DOD Overdrive Preamp 250

In 2008 or so I took up building pedals. I became quite obsessed with the hobby for a couple of years. The www provides so many great resources for building, modding, and dissecting guitar pedals. It’s a great community and a classic example of the internet used for “good”.

I reckon I built 30 or so various pedals. Mostly simple, classic circuits. At some point I became enamored with the DOD Overdrive Preamp 250 and probably built a dozen versions of this pedal.

The DOD OD-250 is nearly identical to the classic MXR Distortion Plus with only a few different values for some components and a different type of clipping diode yet they sound completely different. The MXR has less output but more – slightly warmer – distortion. The DOD has less distortion with more output. This makes the DOD much more usable in my opinion. It can be utilized – and this is where it excels – as a semi-clean boost, or an always on goose for the front end of the amp. Either pedal will get progressively raspy and thin out a little as you turn the drive/distortion up.

I can see how the OD-250 would be hard to love in today’s boutique world. They can easily be made to sound awful. Especially in the context of dicking around in the bedroom or den. On the other hand, when used as a preamp to push the front end of a tube amp it can be extremely useful and the circuit is purported to be the base of many a boutique pedal.

I like to set the drive at very a low level. Almost off. And then raise the output until I hear/feel the amp starting to fill out. I found that this pedal is really great at adding some girth to a Stratocaster’s bridge pickup. I’ve also used it as a semi clean boost after a Tube Screamer.

The DOD 250 comes with its own form of “chip worship” though not to the extent that the Tube Screamer does. The classic (and expensive) Grey version came with the 741 chip as did some early Yellow versions. Later yellows had a 351. Reissues had 4558 chips. I’ve built the circuit with both 741 and 351 chips. I couldn’t really tell much of a difference. I also built every possible circuit version (grey version, early yellow, late yellow).

I have a 1983 yellow OD-250 that I have A/B/C/D-ed against all of my homemade pedals. The original sounds quite noticeably better to my ears. It’s warmer and fuller. They all behave very similarly and they breakup and get raspy at the same point. My home rolled versions just sound more “clinical” to my ears. I have no scientific explanation for this but I’m willing to guess that one of the following two reasons may have something to do with it:

1. Old pedal bias – The original looks so much cooler so how can it NOT sound better?

2. True bypass vs. non-true bypass. Every pedal I’ve built utilized true bypass. It is possible that the tiny bit of “tone suck” from the original gave it more warmth.

I no longer build pedals. Partly because I got frustrated with the quality of parts out there. Mostly the switches. I am quite thankful for the knowledge I gained while cultivating my pedal building hobby though. In the end I found that I much prefer to seek out the vintage stuff. I paid about $40.00 for this ’83 DOD 250. To me that’s an amazingly small amount of dough to shell out for a such a cool part of pedal history.