Guitar Sound Effects

Fulltone OCD

Value for Money
Sound Quality
Features
Ease of Use

Apr 22, 2010 Distorsion and Overdrives, Pedals and Stompboxes, Recommended Guitar Equipment
Posted by Fila

Given the amount of guitar sound effects that are on the market at any given moment it is hard to choose THE pedal that you can declare the best one. Nevertheless,  Fulltone OCD is definitely in top of the range when it comes to overdrive pedals. Whether you want a clan boost, Texas blues  or a Plexi type guitar sound, OCD is a way to go. Considering it has only three basic knobs (volume, drive and tone) some people might think that it is not verstile enough. But dont let the simplicity fool you. It is versatile. Many experienced guitarists will tell you that versatility is not measured by number of  knobs and switches that give you various options, rather that versatility is measured by different guitar sounds that a piece of gear is capable of producing using different playing techniques. In other words, verstility is judged by responsiveness of the gear. OCD is right that. A very responsive overdrive, sensitive to your picking technique that allows the character of your guitar to come through. Just like old vintage tube amps.

The type of sound is determined with the drive knob. With drive up to 9 o clock (and volume and tone set to preference) you get a clean and very transparent booster, great to enhance your guitar signal and awsome if you use it with the allready overdriven amp. If you set the drive in between the range of 10 and 2 o clock you get  Texas Blues type of sound and in this range the pedal is most responsive yet very transparent. Turn the gain at 3 o clock or more and you enter into Zeppelin territory, an old crancked Plexi type drive. With gain at full it produces a lot of drive great for crunch rhythms (Paul Kossof, AC/DC) and smoking blues solos. It is awsome how the sound remains ariculate even with gain at full, something which is not always the case with OD and distorsion boxes. That means that this little box is usable all the way. Another great thing about it is how nicely it cleans up, especially higher gain settings (2 o clock and more). That means you can easily control the amount of gain with your guitar volume knob. Roll it off for cleaner sounds and turn it to the max for dirty sounds.

There are four versions of this pedal, all of them slightly different. Not that one is better than the other, just a little different. Here are some of my impressions regarding the differences:

v.1 is the most transparent, brighter than v.3 and v.4,  has a little more presence  and power in higher frequencies. At higher gain settings it screams the most in soloing (but in a very pleasant way)

v.2 has the most midrange and a very pleasant sound. It seems to me that it is a little less compressed than the others but it varies with the tone settings. It also seems the brightest of them all and has a little more lower midrange than v.1 and v.3  but it is hard to rate.

v.3 is the loudest of them all, has most presence, more high end than v.2 and kind of  “dryer” tone.

v.4 while first three versions are very hard to tell apart. v.4 is a lot different. It is the darkest sounding,  most compressed has more gain than the others and notably the quitest of them all. But as you increase the volume it really opens up and takes characteristics of the other three.

My personal favourite is v.2, but dont take this for granted. The differences are very small and hard to tell (except maybe for v.4) and they depend on various tone settings. The most important thing is that all of them will do the work!

This pedal is great for players who want to control their sound with picking dynamics and let all nuances of their playing to come through. It will not hide any mistakes but it will reward a good player with some serious blues and classic rock tones. However, no heavy metal out of this box.

Get your OCD here and now.

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Tags: Blues Guitar Sound, Boost guitar sound, Classic Rock Sound, Fulltone OCD, Overdrive, Plexi