There has been talk in other SA threads about this pedal. Let's make it official!
I know a couple beta testers are on the forum, so share the goods...
I know a couple beta testers are on the forum, so share the goods...
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Source Audio OFD
- Thread starter jasonmitsch
- Start date
lol, um why, wasn't that what this thread was for?
I have some thoughts I can share later, but traveling for work at the moment, so it will have to wait.
well, it was labeled wrong. It's fixed now. If I knew it was going to be changed that would have made perfect sense. I don't care how starts it, but I was already planning on starting a thread as of last night. Now this is just confusing.
ok, I'm moving here, haha
Bits and peices of info on this pedal have popped up since NAMM 2013 and last week an approximate release date was given out by the president of the company and we are less fhan a month from seeing the official production release of this pedal. There are even a few Wil videos out there and here they are:
Orbital & OFD filmed in Northwood
Invalid Link Removed
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
So what is the OFD? It's basically a hi-fi, miniature multi-fx unit that focuses on overdrive/fuzz/distortion with other support features like a programmable blend, tone shaping and a noise gate all in one nice neat package.
I'm sure most of you are in the same position, where you want to play with some tube drive, fuzz, octave fuzz, crazy metal madness and other types of cool pedals out there but that usually requires some blending and some eq tweaking to dial in what you want. Now if you are only needing one raunchy tone, a blend pedal, eq pedal and a dirt pedal may be fine. But imaging exploring dozens of fx models and tayloring them into some presets. huh!!
"but I can do that with a multifx"......sure, but the tone you get from the source audio pedals is soooo good, clean, you can crank these gains and no hiss. I have the latest popular flavors of multifx unit too and they do the job, but when it comes down to it I gotta have my SA.
Now what I'm actually using live for tge last couple years is the Classic Distortion Pro. It has all the features of the OFD, but it a little different in tone and the way the blend works. Plus my rig is midi controlled and the midi adapter for the SB2 is not out yet. Once the midi interface is in my hands the OFD will be on my board where the Classic Pro is now. I lve my classic pro, but there are some bass specific improvements on the OFD i really like. Mostly the blend and that it's not burried in the backpage menu. The blend also sounds different to me.
So on the latest Orbital demo they show the OFD and it looks like it has all the great fx the Classic Pro has plus a gated fuzz in place of the clean boost.
I really don't want to post any sound clips or comparisons with the Classic pro until I get the production version of the OFD so there won't be any confusion there, but it's coming soon and I wanted to get everyone as excited as I am.
Bits and peices of info on this pedal have popped up since NAMM 2013 and last week an approximate release date was given out by the president of the company and we are less fhan a month from seeing the official production release of this pedal. There are even a few Wil videos out there and here they are:
Orbital & OFD filmed in Northwood
Invalid Link Removed
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
So what is the OFD? It's basically a hi-fi, miniature multi-fx unit that focuses on overdrive/fuzz/distortion with other support features like a programmable blend, tone shaping and a noise gate all in one nice neat package.
I'm sure most of you are in the same position, where you want to play with some tube drive, fuzz, octave fuzz, crazy metal madness and other types of cool pedals out there but that usually requires some blending and some eq tweaking to dial in what you want. Now if you are only needing one raunchy tone, a blend pedal, eq pedal and a dirt pedal may be fine. But imaging exploring dozens of fx models and tayloring them into some presets. huh!!
"but I can do that with a multifx"......sure, but the tone you get from the source audio pedals is soooo good, clean, you can crank these gains and no hiss. I have the latest popular flavors of multifx unit too and they do the job, but when it comes down to it I gotta have my SA.
Now what I'm actually using live for tge last couple years is the Classic Distortion Pro. It has all the features of the OFD, but it a little different in tone and the way the blend works. Plus my rig is midi controlled and the midi adapter for the SB2 is not out yet. Once the midi interface is in my hands the OFD will be on my board where the Classic Pro is now. I lve my classic pro, but there are some bass specific improvements on the OFD i really like. Mostly the blend and that it's not burried in the backpage menu. The blend also sounds different to me.
So on the latest Orbital demo they show the OFD and it looks like it has all the great fx the Classic Pro has plus a gated fuzz in place of the clean boost.
I really don't want to post any sound clips or comparisons with the Classic pro until I get the production version of the OFD so there won't be any confusion there, but it's coming soon and I wanted to get everyone as excited as I am.
OFD is my favorite SA pedal I've tested thus far. Small, intuitive and easy to use, but most importantly lots of great tones available. Overall the best DSP based "classic" style drive effects I've personally heard thus far.
The firmware on my beta unit is almost 5 months old at this point, so I think there have been quite a few tweaks done since then. The three settings I've been playing with the most are the Big Pi, Octave and Gated fuzzes.
I can get the Big Pi to sound very similar to my favorite Muff clone, the Hoof Fuzz, which is pretty awesome. I don't expect it to get it dead on as the Hoof has different sets of controls in comparison, but the main point is I get a very good Muff sound out of the unit.
With the octave fuzz setting I can get some brassmasterish tones, but with the ability to tame a bit of the harshness of that sound if I want.
The gated fuzz is a lot of fun, my unit actually has a hardware fault that adds in some noise so I haven't had the benifit of a fully functional gated fuzz sound, but even with the issue, feeding the gated fuzz a suboctave signal and running it into a low pass filter is giving me some quite stellar synth type sounds. Going forward, once I get the production version, I'll probably set my two presets using the Octave Fuzz and the Gated Fuzz settings. As I mentioned above, I have a muff clone that I like very much, so there isn't any reason to use one of my presets for the Big Pi mode.
However, once the scene saver box is available and I can have more than 2 "presets" I'll have to reevaluate what I'm doing.
Have band practice tonight, I think I'll dedicate some time to more of the drive settings.
I can get the Big Pi to sound very similar to my favorite Muff clone, the Hoof Fuzz, which is pretty awesome. I don't expect it to get it dead on as the Hoof has different sets of controls in comparison, but the main point is I get a very good Muff sound out of the unit.
With the octave fuzz setting I can get some brassmasterish tones, but with the ability to tame a bit of the harshness of that sound if I want.
The gated fuzz is a lot of fun, my unit actually has a hardware fault that adds in some noise so I haven't had the benifit of a fully functional gated fuzz sound, but even with the issue, feeding the gated fuzz a suboctave signal and running it into a low pass filter is giving me some quite stellar synth type sounds. Going forward, once I get the production version, I'll probably set my two presets using the Octave Fuzz and the Gated Fuzz settings. As I mentioned above, I have a muff clone that I like very much, so there isn't any reason to use one of my presets for the Big Pi mode.
However, once the scene saver box is available and I can have more than 2 "presets" I'll have to reevaluate what I'm doing.
Have band practice tonight, I think I'll dedicate some time to more of the drive settings.
rsmith601
Commercial User
- Apr 14, 2009
- 4,461
- 8,356
- Disclosures
- CEO and Co-Founder, Source Audio
As I noted on the other post, the bass sound clips on the site are not up to our usual standards. The guitar ones are really good, if you want to get a sense of the quality of our approach to this challenge.
Adamixoye
A PT Pro is cool for worship, right?
- Apr 9, 2012
- 18,158
- 69,338
- Disclosures
- Occasional Beta Tester for Confusion Studios, Singular Sound, and Source Audio
FWIW, I thought they each sounded good on their own, but too similar to each other. If you update them perhaps there is a way to show the range of tones a little better.
rsmith601
Commercial User
- Apr 14, 2009
- 4,461
- 8,356
- Disclosures
- CEO and Co-Founder, Source Audio
That is our exact complaint with those clips. The drive is too high and the tones sound way too similar. If you listen to the guitar clips you can see that they are all indeed really different.
I'm busy tonight and the kids are already in bed....but I'm thinkin tomorrow night - DEMO VIDEO. stay tuned.
Honestly, with just the gain knob and the 3-band EQ you can get a LOT of different tones out of just one voicing on the OFD. So much more versatile than your standard tone knob found on most boxes. Now every single drive voice can have a mid-scoop, or a mid-boost, a massive Massive MASSIVE low end boost. Lots of highs. No highs. And on and on. 
And the awesome noise gate. I keep mentioning it as I'm looking forward to hearing what kind of creative things people figure out to do with the gate beyond just squelching noise floor during silent passages. I'm sure someone will come up with something crafty.
And the awesome noise gate. I keep mentioning it as I'm looking forward to hearing what kind of creative things people figure out to do with the gate beyond just squelching noise floor during silent passages. I'm sure someone will come up with something crafty.
I would really like some sound samples. Is it also possible to get a light low gain tube drive out of this box?
And when will it be available in Europe?
And when will it be available in Europe?
rsmith601
Commercial User
- Apr 14, 2009
- 4,461
- 8,356
- Disclosures
- CEO and Co-Founder, Source Audio
I will defer to the beta testers on the sound question, because I am too likely to say "sure, it can do that". I will say that it was clearly designed to do that. Clean boost is also possible.
Our international distributors (Warwick in Germany, Strings and Things in the UK, etc.) need to get their ocean shipments first. 4 to 6 weeks is my guess.
