noisy boss odb-3

The ODB-3 is an overdrive pedal, meaning it adds gain to your signal in order to get a dirty crunchy sound.

The things you experience are normal when playing with overdrive or distortion pedals.

 

But the Ol Dirty Bastard is known for being one of the more noisy of the "overdrives." If I had to pick one word to describe the ODB... noise.

 

I use the ODB (with a CS-3 AND an Xciter before it ..talk about noise!) in the loop of an NS-2 noise supressor.

That thing works perfectly. No other supressor that doesn't have remote sensing can do what the NS-2 can do. It works perfectly!

I'm not only runnin' TONS of compression before the ODB, but I boost the treble on both the CS and the Xciter (on the ODB - for the heavy-distortion sound - I run bass=1:30, treble=10:30).

Joe

 

If you're looking for an octave down, the EH Octave Multiplexer is a beauty of a pedal. I'm also looking out for a delay pedal myself.

 

look at a clock (not a digital one)

 

I'm sure you did hear, but as far as I know, I'm the only one who's been saying it. No one's actually DISagreed with me either.

There's really been pretty-much NO response to my 'crying in the wilderness' over this; I still say the combination is pretty-incredible. I wouln't at-all mind if someone were to report their success with it - one way or the other would be fine, but it'd be nice if someone would report having tried it...

I run the Xciter - as per the printed markings on the control panel, left-to-right - 5.5, 8.0, 6.5, 8.5. It can sound pretty cool to run either of the Big Bottom controls (the left two knobs) higher than what I've suggested above (the left one causes the B.B. to process higher and higher up toward the mids as you turn it clock-wise, and the right one blends-in more and more of the effect the original signal as you go C.W.), but the problem is, when I switch-OFF the ODB, it leaves me with too boomy or bassy of a clean sound! Because of that, that's about the highest I dare to run those. When it comes to the high-freq controls (the right two 'Exciter' knobs), remember that I'm running flatwounds; I'd imagine that 'blend' control (far-right) might be too high for round wounds on a bright bass.

...And yes: The trick is to put it BEFORE the ODB-3! I understand the disadvantages, and the logic with putting the Xciter last-last-last - but I'm talking about transforming the sound of an ODB-3; for THAT it has to go BEFORE the ODB.

Also: remember that a problem I've encountered with this was my passive bass apparently clipping the Xciter, resulting in a nasty and unacceptable crackle-sound. You can push the 'active' switch, but then the output goes down so much that you can have trouble properly 'driving' the stuff that follows.

Write back with a report on this stuff, huh?

Thanks -

Joe

 

Yeah, I've had poor experiences with this pedal. When the gain is turned up on the pedal loud enough to make a difference I feedback like crazyyyy.

I have traditionally been terrible at finding good settings on boss pedals though. I might just suck at using this pedal.