Award Sounds

The BYOC Overdrive is a guitar fx pedal which comes in kit form. You receive all the parts, you download the instructions, then you assemble and solder it all together. It's based on old circuits and is meant to be a clone of the TS9 and TS808; essentially it's a tubescreamer pedals in a kit.

The Build

The instructions are straightforward if you want a stock build. My kit came with a strip of sockets, making it easier to swap out resistors, capacitors, etc. A lot of modifications are listed in the build instructions. There are a number of changes you can make to end up with a pedal more similar to a TS9 or a TS808. I chose to diverge from the stock build, aiming for something in between the two, but soldered in sockets for components I thought I might want to change.

I found this a pretty easy build, for the soldering part. I found the assembly harder than the BYOC Triboost or the BYOC Tremolo since it has three pots/knobs and it was getting a bit tight wiring them all up in the end. However, I built it in 3 hours from start to finish. Now I have to paint and finish it.

The Swap

I originally had the JRC4558D op-amp in the pedal. I had no idea which was better. After a couple of days, I swapped out the IC for the RC4558P. I played with that for a while, but realised that the JRC4558D was much better for my purposes.

The Sounds

Wow, this is quite possibly the best pedal I own and I'm very happy with some of my other pedals. It allows for creamy lead tones with a neck pickup or marshall-esque tones with a bridge pickup as well as a variety of other tones.

I've posted audio clips of the overdrive pedal.

The New Revision

There's a new version of the Overdrive pedal, the Overdrive 2 featuring more knobs, a toggle switch and an additional footswitch. Looks interesting.