Catalinbread SuperCharged Overdrive

Pretty simple, Volume, Contour and Gain, all quite self explanatory. It comes with a sheet of paper with some suggested settings, which is nice however I haven't tried any of these out as I prefer to just piss about with pedals and see what happens. I also have no concept of what a 'tight open backed tweed' really sounds like, so the comparision is kind of meaningless for me.
The only slight downfall is that as it's so light and doesn't have any rubber grips, unless you stick it to a pedalboard it can move about a bit if you stamp on it too hard or knock it.

I use a few different guitars with this, but mainly a Fender Aerodyne Telecaster and Squier Supersonic. When I tried it out in Vinatge and Rare with a #2000 SG Junior it sounded beautiful, it sounds equally good with my stuff too. I like to vary my pedal set-up from gig to gig but it will usually include some of the following: E-H Poly Chorus, Jacques Meistersinger Chorus, Vox Clyde McCoy Wah, MXR Distortion II, MXR Flanger, Boss NS-2 plus various other things I drag out of my pedal box when I feel like it.
All this Runs into a Marshall Mode 4 (yeah, I know I fell for the hype).

I really like the sound of this pedal. I have been using the Mode 4 distortion channel for ages, but despite the claims of massive headroom, I had been having trouble with it live, no matter how loud I ran it it just kept getting lost in the mix, no matter how much mid I added. A friend of mine used the Mode 4 recently and commented that it didn't sound 'real'. That's all changed since I bought this pedal.

I've had the Super Charged Overdrive for a week now, I've used it at two practices and I'm now running my amp at half the volume I used previously. The sound is fat and quite bottomy but it's so clear. We are a loud band and due to too much gig induced permanent tinnitus I now wear earplugs, I can still hear this thing clearly though. It's just a revelation. It really cuts through the mix.

Downsides are that the contour control isn't quite as responsive as I'd like it to be and I'm a little worried about note definition on the higher strings of chords, but I can live with this considering how aggressive it sounds. I've written two new songs since I bought it which to me is the sign of a good pedal. I just can't stop playing it.

It's by far the best distortion (and it is a distortion) I have ever owned. It put the Vintage Rat and the NYC re-issue Big Muff to shame.

There is a slight pop when you switch it on, but again the plus sides out weigh the minuses!

It seems ok, I'll post again if it breaks!

Again, we'll see what happens, but I'm pretty sure the shop I got it would be cool about sorting it out. Vintage and Rare really seem to be the most down to earth guys out of all the Denmark Street area shops.

I love it. I really do. I originally intended to buy a D*A*M Sonic Titan but when I tried the two together, this just sounded a bit more exciting, (I'll probably buy the Sonic Titan too in a month or so, you know how it is!)

I don't really know how to describe my band and obviously I don't like to say we sound like anyone else, but influence-wise, think of a combination Helmet/Killing Joke/Cable(the Britsh one)/Caspar Brotzmann Massaker and so on. I wish the pedal had a tiny bit more sustain, but I'll just have to find a way of working around that.

I also love the fact that is has a fuck-off great V-8 engine drawn on it.

I will be using it as my main rhythm sound on our forthcoming album. Which says it all really.

3 knobs is about as easy as you get. Gain, Volume and Contour. Gain and Volume are easy to set to taste. The Contour is also a pretty easy dial. Seems a little darker to me to the left and brighter to the right. All in all, easy as it gets. I don't like too many controls on Distortions/OD's. It means its altering the original tone more than I'd like

Sound quality is awesome. I A/B'd this against a new Fulltone OCD and sold the OCD. The OCD is good. Very good, even. But with my amp, (Dr.Z Maz), it sounded more like it was emulating the tone that my amp already achieved naturally. The Supercharged Overdrive however, was like a seperate gain stage in my amp. Sweet and a little spongey like an Orange AD30. I'm using a Les Paul with Duncan 59's in both positions into my Dr. Z. The SCOD is an awesome compliment to my tone and the first distortion pedal (and it IS more distortion than OD) that I've ever REALLY liked. It's because it avoids the trappings of diode clipping, I think. It sounds like what it is..mutiple stages of gain...only added to my amp.
The only thing id say is that I wish it had a TOUCH (and i mean JUST a touch) more bass. Thats the only place the OCD beat out the SCOD, in my opinion

Never had an issue..dont see any reason I would but I know Nicholas would take care of it ASAP

Nicholas is as nice and responsive as you get. He loves to hear what you think about his work and he likes to hear that you're happy. Cant imagine ever having an issue with this guy

Like I said..first Distortion that I ever even liked. That speaks volunes to me. Wouldn't mind an up/down design over side to side..but thats nit-picking and who cares?

Only three knobs very simple to use

THIS PEDAL IS AMAZING!!
It is the best overdrive distortion unit I have tryed, it souds so musical that you would like to play it even at night.
I use it with a PEAVEY CLASSIC 100 an the thing that really surprise me is the color of this distortion, it has a flavour that you can't find in any other overdrive pedal it is so warm!
There aren't a lot of sounds you can dial with but that ones are wonderfull. Compared to my other overdrive the Fulltone OCD that is also a great sounding pedal the Supercharged is more warm and vintage
but at the same time is able to generate incredible agressive tones
good for crossover or stoner rock.

Maybe it is too small

THIS PEDAL IS A MUST HAVE FOR ALL TONE FREAK!

It's an overdrive with 3 knobs. Didn't have much trouble getting a good sound out of the SCO. Depends on what your looking for, push the amp versus the distortion of the box.

Tried 3 different guitars (EBMM Axis, Tokai Love Rocks, Fender Strat) through a SF Fender Champ. When you turn the Volume past 12:00, contour at 11 and the gain about 7 this thing will make a cranked Champ sound HUGE.

Doesn't add unnecessary noise to the signal. Different sounding from a Tube Screamer, definately unique but very usable.

Basic stompbox. If it breaks during a gig your not that out of luck.

The guy that builds these is really responsive to email.

Play basic rock and blues. Love this box and would get another. More complete review at http://www.grailtone.com/guitar-reviews/catalinbread-sco-review.html

Well, it is very simple to get a good sound out of the Super Charged Overdrive right away... after all it's an overdrive with only three knobs. But, if you want to make the most of your setup this pedal allows you to tweak and finetune your sound to no end, using both the SCOD, your guitar and amp. The manual that came with it (wich can also be found at the website) was helpful in explaining the Super Charged Overdrive and how it works.

I've tried it through various setups, tube amps as well as some good solid state amps and it hasn't let me down yet. I must stress that this is not another TS clone, this is a totally unique overdrive design with lots of gain available.

The guy who talks about the color of the box being a reference to Orange amps might be on to something. When I plug my Gibson Les Paul DC with P-90's into the SCOD into a Twin Reverb the sound is very brown and woody. I've always had a bit of a problem with my Twin Reverb being a tad bright for overdrive pedals but with the SCOD it just barks in the nicest way.

When you turn up the gain the SCOD still sounds tight and focused. Nicholas mentioned the application of this overdrive for stoner rock? and I agree. With the gain at 3 o'clock this pedal can nail tones from ?Songs for the deaf? by Queens of the Stone Age for example. Turn down the gain knob and you can easily get some of David Gilmour's overdrive from ?Shine on you crazy diamond?..

But this pedal is more than just another overdrive, used to copy some cats. The tone this little orange box has to offer is indeed very complex. On Catalinbread.com it says ?the SCO's distortion is achieved by multiple cascaded moderate gain stages?. I don?t know what the hell that means, but it's different, and I like it! The tone even has as slight fuzz sound. When you play a note and just let it ring, you can hear this fizzy overtone? This is very much a part of the SCOD and is very pleasing to my ears.

I think it takes a pretty conscious effort and some heavy machinery to destroy something like this. So yeah, I definitely feel I can depend on the SCOD for gigs.

Catalinbread offers fantastic customer support. Nicholas responds to e-mails in a matter of hours and is helpful and friendly. My belief is that ingenuity & ambition can take you as far as you want to go, and Nicholas Harris seems to have plenty of both.

I've had some bad luck with OD/distortion boxes. I've tried the Boss DS-2 (which was completely atonal), the ProCo Rat (which looses too much bottom and has a harsh top), as well as many TS clones which sounded alright.. but a bit stompboxy and dull.

The Super Charged Overdrive is anything but dull, and definetly doesn't sound stompboxy. It sound more like my guitar is melting with my amp, without loosing bass or sounding harsh. This can probably be attributed to the ?Contour? knob which doesn't do the damage a tone knob does. The ?Contour? knob works more like a prescence control on an amp. This means that you can (and should) control the sound of your SCOD by?


a) Changing your amps EQ
b) Rolling off your guitars volume and / or tone knobs
c) Switching pickups!
d) Changing your picking style / strumming on different parts of the guitar



I am very happy with my SCOD. It's different, musical, responsive and the price is right! I play my own music in the pop/rock vein (And when I say pop I mean pop like the Beatles as opposed to the more American talentless-girls-miming-shaking-tits-and-ass-for-money kind of pop). This fits the bill!

I'm using a Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul DC into various amps. Effects include the Z. Vex Fuzz Probe, Boss DD-3, Digitech Whammy, Ernie Ball volume pedal, Catalinbread Super Chile Picoso and now the Super Charged Overdrive..

I know good tone when I hear it, and I haven't stopped playing with my SCOD since it came in the mail. My fingertips are actually hurting right now, wich is something that hasn't happened since I started playing many years ago?

Very inspiring!

Easy, easy, easy. The Volume control is pretty self-explanatory, and the Gain knob is intuitive as well ? turning it up adds more distortion, turning it down reduces the amount of distortion. The only tricky control is the ?Contour? control ? not like your typical treble/mid/bass EQ controls, it?s more of a Presence control. Adds what I?ll call ?fidelity? to your sound. Those are the only controls on the device ? save the switch and LED, which allow you to turn the unit on and off, and tell when it?s on and off. Battery is accessed by removing four Philips screws and removing the back plate. The unit also can be powered by AC. It also has a manual. Perhaps the most confusing thing about it is that... it's not an overdrive, as the name would suggest. It's so much more. See below.

I first got to try one of these as part of a ?tour box? ? a box of demo pedals mailed around to regulars on the Harmony Central Effects forum. I tried this one last, with the assumption that ?I really don?t need yet another overdrive, but might as well give this one a go.? You see, I?ve owned and do own countless boutique and mass-produced dirt boxes, ranging from the typical Boss/Ibanez varieties through the modded (i.e. Keeley) the infamous (NVN) the hyped (Crowther, Klon), etc., etc., etc. So when I plugged this one in, I thought I was going to be slightly impressed ? but no more so than any other pedal. Upon my first ringing A bar chord out of my Telecaster 52RI thru thish thing into my AC30, I instantly thought, ?Whoa, I see we have Live at Leeds in a little orange box.? I immediately proceeded to launch into Sparks. And then pretty much every rock riff I?ve ever known from the Who to the Stones to Deep Purple to LZ to Metallica to Nirvana to Bad Religion to Ramones to Sex Pistols to QOTSA to Fu Manchu to The Darkness to back to the Who. (I always end up going back to the Who...). You see, this thing is no overdrive. It?s not a pedal that ?adds fatness and retains the tone of your control signal, producing warm even-order harmonics for soloing Chicago blues.? It?s a fooking distortion pedal that will blow your head off. If a Tubescreamer is a table knife, this thing is a chain saw. If a SD-1 is a .44, this thing is a Howitzer. It is truly a rock pedal on every setting. Case in point ? I have the gain knob almost all the way down, and this thing still is putting my trust Rat to shame with its fatness. Now, make no mistake ? it?s not such an uncontrollable gain machine that it?s futile to even try to play it for any sort of practical reason? no, not at all. It?s quite usable, as long as you?re playing some sort of rock music. Anyway, I?m going to go out on a limb here? Since people only respond to descriptions like ?Tweed tone factory? or ?Plexi-in-a-box.? This one is neither, but? if someone wanted Pete Townsend without investing in a Hiwatt and a SG with P90s, get this sucker and windmill away. Also, I think it?s no coincidence that the SCOD is colored Orange, if you get my drift.

This thing is as well made as any pedal. I have no qualms about using it without a backup.

Nick is one of the best if not the best. Sets the bar high -- almost out of this world high in terms of responsiveness and friendliness.

Really, this one's a keeper. It inspires you to play your guitar. I don't really "collect" pedals in the traditional sense. If I'm not using it, I get rid of it. After overthinking and over-obsessing about distortion pedals and other effects gear, I?ve concluded different people want different things out of their boxes. Some people want pedals that don't modify their existing tone in any way - just boost it or make the same tone "better." These people probably have low powered vintage or boutique amps and nice guitars - and are happy with the tonal recipe they have... they just want more of it. Others want pedals that emulate a famous tone. (For example, ?What pedal gets me close to Brian May?s ?Bohemium Rhapsody? tone??) These folks usually have clean amps, so their tone is a "blank canvass" and pedals are used as "paint." Still other people are kind of in between... they like their basic tone, but use pedals to build on it and expand in certain directions. What I find is that certain pedals are being touted as solutions for all of these three types of crowds. And then people get disappointed. A pedal made to just simply smash a preamp section of a non MV amp probably isn't going to be right for a low volume clean amp. Some people might praise a certain pedal as the ideal basement tweakers' pedal, but others who try to use it in gig situations are disappointed. Anyway, bottom line is this one is definitely a unique sounding distortion pedal that rivals the best of the best, and especially a good option for someone wanting that British rock sound that isn?t a Vox or a Marshall.

This is ONE KILLER pedal...its easy to get good sounds at almost every setting.....the only thing it doesnt have is CLEAN BOOST...thats why Nic makes the Chile Picoso, which has been on my board for over 2 years...the SCOD is staying there too.

Ok, here you go...MY GOD what a pedal...i even emailed nic to see if this thing had some germanium in it, its THAT intense....if you're looking for something to subtly give you a mild boost, this ISNT it ! But if you want something to KICK ASS...and i mean KICK IT, this is it....I'm old enough to remember riding in a 1967 Chevelle SS396...and the feeling of VERTIGO amd GFORCE when you kicked in the 4 -Barrel Carb....thats what this pedal does...but its EASY to control..like the old saying...power is nothing without control...Using my 73 LP Deluxe, running first through my JAC compressor, then wah then SCOD....i can coax ALL the controlled feedback i want out of my peavey 2-10" Delta Blues....

Nic builds his pedals solid as a brick, i can witness that...i've had my Chile Picoso for years now, no problem...

Here's where Nic shines...I dont think of him just as a guy that makes pedals, he's become a friend and is a great guy, as well as a top-notch inventor and manufacturer....if you have any problems, he'll take care of it quick !!

I play 60s and 70s rock...i prefer extended jams with 2 or 3 other guitarists, hitting some dual harmonies like wishbone ash or the Brothers on the way....but to pay the bills, my main gig ( which I love also)is an electric acoustic duet....we must do pretty good, we've been playing together for 10 years now and have done good for ourselves....people like Nic make it even better

thre knobs, VOLUME, CONTOUR, GAIN. the CONTOUR knob is a presence knob, a subtle effect but then again it says that on the manual. pretty easy.

a Parker NiteFly-M goes into this and into a Reverend Hellhound 1X12 combo amp.

first off the amp is running sparkly clean, the SCOD sounds so
thick and well balanced with only the VOLUME knob turned and CONTOUR and GAIN all the way down, very gritty natural sounding OD. this thing has so much headroom, is the SCP in this? so i start turning the GAIN knob and as early as 9 o'clock the SCOD is already unleashing some mean full stack OD, nice and full not muddy or overly compressed. the GAIN starts reaching Noon and the OD starts dancing into distortion turf, sounds slightly compressed but with all the sustain you'll ever need.then i take it past NOON and it's Headbanger's Ball baby! the SCOD just sounds massive and still well balanced, not too much lows, mids or highs or lack of, everything is still there. if i say the SCOD is also great for blues i would be a liar, there is so much gain and headroom in this for it to be a blues tool.

the CONTOUR knob i'm still trying to get a grasp of, but i do understand what Nic means by this being more of a presence knob. he is right on the manual when describing it being a subtle effect but differences in sound are still noticeable from its Min and Max settings. softer highs at minimum and a bit more sparkle at max settings.

the icing on the cake is when i rolled off the guitar's volume and it cleaned up nicely, even with the GAIN knob dimed! this is a huge plus because i leave my Peachfuzz or Keeley BD2 ON all the time and just get my cleans by rolling off on the guitar's volume. very nice.

all in all, i was looking for an OD/distortion that would fall between my KBD2 and Peachfuzz and i found it. the SuperCharger definitely picks up where my BD2 leaves off and it's right up there with the Peachfuzz as far as high gain goes, but without the fizz.

this is a 9 simply because it's my honeymoon review but does deserve a 10 for it's sounds.

i had had a SuperChilePicoso for half a year and so far have not had problems. the quality is great and i trust i will not have a major glitch with it.

Nicholas at Catalinbread, like most boutique pedal builders, take care of their customers. Although i have not had to send him my SuperChilePicoso yet, i'm sure he will give it some TLC if it needs it.

i play anything from blues rock to alternative/space rock so the SCOD definitely fits the bill, not really for blues but the rest for sure. the SuperCharged OD is surely a keeper and going on the pedalboard. if it got stolen i will find the person who took it.