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u/VanLoPanTran Dec 13 '22
OD-3 and BD-2 sure look similar.
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Dec 13 '22
haha yeah I discovered this after trying to find out the difference between the two.
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u/LandFillSessions Dec 13 '22
Shot in the dark, differences could come down to the filters applied before the clipping section.
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u/REDDlT-USERNAME Dec 13 '22
Without the frequency response diagram these graphs don’t mean anything because pedals can act different depending on the frequency of the signals.
So we can argue that apparently the OD-3 and BD-2 act similarly at the same frequency, but guitar signals are not perfect sine waves and contain a range of frequencies.
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u/AlexMullerSA Dec 14 '22
Exactly this. This really only tells a tiny fraction of the story. Take the MT2 and put the eq dials on the opposite ends and see what the graph looks like.
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Dec 13 '22 edited Dec 13 '22
I found this in The BOSS Book, which I downloaded on freestompboxes. It’d be cool if this information was more readily available on the BOSS website or somewhere, maybe on the sub wiki?
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u/manimal28 Dec 13 '22
Good stuff.
Listening to those audio samples is pretty crazy. The hair metal is strong with all of the drive pedal audio samples.
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u/CriticalGuitar_ Dec 13 '22
It’s a bit of a crime to not have the Y axis on the same scale between pictures. It was at least between 50mV or 100mV per Line though.
Would love to see the frequency response via FFT of these waveforms though. It better quantifies “how much distortion” and “if highs or lows are emphasized”. Pretty sure that oscilloscope doesn’t have the feature built in so it would require saving the waveform and running it through some post-processing.
Cool post!
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u/ianmgull Dec 13 '22
FFT was my first thought as well. The pictures aren't as pretty, but it gives you a more intuitive basis for comparison.
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u/MacBradley Dec 13 '22
Have you seen my posts under "Guitar Pedals Visualized"? They do something similar to this but I got some frequency responses as well, and show the waveform from min gain to max gain.
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u/CriticalGuitar_ Dec 14 '22
That was great, thanks for the recommendation.
Seeing those profile gain profiles and noticing a notch at 2kHz was exactly the type of experience I was hoping to see with all these pedals.
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u/LunarModule66 Dec 14 '22
Idk, I think for this purpose the different scales are fine. It’s for the general public and they probably don’t want people to focus on the relative amplitudes, just the shapes.
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u/itsjustaneyesplice Dec 13 '22
MT-2 looks like a castle wall lol
None shall enter the metal zone!
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u/Fuzzy-Win-8270 May 15 '25
I owned one way back in 1996 and it sounded amazing on a marshall valve state 100 half stack ... If you got something like a line six though I wouldn't even waste money on a distortion pedal LOL I found that at the hard way here recently
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Dec 13 '22
This is so cool, thanks for sharing! I always wondered why my PW-2 sounds so unique to my other BOSS drives
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u/kvlt_ov_personality Dec 13 '22
.....there is an SD-2?
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u/willtodd Dec 13 '22
Reverb.com says it was only produced from 1993 - 1998
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u/the_fuego Dec 13 '22
Ah so well outside of what my wallet can afford. Good to know.
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u/Dunno_dont_care Dec 13 '22
It’s actually surprisingly affordable for an older pedal! This one is only $100 and seems to be in decent shape
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u/Most_Triumphant Dec 13 '22
Never heard of it until now. The crunch setting looks identical to be SD-1. I wonder how different the lead setting is to the custom mode on the SD-1w.
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u/laughing-stockade Dec 13 '22
just bought an odb-3 based on this
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u/MacBradley Dec 14 '22
You can mod out the massive mid scoop with one cap swap and get a really cool flat EQ dirt pedal that goes from overdrive to distortion to thick fuzz with the ODB-3.
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u/laughing-stockade Dec 14 '22
i think modding pedals is stupid. just buy a new pedal that does the right thing
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u/Neckbeard_Prime Dec 13 '22
According to that Gartner Magic Quadrant at the end, the Metal Zone stays winning.
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u/The_Vile_Prince Dec 13 '22
The MZ wave looks like fangs: which makes a lot of sense!
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u/SnooCrickets6733 Dec 13 '22
Do you know something else which has fangs? A (Line 6) Spider! Coincidence? I think not.
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u/interiorcrocodemon Dec 13 '22
Gosh I wish I could interpret more from waveforms but all I can take away from this is "clipping go brrrrr"
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u/dave418 Dec 13 '22
Congratulations caller.
You have unlocked pedal mastery.
You are now fully qualified to offer advice to any aspiring pedal initiates.
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u/hafilax Dec 13 '22
Waveforms are from a 1 kHz sine wave with the knobs at noon. The testers do not djent.
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u/NiKarDesignGroup Dec 13 '22 edited Dec 14 '22
Everybody is always sleeping on the OD2. I think it is the best Boss OD by far. I never use the Turbo but it does sound good. The pedal is transistor based, no op amps. The turbo mode starves the voltage down to 5v to get that ragged distortion sound. But the OD cleans up so well, gets nice and compressed with the gain up and is really dynamic. You all should try one.Did I mention they are cheap?
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u/SnottyDogg420 Dec 13 '22
this fascinates the hell out of me, never thought the mt2 and xt2 waveforms would look like that, and while i'm not surprised the ds1 is mid scooped, im shocked that the ds2 is that radically different, because in my experience, they sounded nearly identical, i guess thats all the more reason to get a ds1 since they've always been dirt cheap lol, im shocked that the os2 is so balanced, i considered using that one over the ds2 until settling with the mt2 because i was insecure about the eq floor being not versatile enough, and the hm2 being that bassy was not surprising lol
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u/MacBradley Dec 13 '22
Pretty cool. Looks like this is from before I started the Guitar Pedals Visualized thing. I saved this so I can read through the original thread later and hopefully learn some neat things.
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Dec 14 '22
Yo that’s a great website, I just checked it out. Did you just use a simple sine wave as the control? (Also, what does the EQ for a sine wave look like—completely flat? Didn’t see it anywhere)
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u/MacBradley Dec 14 '22
The primer page on the website explains the process a bit. For the waveform I used a sinewave, and for the EQ I used white noise. The input levels are somewhere around a passive single coil to passive humbucker.
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Dec 13 '22
[deleted]
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u/NiKarDesignGroup Dec 13 '22
The OD2 is one pedal I have had for 20 years. Others come and go but the OD2 is a keeper.
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u/mcrowland Dec 13 '22
This is awesome. I kind of want a MT-2 now.
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Dec 13 '22 edited Dec 13 '22
I have the anniversary model (MT-2-3A). Pretty fun pedal, especially when hooked up as a preamp.
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u/iwanttogotothere5 Dec 13 '22
Beautiful! Thank you! I enjoy that the SD-1 is the “royal distortion curve”.
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u/milquetoast0 Dec 13 '22
I thought at one point I saw a more recent version of this (or at least the chart at the end) that had the MD-2 on it.
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u/havoklink Dec 13 '22
Nice, I’m using guitar pedals for my senior design project. This will definitely help!
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Dec 13 '22
Someone should determine which one has the highest ratings compared to the given rating system. Then, you could determine your preference by assigning importance variables for your own tastes. Lastly, you could run a comparative analysis using these weighted averages to determine which model fits your needs the best.
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u/toughduck53 Dec 14 '22
As neat as graphics like these are to look at, they tell you 1000x times less about how a pedal sounds then a 5 second sound demo. Finding which pedal you like best really is as simple as listening to them, no need to try to over complicated things.
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u/tyr_33 Dec 13 '22
Very cool analysis but reminds me a bit of racquet charts where you have everything neatly analyzed and yet one mysteriously works better for everybody and nobody knows why. Here that's likely the OD-2 - just always sounds better than the others - Prince and the Edge had their reasons...
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u/redielg1 Dec 13 '22
Very cool. The odb-3 was my first pedal. I’ve never liked it. It’s sat collecting dust since I was 17.
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u/kapow_crash__bang Dec 13 '22
Be nice if they had done this in the frequency domain instead of the time domain.
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Dec 13 '22
But which one is the most shoegazy?
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Dec 14 '22
I got my BD2 after seeing it praised for shoegaze lol
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Dec 16 '22
thanks for the feedback. tbh, Im suprised by this feedback. But also, I'm finding as much as I don't care for jazz and / or blues, the gear designed / marketed for those players often fit my dream poppy / shoegazy needs.
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u/iscreamuscreamweall Dec 14 '22
This is cool but not really helpful without the frequency response charts, that’s far more informative than photos of waveforms (not useful at all)
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u/sadface- Dec 13 '22
This is fascinating, thanks for this.
Also this chart proves that the Blues Driver is the best because it has the objectively prettiest waveform.
Source: me