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Friday, 7 December 2012

Boss OD1

Info from Boss:

The OD-1 is by now legendary. Artist of the 70's was mostly using a fuzz distortion sound and the overdrive produced by the OD-1 was not typical. It was however soon accepted as the new standard of guitar sound. The OD-1 features an asymmetric circuit where the positive and negative halves of the waveform isn't distorted equally. The sound is therefore still close to the original even though distortion have been added.







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23 comments:

  1. Doron Barness7 December 2012 at 08:40

    what a classic. Along with the Crowther HotCake,the Pro Co Rat and the Ibanez Tube Screamer this was on of the main pedals to change the music style from Fuzz and tubes to overdrive pedals and distortions.

    Now please can you try to complete this set with the Boss BD2 which is IMO the best Boss pedal ever and maybe the best non-boutique OD pedal over.

    Thanks,
    D

    ReplyDelete
  2. superferrite7 December 2012 at 15:43

    YEAH! Glad I dumped mine on Ebay for $100 a few years ago. Now I have the parts to roll my own!

    Seconds on the Blues Driver. That one rules.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7 December 2012 at 21:55

    I heard a lot of varying reports on Boss OD's and distortions so i had to build this to hear it for myself and i'm pleasantly surprised.

    I'll be boxing this one up over the weekend, it's a keeper ;-)

    This one can be tagged

    Thanks for posting this one Mark

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  4. Jacob8 December 2012 at 03:27

    Any thoughts on doing the 14-pin IC version?

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  5. Anonymous9 December 2012 at 18:17

    Got this one boxed up. Spent the weekend boxing up some of my other pedals as well.

    http://ubuntuone.com/0BLpgQFBSuygCyWnwqihy7

    Thanks again for this one.

    James

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Otalgia FX13 December 2012 at 08:34

      Pedal looks great James. How did you get the white lettering on your enclosure was it screen printed?

      Delete
    2. ichilton19 February 2013 at 10:11

      How do you get the boxes coloured like that?

      Delete
  6. ichilton19 February 2013 at 10:11

    Does this have the buffers on, or have they been removed?

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    Replies
    1. IvIark19 February 2013 at 12:09

      Yes it has the input and output buffers, but it has the buffers Boss use for their bypass switching removed.

      Delete
  7. Unknown20 July 2013 at 19:32

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Piltdown Man29 July 2013 at 13:43

    What transistors are recommended? Go with the standby of 2N5088's?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. drdFX5 August 2013 at 09:20

      Tried a few, for me 2n3904s worked the best

      Delete
  9. Jarrett Trezzo5 August 2013 at 20:04

    I had heard this one was supposed to be great, but I am pretty disappointed. It's pretty thin and sterile sounding to my ears, with my gear. I used 2n5088s. I'll try again with some 2n3904s and maybe test some different ICs before scrapping it. Any brilliant findings will be reported.

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  10. upthepunxxx13 November 2013 at 19:28

    What does "Watch double link in single hole" mean?

    ReplyDelete
  11. mirosol23 September 2014 at 16:06

    Just came around to building one. Sounds like it should, but i found the "near unity level when maxed" (aka too low level) to suck ass, so i made couple of value substitutions.
    -10K from third row to IC pin 6 - changed that to 4K7 (double the gain of the recovery amp)
    -4K7 from top row Level 3 - changed that to 2K2 (shorter path to output buffer = more volume)

    Now it boosts and still has the frequency response per, or really close to the original. Not too great, but somehow i like it. Like a boosting TS without tone control (which it pretty much is :))...
    +m

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  12. Unknown16 February 2015 at 12:52

    i built one for a bass player who was using an original od3 and it sounds amazing!!! thanks!!!

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  13. Luiz Neto24 August 2015 at 22:51

    Hi, do you have the original schematics so I can take a look at the circuit? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

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  14. Unknown21 June 2018 at 16:08

    Hi, the problem with the volume drop is about the pots... drive is B1M and level is B10k. That’s all!!! I hope it can help!

    ReplyDelete
  15. sammyuuuu15 July 2019 at 15:37

    i will begin with yes yes yes oh yes i must say that im very honored to own the real holy grail the od1 with 14 pin rca chip from 1978 and yes i will confirmed that nothing beat that pedal period.as all the rest of the overdrive pedal are just copies of the holy grail .not saying bad pedals but they have nothing to do with the boss od1 period.
    get the boss od1 if you can find the 14pin rca chip .you be a king of the thrown and yes you can kill humanity with its tone .

    ReplyDelete
  16. Marcus2 January 2022 at 22:16

    Built one today with the suggested mods from Mirosol. It sounds good and screams! I also added a switch to switch between two or three diodes. Using just two diodes gives more headroom and loudness. Will A/B it with my original pedal.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Marcus9 January 2022 at 07:57

    Now I’ve just A/B my build to the origional. With the suggested mods (2k2 and 4k7) they sound different. So, I made it stock like in the layout. Now they sound very much alike.

    ReplyDelete
  18. j-pee2 September 2024 at 08:34

    hi,
    Analogman suggests (based on his experiments in the '90s) that the dual op-amp + 2 BJTs version and the original 14 pin quad op-amp version sound very similar if just a few capacitor values are changed "back" to the original...

    Comparing the two schematics, it looks like it only means 3 capacitors...
    see this schematic (which I uploaded):

    https://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?p=300417#p300417

    the two 47nF caps at the bases of the two transistors, plus the 1uF cap at the output... changing them to 100n, 100n, 10uF, respectively...

    I'm not experienced enough to be able to tell if this really works,
    but I trust Analogman :)

    If it works, it may be worth adding the modded layout...


    ReplyDelete