Most disappointing distortion pedal you ever tried

  • Thread starter Thread starter BABMusic
  • Start date Start date
I’m a mad scientist. I can usually get a usable tone out of just about anything with enough fucking around. I certainly have thrown a few pedals in the trash within 10 minutes. I’ve also sold some that I wish I hadn’t. Would like to have the SLO preamp back to give it another chance. The one pedal I hate is the OCD. it has a certain nasally characteristic to it that makes me almost nauseous. 🤷🏼‍♂️
 
ROSS (not BOSS) distortion pedal. If a MXR Dist + messed around with it’s cousin’s Fuzz, this would be the offspring
 
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headlessdeadguy said:
I’m a mad scientist. I can usually get a usable tone out of just about anything with enough fucking around.
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Generally agree with this. But there are some things that are just so bad that it's impossible to get any kind of usable tone. Gorilla amps, and the DOD American Metal pedal fall into this category.
 
The Carl Martin Plexitone. The gold one. My first lesson in buying pedals demo'd by Pete Thorn. That dude makes everything sound good, but I HATED that pedal lol
 
reignman454 said:
Not a distortion but the fultone ocd was the most over-rated piece of gear I’ve ever seen. I said it.
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It's a really good OD but the level of hype on forums around it's release was probably on a level never seen by any OD pedal before or since.
 
BABMusic said:
Mine would be this thing. I remember my guitar teacher (who was awesome) let me borrow this. I plugged it in and it sounded almost as bad as my 5 watt Gorilla amp. It sounded kind of like crumbling a piece of paper.




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Came to post this same pedal. It's the dullest sounding distortion pedal I ever heard.
 
It might be loser error but I didn't get along real well with Suhr Koko boost nor the Pepers Dirty Tree. Just too over the top and hard to control the gain. Much prefer the simple and trusty SD1 and Bad Monkey for clean OD boosting.
 
I decided to get out and compare some overdrive, boost and distortion pedals with a THD Univalve.

So far the amp sounds best without them.
 
I believe the OCD is a underrated boost for high gain. Some complain it's not as tight as a TS but plenty of amps don't need that much low cut - Marshall derivatives especially. The OCD's lack of mid-hump and switchable high shelf make it really useful in lots of situations where a TS sounds honky or lacking teeth. I am running the Univalve moderate crunch. Adding the OCD V2 and Zuul+ for more saturation and gain.

I probably would not have plugged it in if not mentioned in this thread.
 
Techdeth said:
I do not like any distortion pedals . They just sound synthetic compared to real tube distortion
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Exactly

But for whatever reason I keep trying different pedals with different amps.

If I turn up the amp to get a similar sound with just the amp. The amp alone always feels and sounds better.
 
I recently bought a used Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret from a local GC. I couldn't even get a usable sound out of it and I'm not being dramatic. It was horrible. Returned the next day.

It was used, so who knows....
 
DigiTech Grunge and nothing else is close. Quickest pedal I've ever sold.
 
stephen sawall said:
Exactly

But for whatever reason I keep trying different pedals with different amps.

If I turn up the amp to get a similar sound with just the amp. The amp alone always feels and sounds better.
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And you can uses boosts and eq to beef it up need be
 
BABMusic said:
Mine would be this thing. I remember my guitar teacher (who was awesome) let me borrow this. I plugged it in and it sounded almost as bad as my 5 watt Gorilla amp. It sounded kind of like crumbling a piece of paper.
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BABMusic said:
Generally agree with this. But there are some things that are just so bad that it's impossible to get any kind of usable tone. Gorilla amps, and the DOD American Metal pedal fall into this category.
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Don't remember the model of the one I had. But it was a DOD or Digitech pedal and yellow. Sounded weak and thin like if you switched your amp to a transistor radio or something.

The mention of the Gorilla amps reminded me. Back in the '90s I was getting my Seymour Duncan 84-40 2×10" tube combo serviced. And the shop lended me a Gorilla 35 amp while they worked on my amp. I showed up to a rehearsal with it and my band mates started laughing before I even plugged it in.
 
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