I developed the Opaque Drive to be the final say in overdrive pedals, but I tried plenty of pedals before realizing had to I set out and make my own! Several overdrives have entered and exited my pedal collection over the years, but there are a few that will always hold a special place in my tone search. The pedals on this list are all legendary in their own right, and each influenced the development of the Opaque Drive.
Fulltone’s OCD
The Fulltone OCD was perhaps the first ovedrive I ever fell in love with. I love the OCD’s gainier tones, but perhaps its most addicting quality is the sharp, percussive tone that it produces under high gain when playing palm-muted chords. My favorite settings on the OCD are to turn the Drive all the way down, set the Tone to taste, flip the switch to HP mode and then set the Volume so that the pedal drives slightly (a hair above unity gain). In this way, I use it very similarly to how others use a Tube Screamer to boost and tighten an amplifier.
While this setting works amazing for crafting articulate heavy metal guitar tones, it suffers from poor flexibility; outside of high-gain and “metal” amplifiers, the OCD’s sharpness makes for a harsh and abrasive tone. The Opaque Drive’s Silver circuit on Classic mode shares some of the percussive nature of the OCD, but with a broader mid boost that does not carry the same harshness. Silver also features an expanded gain range for a cleaner guitar tone (OCDs and Tube Screamers are always distorting your signal, even at minimum Drive settings).
Reaper Pedal’s Pandemonium Overdrive
This boutique OCD clone from Sweden is fewer in number than the Opaque Drive, but it was a staple of my early recordings. I took many exterior design queues for the Opaque Drive from this pedal, including the 1590BB enclosure and durable, adonized metal knobs. This pedal also makes use of a very popular Tube Screamer modification to allow more low end to pass through the circuit than normal. This mod is incredibly useful for preserving as much low end as possible from single-coil pickups or retaining essential low-end from bass guitars, so I have included my version of the mod in Silver as the Full mode.
EarthQuaker Devices’ Plumes
It’s no secret among my music friends that the Plumes “Small Signal Shredder” is my favorite Screamer-style pedal. Among my many complaints with Tube Screamers is their inherent dynamic compression. This compression robs players who strike their strings harder of the aggression that they are seeking to achieve! Setting the Plumes’ Mode switch to “2” defeats the electrical components that carry out this compression, providing the player with a (loud) boost pedal that still carries out the signal filtering that caused metal producers and musicians to reach for the Tube Screamer in the first place.
While not a Screamer itself, the Opaque Drive’s Gold circuit includes a similar function with its Boost mode, giving the player access to a bright, loud, and slightly dirty boost that still touts considerable dynamics. This mode only gives sustaining distortion at very high settings of Gain, so don’t be afraid to lower Lvl!
Protone’s Attack Overdrive
This Screamer-style pedal was built for the mighty Misha Mansoor of Periphery to boost his 7- and 8-string guitars into high-gain amplifiers. It accomplishes this with a reciprocal mod to the one found within the Panndemonium Overdrive; rather than preserving low end, it aggressively cuts out extra low end and compensates by emphasizing the higher-voiced mid frequencies.
Due to its utility with low-tuned metal players, a similar trick has been incorporated into the Silver circuit as Attack mode. This voicing provides the same percussive, articulate voicing also found within TC Line Booster derivatives, such as the Fortin Grind/33 and the Pepers’ Pedals Dirty Tree.
Analog Man’s King of Tone
The King of Tone may be the ultimate dual overdrive for rock and blues guitarists. Its high degree of customizability, distinctly different distortion tones, and beautiful sound (almost regardless of the other gear within the signal chain) makes the King of Tone stiff competition for any ovedrive newcomers.
The Opaque Drive shares no circuit DNA with the King of Tone or its smaller incarnations, but the rich user experience of these purple pedals is something I wanted to capture. Like the King, the Opaque Drive’s Gold circuit also features three very distinct distortion flavors. Soft mode seemingly blends a clean signal and a distorted one into a single, compressed tone. Hard mode features a fully-distorted ovedrive tone with a fuzzy midrange and a fast, percussive low end. Boost is the cleanest and most dynamic. All three of these make the Gold circuit capable of handling any task that may be thrown at it!
Line 6’s DM4 (Tube Drive model)
The Chandler Tube Driver is a holy grail pedal for many, but the very first overdrive pedal that I ever had experience with was actually Line 6’s digital recreation of it! As an early teenager, the Line 6 Tube Drive model was my preferred overdrive within my POD due to its rich distortion characteristic. The Opaque Drive is a solid-state pedal, however, Silver’s unique gain texture is very similar to the Tube Drive model. While this was not intentional, perhaps years of using the digital model conditioned my ears to seek my long-preferred distoriton when making my own pedal!
The Opaque Drive is available to purchase from us or one of our dealers!
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