MusicRadar Verdict
Provides boost and dirt for your amp, with a fuzzy edge as you turn up.
Pros
- +
Flexible overdrive for both clean and driven amp tones. Borderline fuzz sounds.
Cons
- -
Not a lot.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
The DOD Overdrive Preamp 250 is a 70s-designed overdrive pedal, with a gain knob turning up the dirt and a level knob setting the volume of the output signal.
"Grit turns into more amp-like overdrive, with not much in the way of tonal shift as you turn up the gain"
With the level set high and gain at minimum, you can use the pedal as a clean-ish booster with a semblance of grit to the sound.
That grit turns into more amp-like overdrive, with not much in the way of tonal shift as you turn up the gain, delivering a wide range of possibilities depending on how you combine the two controls. Basically, it adds crunch to a clean amp or drives a driven amp further - which it does very well.
There's more, though: turning the gain knob past vertical and on to its final reaches sees the distortion get brighter and more aggressive as the nature of the diode- clipping circuit starts to offer some of the character you'd get from a fuzz pedal.
There's a schizophrenic feel to this pedal, but that's not a bad thing: just set the gain for the sound you want.
“They spent hours building up hundreds of vocal tracks from single notes - then they ‘played’ a traditional mixing desk like a keyboard”: The pioneering techniques that brought static sounds to life
Protect This Woman's Work: Kate Bush says no to Fake Bush, as stars’ petition against AI training hits 36,000 signatures
“I had a £150 Behringer mixer and an iMac, and whenever I earned any money from music I’d buy a new piece of kit”: Bibio on how he made his biggest track - and why he's still using lo-fi recording techniques 15 years later
