made.
It will do the job if you're on a budget or want this very specific sound, but I would instead prefer something like the Big Muff Pi for more versatility and analog warmth.