So there are a few haters out there who say that the version 4 Fulltone OCD is not as good as the others. Well I’m here to say its a killer pedal! I have been through hundreds of pedals, whether trading, or selling, the OCD is the only pedal that has never gone off my board. I can say the difference between this pedal at 9v and at 18v are huge. At 9v it can be a bit fizzy and dare I say it “muddy.” At 18v the added headroom is huge. It clears up the fizzle and makes it sing.

My band went to Nashville to record, which was a huge waste of money. The song sounded great but it was way too expensive for what it was. While I was there, though, I got to try different amps and pedal. I used the OCD as my main drive. On the 8hr drive back home I went on ebay and bought an OCD for myself. As my tastes have changed over the past several years, the OCD has always been there.

I use it mainly as a light OD. Its so amp like, which I guess is what they were goin for when they built it. I read that the OCD is a highly modified Voodoo labs OD. I think what makes the pedal so versatile is the kind of clipping it uses. From what I can tell from the schematic and PCB it uses a Shakka Braddah clipping stage. Its a mixture of transistors and diodes. Its smooth yet cuts through at the same time. The gain pot pared with a capacitor makes a high pass filter, so when you crank the gain, it cranks the tone, but with a very usable and responsive tone knob you can dial in any sound you want. From the website it seems as if they were going for a British amp cranked to breaking sound. I’ve always loved american amps and a British OD mixed with the sweet World War II surplus parts Silvertone 1484 and 1483 I use its the exact sound I want. When the gain is cranked it gets really beefy!

There is a HP and LP switch, which stands for High Peak and Low Peak. All the switch does is add a resistor parallel making more signal pass through. I leave mine set on HP all the time. I had a friend who broke his switch so I hardwired it to always on HP mode. The LP can get muddy compared to the HP.

At low gains this pedal is super transparent, but as the gain increases it turns more and more into a British tube amp.

This pedal also stacks well with other drives. I’ve tried it with an EHX glove OD, and Soul Food and it doesn’t force its sound on to them, it remains clear. For a long time I would put a BBE Boosta grande then later and Xotic EP booster before the OCD and boosted it for days. So touch sensitive and gainy! Over all this is a great pedal all around!! I put new knobs and a green LED in mine. I suggest you all go get one from Fulltone now!

Submitted by Ben A, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook

GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES, CONTEST INFO, SEE OUR LATEST DEMO VIDEOS AND MORE:

More info at: