Behringer OD300 Overdrive Distortion Pedal

I've always liked the idea of a drive pedal with a variable clipping control. That's all overdrive and distortion is: Soft clipping and hard clipping.This pedal sounds great. And yes it's made out of plastic. But it's ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) Plastic which is an extremely high impact plastic used in every new car today because of it's weight and hardness profile. It's football helmet level hardness.Behringer pedals are lightweight so you can have a versatile, affordable, and lightweight pedal board. Could you imagine the pedal board pictured being comprised of old style huge and heavy pedals? It would be 10 feet long and weigh 80 pounds.The weakest link in Behringer pedals are the jacks. They are delicate so I would advise not plugging and unplugging them a lot. Leave them plugged in and you'll be golden.I like this pedal so much that I bought a second one.I'd also like to see Behringer start using center detent sliders on the EQ.

I'm not going to talk about technical things or comparisons to other pedals because I really don't know anything about any of that. I'm going to talk about how I became a Metal God for less than $40.I bought a Squier Strat/amp set a few months ago and was having some fun learning a few chords and generally goofing off. I've played electric bass for about 30 years, so it was novel and fun to have a 6-string. After a few weeks I realized that my little practice amp was not adequate for summoning the dark metal powers that I required. I plugged into my much more formidable bass rig and enjoyed the sheer volume available, but that wasn't enough. My bass setup is for providing clean and clear bass guitar sound, not the evil distortion cacophony I sought. I knew that it was time for a pedal.I spent some time on Amazon looking at the various pedals available, and I was generally impressed by the reviews of this and other Behringer pedals. To be clear: my needs are not those of a professional musician. I'm sure that the Ultra Metal, Heavy Metal, or any other similar pedals would be fine for unleashing the savage fury that is no longer contained. I went with this one because it gives me overdrive and distortion, the purple case is more agreeable to me than the hot pink shades of the other pedals I considered, and the price is low enough that I wouldn't be too bent if demonic apparitions did not burst from the netherworld upon the first notes' issuance from my amp. I noted the reviews that mentioned that battery installation is a grim struggle, so it was an easy decision to go with the Planet Waves 9V power adapter and skip all the mucky-muck.After my order arrived I was set up in minutes, and the evil that spewed forth from my guitar amp was powerful and humbling! What I like the most about it is that with this pedal my lacking of skill, experience, and talent that is so evident to anyone in earshot when I'm playing clean guitar is replaced by a frightening and undeniable wall of sonic doom. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a hack, but I sound great when I'm mutilating Sabbath, Cream, Zep, and a lot of other bands from long ago. I'm a hack now, but since I have such fun with it I'll get better and better and one day I'll be the Metal God in reality that I am in my head today. Also, my kids hate it, so your parents probably will too. It's so worth it!To summarize: You should buy this. If it starts you on your path to inevitable rock-n-roll stardom, soothes your midlife crisis, or provides an economical way to upgrade your guitar apparatus it's a relatively small investment with a nice return. If it breaks or collects dust you aren't out a whole lot of dough. If it's like mine and still doing what it needs you have scored and still have some cash for some other sweet gear.

Good sound. Not pricey, great first pedal for someone. Been using for months and it still works great.

There are quite a few critics out there for the Behringer line of pedals. I don't play live shows and I have been a closet guitarist for about 8 years. I jam out with YouTube and these seem to give a nice tone and sound for the fact they are about $25 vs. their competitors which range much higher $50-$150 for a similar sound.This pedal in particular I use probably the most, You can dial it to have more distortion or more overdrive or a balance of both. The level/gain knobs are amazingly powerful, they will boost your amp substantially which is really nice if you play a combination of rhythm and lead. The moment you go to shred and you hit this pedal for the lead solo it cranks out the sound on the amp so you stand out a little bit more.The housing is a plastic compound. I will admit that I have other pedals that have that nice metal housing and hardy metal foot switch but all in all again you pay 25$ and you get the sound and to be honest I have had both more expensive and cheaper brand pedals and any/all the pedals I have bought including the Behringer line are still holding strong today.For the nay-sayers out there, I always Watch YouTube clips before buying a pedal anyways. And there is almost every Pedal on the Market in comparison to one another that is documented already. The Behringer Pedals vs Boss Pedals videos are very nice to show how close, if any difference, they are to one another. Specifically this pedal and the Distortion pedal Boss provides for an arm and a leg more I personally could not tell the difference.I do not use the battery feature with this pedal I just use the 9v Jack with my Pedal Board.

This pedal is a great concept, and I really liked the ability to go from OD to distortion in a sweep, BUT, unfortunately it was super muddy in tone.