BOSS Od-3 Overdrive Pedal

Product Information

The main use of pedals like the Boss OD-3 is to either produce a natural overdrive sound at sensible volumes, clip the amp, or be the overdrive sound and run it with plenty of headroom with a clean amp.

The color and nuance do not disrupt the sound but add a subtle touch of elegance and rich harmonics. At first glance, the Boss OD-3 OverDrive effects unit is just one more in the company’s wide range of distortion/overdrive pedals. It’s reasonably priced, it’s got the Boss brand name, and it’s a fresh iteration on an old classic. That’s a great starting point, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. After all, the Boss overdrive family is so large at this point, that one has to question whether or not this pedal can really hold its own alongside its predecessors. Bear in mind that Boss’s current lineup features such classics as the Blues Driver, the Super OverDrive and, of course, the now legendary OD-1– the first-ever overdrive pedal. What Makes the OD-3 Different? This is why it works better with full-voiced cords than purely high frequencies. Most open chords are not played with overdrives since the overtones and higher notes have a considerably low energy concentration.

Customer Added Media

Boss says, the OD-3 had a "bigger, smoother tone than any Overdrive pedal ever had". I say: It's true! Another term that you may come across is fuzz, a special type of distortion consisting of harmonic tones that dominate the overall sound.

After this mod the pedal becomes a high gain Overdrive / Distortion. The sound is not muffled any more, that is a lot of presence and sparkle could be heard after the mod. LEVEL: This is the volume control of the effect & it is the last part of the circuit, so it’s the master control. Even with the gain down the circuit is amplifying your guitar’s signal quite a bit so generally this will be used to reign the signal in rather than run it flat out. It should be noted that you can let more volume out to push a valve amp into overdrive rather than trying to clip the first valve with the amps volume control itself here so careful setting of the gain to level balance will produce some pretty great, dynamically responsive sounds.The key difference between the two is that the Boss SD-1 Overdrive creates asymmetrical clipping as opposed to the symmetrical clipping made by the latter.