MXR Distortion Plus
Christmas of 1978 I found one of these mustard-brown beauties under the tree. Finally I was able to approximate those hard rock sounds I heard on records. I really loved that pedal. It felt like a serious professional accessory with its sturdy, business-like design and solid construction.
I don’t recall how I used the pedal back in the day but knowing myself I am betting I had the distortion and the output cranked. I do recall how much things seemed to come alive once I had all that dirt and sustain happening.
The Distortion Plus is one of those pedals that is fairly easy to make sound crappy. The distortion can be a little buzzy and as you increase the gain it rolls off some low end to keep it from farting out. Things can get a little shrill and trashy if you are not careful. Through a cranked Marshall things get a lot more interesting and it can sound pretty damn awesome. I’m betting lot of classic rock sounds were pumped though a D+.
As much as I loved that little pedal I can clearly recall the exact moment when I knew it was time to part ways with it. I was jamming with my little high school rock band and another guitar player stopped by to sit in. He had his rig which included a yellow DOD OD-250 Overdrive Preamp. Back then DOD was sort of considered the “poor person’s MXR” and the brand was looked down upon a little.
The other guitar player was interested in trying out my MXR to see if he might want to “upgrade”. I let him hook it up though his rig and for yucks I hooked his DOD through mine. The second I heard that DOD I offered to trade him straight up. His DOD sounded noticeably better than the MXR. It was fatter and fuller and just better all around. He noodled a little more though my MXR and politely declined. The next day I went down to the local music shop and swapped my MXR for a new DOD OD-250.
The Distortion Plus is nearly identical to the OD-250. It’s pretty easy to convert one to the other with just a few component value changes and a diode swap (the MXR uses germanium diodes and the DOD uses silicon). I think the DOD is more useful because it has a little more gain and the distortion is a little “cleaner” for lack of a better term. The MXR’s distortion is considerably smoother though and the DOD does get pretty raspy with the Gain cranked. The extra gain of the DOD works better for a clean-ish boost. I wrote in detail about my OD-250 back in 2018.
For DIY-ers the MXR Distortion Plus and/or the DOD OD-250 are great circuits to start out with. Their small parts count and tiny circuit footprint make them prefect for learning how to put pedals together. They are easy to build on perfboard too. The pedal pictured throughout this post is from 1979 and was purchased on eBay about 5 years ago.
Christmas 1978 was a pretty memorable Christmas for me for sure. In addition to the distortion pedal I also scored Hemispheres by RUSH which had come out in October of that year. It was a joy to work out the guitar parts in “Circumstances” with the crunch and sustain my new MXR Distortion Plus brought to the table.