I think it's only fair to say a big, heartfelt thankyou to Mr PCB (Thanks Pedal!) for the Strawberry Red OD board. It's slightly obscure but I have wanted to be able to modify an SROD for a couple of years now. And now I have and it sounds bloody great.
A friend came around to my place today - he manages to fit guitar pedal testing into his busy working schedule on a Friday morning sometimes. We tried a few recent builds but it was the SROD which really stole the show. Wow. It's one of those rare ODs which sounds good with the gain barely cracked, with gain a little higher to get a jangley chime and even with gain up to Foo Fighters saturation levels. Playing through a 5E3 Deluxe we were able to get thumping Triple Rectifier sounds with my Strat. Not my usual sound but my friend was getting plenty of chug with a drop-D tuning. Very convincing it was too.
And then he just rolled back the volume on the guitar a little (My Strat has a cap on the volume pot) and it sounded amazing then also. So few ODs work well with the volume rolled back.
All I have done is a few very simple mods to tweak it to my taste - added a little brightness, used different clipping diodes and cut a hint of bass. The Strawberry built as stock is already a fantastic OD but now it's close to being perfect for me. I don't have one favourite OD but this one is in my top three now. It's quite a modern sound but very, very usable, and great for fattening up a Strat. The low end doesn't get mushy at all and even with loads of gain you can hear every note in a chord. Remarkable.
Thanks Robert!
A friend came around to my place today - he manages to fit guitar pedal testing into his busy working schedule on a Friday morning sometimes. We tried a few recent builds but it was the SROD which really stole the show. Wow. It's one of those rare ODs which sounds good with the gain barely cracked, with gain a little higher to get a jangley chime and even with gain up to Foo Fighters saturation levels. Playing through a 5E3 Deluxe we were able to get thumping Triple Rectifier sounds with my Strat. Not my usual sound but my friend was getting plenty of chug with a drop-D tuning. Very convincing it was too.
And then he just rolled back the volume on the guitar a little (My Strat has a cap on the volume pot) and it sounded amazing then also. So few ODs work well with the volume rolled back.
All I have done is a few very simple mods to tweak it to my taste - added a little brightness, used different clipping diodes and cut a hint of bass. The Strawberry built as stock is already a fantastic OD but now it's close to being perfect for me. I don't have one favourite OD but this one is in my top three now. It's quite a modern sound but very, very usable, and great for fattening up a Strat. The low end doesn't get mushy at all and even with loads of gain you can hear every note in a chord. Remarkable.
Thanks Robert!