NPD: Maxon Overdrive OD-02 (80's Japan only?)

[bluesholyman]

Now this pedal is interesting. Apparently, it was never sold in the US, only Japan. Seems to be your basic TS-style, perhaps with a hair more low-end and this thing on it called "Phase" which has a dial that goes from "Tight" to "Fat" - appears to be basically some sort of mid's "Q" control for where the center of the mid hump goes and you can mix in how much of that affects the output. Not really sure how it all works but an interesting take on the TS. You do get a sort of "phasey" distorted sound but there is no active sweep - think cocked wah sound like what Fulltone's Wah-ful does (ala Robin Trower). There is also a jack for an external foot switch which lets you turn the phase effect on/off.

Couldn't find a lot online about it, but its cool and the pedal weighs about as much as a Rat.

Maxon OD-02

• bluesholyman
• May 12, 2018

 

[jondanger]

Seems pretty cool. The ability to move the mid hump around is an interesting feature. All the demos I saw had the drive completely maxed out - how does it sound in the lower range of the drive knob? And what’s the deal with the “Mix” control?

 

[Obelisk]

Basically the OD-02 is a cocked wah version of a TS-9. I have never owned one, but they are a cool sounding pedal. I thought about getting one and modding the footswitch jack to be used with a expression pedal so it really could be TS9 fuzz wah. I have missed a few of them over the past couple of years, but I am always on the lookout for this pedal

The Maxon 01 series is pretty awesome in general. The OD-01 is a cool pedal that combines a SD9 & TS9 into one pedal. They also had another one called the Rock & Roll pedal(OR-01) that uses two TS9 circuits with two sets of controls to make the lead & rhythm settings. You have to use an external footswitch to change between the two settings if you want to bypass the pedal, or just leave it on all of the time and use the internal switch to change between the settings. That pedal is super cool. I do own the Jet Driver, Super Metal & Super Tube Screamer from the same Maxon 0 series. The Super Tube Screamer is the best TS9 pedal ever devised. You have to wonder why Ibanez didn't use it over the TS9 as the Super Tube Screamer is a TS9 with an actual tone control that does something beyond mid boost. Maxon made most of the fabled Ibanez pedals, so buying the Maxon versions are still a good deal. In my mind Maxon makes better pedals than Roland/Boss.

 

[bluesholyman]

Seems pretty cool. The ability to move the mid hump around is an interesting feature. All the demos I saw had the drive completely maxed out - how does it sound in the lower range of the drive knob? And what’s the deal with the “Mix” control?

At lower settings it reminds me a lot of a turbo rat (LED clippers) - no where near as smooth as a TS. So gain at 9 o'clock on the Maxon, its a similar sound to Turbo Rat with distortion at noon (assuming filter is adjusted, etc.)

The mix control seems to affect how much of the "Phase" pot is added back into the mix - it goes from "0:1" on far left to "1:1" on far right. As far as what the Phase control is doing, I am not sure other than cocked wah sound. Its unclear if its affecting center point of tone (which makes no sense with a mix control) or its an additional boost of certain frequencies, depending on where the phase control is. The latter makes more sense w/r/t there being a mix control.

It makes for some interesting sounds as I have not seen another pedal do something like this before. Obviously, not a huge seller in its day, but you can do some cool stuff with it, a decent Turbo Rat sound being one of those things.

If you use a neck humbucker, you can get some smooth saturated fuzz-like sounds out of it. Can be a bit much but dialed in correctly, its a cool sound.