Better dual drive than BE-OD Deluxe?

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phillybhatesme

phillybhatesme

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I can dial in that pedal for exactly what I'm looking for: crunch on one side and high gain on the other. I've bought and sold this pedal twice and I'm not sure why. I'm about to buy another one, but was curious if there were any other really good crunchy/high gain dual drive pedals.
 
Carl Martin Plexiranger.

Or just get two small pedals. For the same price you could have a Rat pedal and a TS Clone, and it would be better. These dual overdrive pedals are all hype IMO.
 
Sick Michael said:
Carl Martin Plexiranger.

Or just get two small pedals. For the same price you could have a Rat pedal and a TS Clone, and it would be better. These dual overdrive pedals are all hype IMO.
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I am not sure I agree. I have a bunch of single-drive pedals and I'm just not getting what I want from them. Could I buy different pedals? Sure.
I'll take a look at the Plexiranger.

griff10672 said:
it's too bad you don't know a custom pedal builder .....
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Lol well...hi. Good point. Didn't know if you just did one-offs. I'll send you a message when I'm ready to pull the trigger I guess.
 
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phillybhatesme said:
I am not sure I agree. I have a bunch of single-drive pedals and I'm just not getting what I want from them. Could I buy different pedals? Sure.
I'll take a look at the Plexiranger.



Lol well...hi. Good point. Didn't know if you just did one-offs. I'll send you a message when I'm ready to pull the trigger I guess.
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I can combo any two Drives you want ( as long as I can get reliable schematics for them ) and set up the PCB to run either circuit separate with it's own Ins and outs or they can run into each other like stacked drives ... just like the VonBonfire deluxe ...

1751290695604.png
 
Sick Michael said:
you could have a Rat pedal and a TS Clone, and it would be better. These dual overdrive pedals are all hype IMO.
Click to expand...
1751294239658.png


Judging from your comment, you've never played the BE-OD Deluxe.

@griff10672 please back me up on this, as a fellow pedal builder.

I've built and modded various pedals myself, including TS-ones and built a Thermionic Deluxe, WHILE owning an original Friedman BE-OD Deluxe.
A Rat is a gritty distortion PEDAL (not amp-like), bordering on fuzz at best, and the Tube Screamer is a 'dirty boost', but not a very low gain Marshall-esque amp-like sounding pedal in the least bit.
The BE-OD Deluxe *is* in fact very amp-like, and in my 30+ years of playing guitar, collecting pedals, building pedals, I've yet to find a better 2 channel amp-like 9V pedal that does the 80's modded Marshall thing so well than the BE-OD Deluxe.

To entertain you some more, these are a few of the better 2 channel pedals I've owned as well:
-AMT SS-30 Bulava ; Pretty good, but not very Marshally in its core tone, and has some raspiness to it.
-Bogner Ecstacy Blue (9V) Very good, very amp-like for stuff up to AC/DC, but lacks the gain for the higher gain stuff.
-Bogner Ecstacy Red (9V) Very good, but lacks the nuance and finesse; a bit more hairy than a BE-OD Deluxe and less apt at lower-gain settings.
-Blackstar HT-Dual; really good, with a thick sound and useable EQ range, but big, heavy and cumbersome, special PSU, tube driven.
-Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor; really nice, but lacks the gain for 80's heavy metal. More of a hard rock pedal. special PSU, tube driven (high plate voltage). Still own this one for shits n giggles.

Comparing ANY of these to 'oh, just combine a DiMarzio Very Metal and a Digitech Bad Monkey and you're good to go for your Marshally amp-like needs' just screams... lack of experience, I'm sorry to say... (because I was gonna say 'pure fuckin' ignorance'... :censored:😉 )
 
I really liked my Wampler Pinnacle Deluxe as a great dual dirt pedal until I blew it up by running a Digitech Freq Out into the front of it
 
@phillybhatesme did you also change the internal trim pots' position to lower the gain of Channel 1? I feel this helps it even more, and there's still plenty of gain left for classic heavy metal tones on that channel, but then the lower part of the gain knob's travel can do really nice crunch, where you just raise the treble and presence a bit.
 
Speeddemon said:
View attachment 405593

Judging from your comment, you've never played the BE-OD Deluxe.

@griff10672 please back me up on this, as a fellow pedal builder.

I've built and modded various pedals myself, including TS-ones and built a Thermionic Deluxe, WHILE owning an original Friedman BE-OD Deluxe.
A Rat is a gritty distortion PEDAL (not amp-like), bordering on fuzz at best, and the Tube Screamer is a 'dirty boost', but not a very low gain Marshall-esque amp-like sounding pedal in the least bit.
The BE-OD Deluxe *is* in fact very amp-like, and in my 30+ years of playing guitar, collecting pedals, building pedals, I've yet to find a better 2 channel amp-like 9V pedal that does the 80's modded Marshall thing so well than the BE-OD Deluxe.

To entertain you some more, these are a few of the better 2 channel pedals I've owned as well:
-AMT SS-30 Bulava ; Pretty good, but not very Marshally in its core tone, and has some raspiness to it.
-Bogner Ecstacy Blue (9V) Very good, very amp-like for stuff up to AC/DC, but lacks the gain for the higher gain stuff.
-Bogner Ecstacy Red (9V) Very good, but lacks the nuance and finesse; a bit more hairy than a BE-OD Deluxe and less apt at lower-gain settings.
-Blackstar HT-Dual; really good, with a thick sound and useable EQ range, but big, heavy and cumbersome, special PSU, tube driven.
-Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor; really nice, but lacks the gain for 80's heavy metal. More of a hard rock pedal. special PSU, tube driven (high plate voltage). Still own this one for shits n giggles.

Comparing ANY of these to 'oh, just combine a DiMarzio Very Metal and a Digitech Bad Monkey and you're good to go for your Marshally amp-like needs' just screams... lack of experience, I'm sorry to say... (because I was gonna say 'pure fuckin' ignorance'... :censored:😉 )
Click to expand...
Timely post, my BE OD Deluxe took a shit so I was going to revisit this but I think I'll just buy a switch and hope that fixes it. If not I'll buy another one.
 
Speeddemon said:
@phillybhatesme did you also trim the internal trim pots to lower the gain of Channel 1? I feel this helps it even more, and there's still plenty of gain left for classic heavy metal tones on that channel, but then the lower part of the gain knob's travel can do really nice crunch, where you just raise the treble and presence a bit.
Click to expand...

This is a great question. I have fiddled with the internal trim pots, yeah. I can’t remember exactly what I changed but they really do allow you to dial in anything from almost slight OD to massive gain.
 
Speeddemon said:
@phillybhatesme did you also change the internal trim pots' position to lower the gain of Channel 1? I feel this helps it even more, and there's still plenty of gain left for classic heavy metal tones on that channel, but then the lower part of the gain knob's travel can do really nice crunch, where you just raise the treble and presence a bit.
Click to expand...
This is exactly how I ran mine. The lower gain channel is one of my favorite things about it.
 
I haven't tried the Suhr Eclipse, but one thing that makes the BE-OD Deluxe more interesting over that one, are the additional Presence and Tight controls, per channel!

When I run a BE-OD Deluxe into some Fender amps, I have to up the mids more, dial back the bass a lot, to get it to where I want it to be.
But now I run it into the input of my Engl Savage 60, which has some heavy handed pre-filtering and is quite a mid-focussed amp, what makes the amp already nice and tight. This causes the BE-OD Deluxe to thin out a tad too much, so I'm running the mids on the pedal low (like 8 'o clock-ish), bass around 2 o' clock (don't try this in a Twin Reverb or Dual Showman!), but with the Tight controls also around 2 to 3 'o clock to counter that added bass 'flub'.
Same with being able to tweak the high-end nicely with Treble + Presence; it gives you so much control over the core tone.
And like I said, if you don't mind the 'low gain' channel to be already at JCM800 levels of gain, then the Ecstacy Red might work for you too.
If there's any negative thing to say about the BE-OD Deluxe, is that it has that typical Friedman-polish, where you sometimes wish you'd have an additional 'rasp' or 'kerrang' control to bring back some of that rawness. So yes, there are pedals that sound more natural for low gain (--> Bogner Ecstacy Blue), but in combination with high gain AND lots of control AND sounding really amp-like...Yeah, that's a tall order.

Judging from Pete Thorn's Suhr Eclipse video, that one that has more raspiness for sure.


But man...even the single channel one sounded better in his hands, IMO of course!
 
Speeddemon said:
View attachment 405593

Judging from your comment, you've never played the BE-OD Deluxe.

@griff10672 please back me up on this, as a fellow pedal builder.

I've built and modded various pedals myself, including TS-ones and built a Thermionic Deluxe, WHILE owning an original Friedman BE-OD Deluxe.
A Rat is a gritty distortion PEDAL (not amp-like), bordering on fuzz at best, and the Tube Screamer is a 'dirty boost', but not a very low gain Marshall-esque amp-like sounding pedal in the least bit.
The BE-OD Deluxe *is* in fact very amp-like, and in my 30+ years of playing guitar, collecting pedals, building pedals, I've yet to find a better 2 channel amp-like 9V pedal that does the 80's modded Marshall thing so well than the BE-OD Deluxe.

To entertain you some more, these are a few of the better 2 channel pedals I've owned as well:
-AMT SS-30 Bulava ; Pretty good, but not very Marshally in its core tone, and has some raspiness to it.
-Bogner Ecstacy Blue (9V) Very good, very amp-like for stuff up to AC/DC, but lacks the gain for the higher gain stuff.
-Bogner Ecstacy Red (9V) Very good, but lacks the nuance and finesse; a bit more hairy than a BE-OD Deluxe and less apt at lower-gain settings.
-Blackstar HT-Dual; really good, with a thick sound and useable EQ range, but big, heavy and cumbersome, special PSU, tube driven.
-Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor; really nice, but lacks the gain for 80's heavy metal. More of a hard rock pedal. special PSU, tube driven (high plate voltage). Still own this one for shits n giggles.

Comparing ANY of these to 'oh, just combine a DiMarzio Very Metal and a Digitech Bad Monkey and you're good to go for your Marshally amp-like needs' just screams... lack of experience, I'm sorry to say... (because I was gonna say 'pure fuckin' ignorance'... :censored:😉 )
Click to expand...
ummmmmm .....

what I can say is I've also built a few Pedal PCB Thermionic Distortions ..... which is a BE-OD and I forget what other Friedman Drive the other channel is suppose to be ....

I've also built a ton of BE-OD clones that I modified a smidgen to put some teeth on the " too smooth " distortion

if you need / want to rely on a pedal for High Gain Marshall like tones the BE-OD modded or not is tough to beat IMO

and to have two separate channels to setup with a clean amp is a great option .

are there better combos to use ??? maybe ....... I've been thinking about combining a Buxom Boost with a BE-OD ....

1751299319934.png

1751299337509.png
 
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I had a BE-OD Deluxe for a while. Got it from Marketplace for cheap and had bought it to check the hype. It was OK but never bonded with it.

As for dual drive. I like the simple JHS AT+, the boost side is may be only one knob but I dig what it adds. Also the Boss OD-200 is a fully packed multi overdrive/distortion all in one pedal.

Another one that could replace the Be-OD is the EVH 5150 pedal, it's only one channel but you could add another preferred od/disto pedal with it to make it dual.
 
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