Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive

extremely easy to use. manual is included, but not really needed. nice if yyou're just beginning to use bass effacts because the manual gives some settings suggestions for different types of sounds.

effects are very powerful and deliver excellent sound quality. i am a big audioslave fan and this helps to generate a sound close to that of Tim C.

this thing is built rock solid! you can kick it around the entire room on and off and it wouldnt break.

i cant say because ive never had any problems or other reasons to contact boss.

just buy it, its the best bass pedal for distortion. very reliable.

As long as you know what gain, level, balance, and an EQ do in a general music context, you can use this straight out of the box, otherwise reading the manual takes a couple of minutes and it includes some very nice pre-sets, after that step on it and wail away, tis that simple.

Im using it mainly with my very budget rebel 4k, through a variety of amps, from Trace to Ashdown to Ampeg, and it sound great even on such a low output instrument. I occasionally run i through some other effects, compression chorus and an octaver, and it sounds solid. There are a variety of sounds you can achieve with this, completely OTT thrash distortion, mild crunch, or a nice simple overdrive.

Once you boost both eq channels past about 1 o'clock you start to get some interesting harmonic overtones been produced which can add a really eerie element to your playing.

Unfortunately it does suffer some minor noise issues when the gain is pushed past about 3 o'clock as some other people have said, but to be honest, if you've got the gain that high, you're generally after a distorted scuzzed out untamed sound, so some extra noise is not a great hinderance, and barely noticebale when you play a line, but still not good for rests........

I use this mainly for writing songs and it provides a weatlth of sounds for intros, solos, or i use it quite a lot to add a interesting counter melody to my guitarists clean interludes, but I have recreated quite well anesthesia and a variety of muse songs, including TIRO and hysteria, although the latter two not as well as Chris plays them (The man uses 4 seperate od and disto pedals for crying out loud)

Overall it produces some excellent sounds

The thing is built like a tank, like all Boss pedals, it has survived minor drops and some serious stage abuse, but despite Boss's reputation, I dont think it'd survive a sledgehammer or a 60ft freefall

Also the pedal gave out about 4 months after buying it, see below for more about this.....

This is where the whole thing went to hell, as I said about 4 months in it gave out, slightly put out.....but reaussred by a 3 year warranty i rang up the shop i bought it from, and they proceeded to send it back to Boss for repair. 3 days later I get a phone call from Boss. When i had purchased it, I notice the screws on the bottom plate were quite tight, casuing it to bow a bit, naturally I loosened the screws and never thought anything of it. Now, the nice man from Boss telles me that they've found evidence the screws were loosened. This apparently instantly voided the warranty. Extremely annoyed at this i protested and said i had not removed the bottom plate; apparently irrelevant.

Boss then charged me ?25 to repair the pedal, ?10 for an estimate, and charged me ?5 for postage. Extremely annoyed and out of pocket I took it to a local shop to find out just what they'd done to it. The shop said they replaced the Chip that actually overdrives the sound.

Total estimated cost to Boss: ?8.50

Very Very VERY annoyed with this, as they have charged me ?31.50 too much. Put me off ever dealing with their customer service again again

Scamming aside, this is a top quality pedal, simple interface and a wealth of interesting sounds, plus seemingly endless stage life, only thing is if you want to run it off the mains you have tp buy a seperate 9v, and I have been unable to find an official Boss one so far, however I have made do with another. Also on that subject, the battery life is mighty impressive, so long as you dont leave a jack in the input jack (this acts as a master power switch)

Unfortuantely, that sordid incident has tainted their repuation in my eyes and i'd need to seriously consider buying another boss pedal or accessorry.

It is pretty straight forward, though it took me a while to get a sound that was more in the vein of what i wanted to use it for.

I use this with a Fender American Jazz bass rewired to be in parallel through a GK800RB and an Ampeg 4x10 cab.

It is not noisy insomuch as having a lot of hissing, but it does tend towards a distortion that sounds a lot like static on top of an unaltered bass sound.

I found the sound unwieldy and unuseable for a long time - too over the top for indie-rock, but then followed the settings on the website for the natural overdrive sound (turning down the treble, turning up the bass towards a little past half way, leaving the balance in the middle, and turning down the distortion almost all the way)and it seems to be working for me now. It adds just enough grit to make the tone more edgy and to fill up the sonic spectrum like we need to as a 3 piece.

I would prefer something that sounded more like a natural distortion of my signal as opposed to the clean signal with raspy crap sitting on top of it, but it'll do.

It looks real strong. I would not have any qualms about building a hut out of these and living in it for twelve years, if a situation were to arise that would make that a necessary course of action.

The website was very helpful when I was trying to make the pedal more useful, and the manual is available online.

Given that it's tough, not much different from an MXR M-80 in terms of tone, and much cheaper than that or a Sansamp, I'd say it's a good pedal to get if you're considering using distortion. If you want to record with distortion or try and get a more unique sound, I would go with something more expensive - an Electro-Harmonix tube-based pedal, or the Ampeg tube preamp pedal thinger, perhaps.

Its pretty simple.

I had to fool around for a while but i found the good sound.


The owners manual had suggested settings in it to try.

I mainly use this as like a overdriven booster and that is basically what it is.

If used as a distortion it gets very staticy.

Try using an EQ with it.

So far i havnt used mine much but when i do it hasnt let me down.

I use this for all rock music.

Easy to use, takes some time and knobfiddling to find the best sound. Once found it's kinda hard to duplicate the sound a next time, unless you write it down properly.
The manual gives some usable setting-suggestions.

My setup is a passive fender jazz bass (usa), ampeg SVT350H and 2 ampeg cabs: 4*10"and 1"*15". I play live a lot on bigger and smaller stages and sit setup, without effects, never lets me down. The sound punches through the other guitars just perfectly. But the overall sound of my setup is a bit clean, so here comes the need of an pedal to roughen it up a bit.

When playing alone, on volume not too high, it sounds okay. As soon as you mix it with a complete band it totally fails. I've tried for hours to get a decent sound. NO way. It takes out the lows and (this is a bass dammit!) and gives a very flat and dull sound. If you want to lighten up the sound it adds a lot of cruncy and crispy mids and highs that interfere with the guitarsound; this means that you lose the basspunch in the overall sound. If you try to compensate the loss of lows by turning up the low gain the bottom-end turns muddy and looses its definition.

It is reliable, had it for a few years, not used it much tough.

no experience here

I've played in mainly loud bands for over 10 years (mathcore, hardcore and garagerock). I need a rough edge around the clean basssound that doesn't take out the definition. Well, this little yellow box does. take away the definition i mean. And it adds a whole lot of crispy stuff i dont want. Kind remind me of the old metal-zone, remember that one?

Anyway, i would not recommend it unless you want an over the top industrial kinda sound.
Or maybe if you play alone, or in a band without any guitars. In that case you have the whole frequency range for yourself, and than this little box can sound massive.

Really easy to use, basic features and setup. Manual isn't needed.

For bass it sounds pretty good. I used it mainly to boost the signal and do some EQ-ing and never really used it for distortion. Worked excellent for that application.

However, I switched over from bass to guitar and now use this pedal to get some nice overdrive sounds. Going through the clean channel of my Randall amp I can get some vintage Bassman tones that sound awesome! It does have a different break-up sound than a real tube amp but unless you are a hardcore tube-amp freak, you and the general public won't really know the difference. It has a darker sound than most overdrives since it's made specifically for the lower frequencies of bass guitars which is really nice.

VERY reliable. Not a huge battery-sucker and it's construction is very solid.

A limited 5 year warranty is always a plus...but I've never had to deal with them.

I mostly use this for guitar now and it does an excellent job of getting everything between an Adam Jones style overdrive to vintage Bassman tones. It's been the only pedal I've kept longer than 2 years. For bass it worked excellent to boost the signal from my passive J-bass and was MUCH cheaper than buying new pickups and a preamp circuit. Plus the distortion was always a bit too harsh for the music I played but for a death metal band or someone needing a soloing tone for bass, this pedal is still great!

Pretty Easy, 5 knobs including 2 EQ's.

I was pretty happy with the sounds in the shop when I bought it. Then at home, I wasn't too pleased. Just couldn't find a sound I wanted. I was getting ready to Sell this thing until while doing a show, I fooled around with it when I was a little drunk before I was about to play, and found a really BIG cutting sound that I now love. It was perfect for the RATM covers we were about to do. Takes a bit of experimentation, but some great sounds come from this little box.

Built like a tank. It's a Boss for christ's sake!

Never dealt with them.

One of my bands is really influenced by RATM, so we have BIG in your face choruses, and this box completely fills out anything left open by the guitar, and cuts through that as well!

Never mind about it being stolen or lost, I want to buy another one anyway, because the very light distortion sounds you get out of it sound great too, and I want the option of being slightly distorted and fully distorted at different parts of the same song.

It takes a bit of fiddling, but i'm very happy with the sound i'm getting out of this thing.

Can be hissy on high treble settings, but sounds rubbish tweaked like that, so doesnt really apply. Probably gives out too much distortion, you lose definition at high settings. At the moment I'm using the pedal with a peavy xr600c powered mixer, thru a 4x10 cabinet. Gives a good growl, plenty of power.

Knobs look breakable, otherwise tank like. Likes the batteries.

I play guitar mainly, tho record my own bass. I like this pedal, as it's got me back into playing bass every night, instead of weekly. I've used my guitar pedals with the bass, all with some success, but tired of changing settings from guitar to bass. So, it's my 1st dedicated bass pedal, suited to the purpose of overdriving the bass sound. No problemo.

It took me about three days of playing with it to get the sound i was looking for. I still play with it but i picked it up fast.

The soumd is alright, it good about 3/4 of the time. some times it just doesn't fit in the song. I get a kind of light fuzz by setting the high Qu at 12:00, Qu's low at 3:00 or 2:00, the balance at 7:00 or 8:00, and the gain at 12:00 or 1:00. the level changes on how loud i play. i like this setting cuz it lets me change the one on my bass for a different kind of sound

IT'S A BOSS!

I don't know about customer support, I have never had to call them.

It might take some getting used to but stick with it, it's worth it.

Real easy, nothing pretentious about this pedal, just volume, two band EQ, balance and gain, simple. Didnt use the manual, didnt need to, but the suggested settings could be useful.

I use it with a Musicman Sterling and an EBS rig, the sound is already quite aggressive, and this pedal really makes it break up nicely. Bearing in mind I only use the pedal on mild (very mild) settings, i'm gonna say it is not at all noisy, but when you turn up the treble filter, or the gain, or god forbid both, it does make a hell of a racket. But for just a little crunch, you wont have any problems.
Like i said, i like it mild, but i found that it wont go quite as mild as i would like. It would be really useful if the gain switch could go ALL the way down, so it wont overdrive at all, but it doesnt, and i sometimes find it too severe even on the mildest setting. The balance knob can make up for this, but it is still not perfect.
It is also true to say that it takes out a little bit of your bottom end, which is a shame, but it aint too bad, it can still sound nice n beefy, and if you aint happy you could get an EQ pedal to bring some back, and still pay less than you would for that Fulltone heap of s**t.
Slap some new strings on yer bass and you can get a lovely rumble going on, and you can nail the 'By The Way' sound if thats what you're after. Personally i was after the sounds that Cordell Crockett (worlds most underrated bass player) gets on Americas Least Wanted by Ugly Kid Joe, and this pedal gives them to me. Superb.

Course you can depend on it, i hate to be boring but it is a Boss. Backup? I'm thinking of getting a second one anyway so i can have two overdrive sounds (or 3 if you have them on together), but i would, and do gig with no backup.

No idea.

I play in a five piece rock band, and we take our influence from the whole Aerosmith/ Ugly Kid Joe/ Guns n Roses thing. I have played 6 years now.
The style of the overdrive on this thing is sweet. Crisp and crunchy. But my biggest problem is that it doesnt go mild enough, i'm also not a fan of yellow, but you will not do any better than this pedal.
I tried the digitech and DOD bass drivers briefly in the shop, and Didnt think much of them, and thay dont come close to this one. I bought the EBS Multidrive, but that robs all of your TOP end. ALL OF IT. I then bought the Fulltone Bass driver cos everybody on this site raves about it, and couldnt find one decent setting. It has the kind of "who spilt beer on my amp?" sound, absolute shite. I have yet to try the Ibanez PD7 though.
What boss want to do now is make an ODB-20, like the OD-20 only for bass, that would be suh-weet.
Listen carefully to 'Goddamn Devil' on Americas Least Wanted, thats what this pedal can do. Lovely. Get one.