Favorite "Always On" OD Pedals

[hexes]

with bright amps: Spaceman Mercury IV

germanium OD. evens things out and adds some good harmonic stuff and I have mine set to just ever so slightly ‘darken’ my offsets without sacrificing high end clarity like rolling a tone knob back.

[MrShake]

Basic as it may be, a Rat with distortion at 10-11, Filter and Volume at about 2-2:30 has never done me wrong, any guitar or amp. I can feed it fuzz or reverb and stack just about any fuzz on top of it. But that ratty clang is my go-to for "crunchy base tone"

[bubba899]

Has been said multiple times, but it's the Broadcast for me. Super dynamic, and stacks incredibly with other drives and fuzzes. Also a perfect recording tool. Prior to this it was always a BD-2. Still use one but now it's set a little hotter.

[jorri]

Has been said multiple times, but it's the Broadcast for me. Super dynamic, and stacks incredibly with other drives and fuzzes. Also a perfect recording tool. Prior to this it was always a BD-2. Still use one but now it's set a little hotter.

Seconded. Its set almost clean but drives when really dig in. It is adding saturation and 'sounds' clean but isn't actually clean, its doing the transformer harmonics thing. It sounds good straight into DI on bass too so usually use it a bit like a console pre.

[Logrinn]

For me, the Tech21 XXL into my Vox AC15HW gives me the sound I really like.
Cleans up beatifully and gives me all the dirt I need when I turn up the volume on my guitar.
I do have other dirt pedals that I use from time to time but this one is what I use 95% of the time.

[garyfanclub]

Not really an "OD", but my Chasetone Secret Preamp is *always on* - love the tone switch, helps when using this board with different amps. Also helps add a bit of beef and compression to the overall signal, especially helpful with single coils and higher wattage amps that you can't really turn up.

[LBx]

DOD 250. A classic and sounds great.

Some things you just miss when you turn them off. So you don’t

I use an EQD White Light between a Rick bass and low watt tube amp & 1x15 at lower volumes at home and it's a perfect alwaysonlowgainODinsteadofcleans jam. Prefer it to the 250 I had prior (which was also great)...

[JamesSGBrown]

SS/BS MINI.

EVERY TIME.

[panoramic]

I've been using an 86 small box rat as my always on OD/Dirt for years but I am about to pickup the benson preamp pedal because i love what it does and it seems like it will be more versatile for bass use. My guess is I will stack these two on some level most of the time and use the benson as the main dirt.

[Subotnik]

I have been wanting to try a Hudson Broadcast. Hopefully I’ll be able to get one some time.

I got a Hudson Broadcast recently and I love it. I could throw away a lot of drives now. It just sounds so rich, with lots of harmonics. It can do ripping fuzz or medium overdrive. When I got it I for weeks I felt like playing Nirvana and nasty power chords. Right now I’m only running this and a JHS morning glory for light overdrive. I can get a lot of good dirt tones out of these two.

[distressed]

SHO clone. It's my clean tone.

[Gavanti]

A year and a half later, it's the Halberd v2 by a mile for me.

[ragamuffin]

Not an od, but I always have my Fairfield Accountant compressor on with the compression set low. It adds a certain thickness to the tone that’s particularly nice with single coils

[hulakatt]

So... I've owned Tubescreamers before. Lots of clones, lots of tweaked and "upgraded" versions and out of them all, my favorite had always been a Maxon OD-9 but I really only ever liked them with BF/SF Fenders and those are not usually my first choice of amp so I sold all of the various TS pedals after not using them much anymore. I have a few BF/SF Fenders these days and I was kinda missing the TS thing so I bought another OD-9 and did what I always wanted to do but never got around to, I sent it off to Analogman for their basic mods. I'm good without NOS chips or making it clearer with hifi componants or whatever, I just want to mess around with an 808 instead of a 9.

I should have done this years ago. I've been very impressed with the pedal now, post mod work, with every guitar I've plugged into it. Still only trie it through my Bassman and SF Champ so far but they go so well together!

[PapaB]

I don't keep it on all the time, as a matter of fact I generally only use it with two amps, an Egnater Tweaker which naturally has a bit of noise when OD'ed with single coils, or with a Fender George Benson that only distorts when pushed to the max. But I could. It has a lovely clean sound, as a boost, and magnificent sound as OD: it's a Plumes.
Great pedal.