DOD FET Preamp

Only one knob, no switch. Easie of use is in the no-brainer category.

Wow! I am writing this review of the benefit of guitar players who may have caught wind of this very obscure sleeper of a pedal and are seeking a superior alternative to your typical op amp based overdrive pedal to overdrive your tube amp. I recently spied this guy at a local used music shop and snapped it up. I was previously very happy with my good old modded DOD 250 (the yngwie pedal) for my strat tones, but was having no luck getting my evh style humbucker guitar to sound good so I gambled this might do the trick. I could not believe the blistering, smoldering, but ultra sweet high gain bliss that resulted from slaming my Marshall 1987 50w with this pedal. Then I thought, hey let's try my HS-3 loaded strat and holy-hell, I got the ultimate old school Yngwie approved violin sustain and sweeeeeeet crunch in spades. My amp is basically stock early 70's spec Marshall with just a good post phase inverter master volume and some very minor cathode resitor changes that slightly soften up the amp to respond better to pedals. The other reviews report tons of clean gain but I'm puzzled. Yes, this pedal has what seems to be a ludicrous amount of gain on tap but it also seems to generating a fair amount of low order harmonics, maybe a bit of compression and did I say sweet? It absolutely purrs and growls and yet preserves the tone of my strat with unreal accuracy but without any trace of sterile hi-fi like tonality. The circuit couldn't be simpler and I know FETs are capable of very tube-like sound with even order clipping etc. This circuit seems to be running this FET wide open because again it has ludicrous gain on tap. Even the pitful 92mv output of my super clean and clear Dimarzio HS-3s produce molten distortion into my Marshall with the gain only at 12:00. Noise? Well I use a Hush in my effects loop and it holds this back without maxing the threshold knob so I guess it's not too noisy but it IS a preamp so don't expect to use it the way I do and not hear some additional noise. Anyway, I could gush for ever but any old school tube purist that wants to learn more feel free to e-mail me. I bought this for only $39!!!!!!!! I immediately retired my long time favorite DOD 250 after I got this. In fact, I'm kind of thinking this is the brutal bastard brother of the the famous DOD 250 because it comes in the same gray box as the vintage 250's. I simply installed a DC power jack and don't EVER INTEND TO SHUT IT OFF! It does everything my DOD 250 did but so much better, vastly more clear to my guitar tone, oooodles more drive and the punchy-speed and tracking to my playing is out of this world. And no clipping diodes either! Why the hell aren't FET's the defacto standard in the stomp box world? Can anyone tell me? (I do know they are more erratic and ideally need to be individually tested to bias properly...) Op-amp based boxes always have a "chinkety chink" sort of sound and feel in the highs, and sound very lacking in punch. This pedal in comparison seems to have super human current drive that op-amp pedal just can't touch. This pedal will bomb-proof your guitar tone all the way through the messiest pedal board there is and still have more than enough power left over to go off like a bomb when it hits a good old vintage Marshall amp. Pristine is the not the right word but it absolutely gets a ten from me.

Ok, well the volume pot on mind is a bit scratchy but I'm guessing it's at least 25 years old and from the looks of it, it's been abused for this whole tone too...so hey about yes, very reliable.

I can't rate this category. Like MXR, this pedal dates back to an interation of the company that no longer exists.

I play yngwie-inspired strat marshall stuff, old school van halen-ish riffs, etc. I'm a two tone player and love a tone I can just dial in and play. With my strat and this secret weapon, my tone sounds like my strat plugged straight in but with gobs of crunch and violin sustain on tap. But at the same time, it's so dynamic that I can go from an Yngwie riff to a Steely Dan riff to Hendrix without changing anything but my attitude. For old Van Halen, boo ya! I can finally drive the hell out of my Marshall without getting bloated crappy bass or weird squacky high end garbage. BUY OF OF THESE NOW AND YOU WILL THANK ME! And note to stomp box tweakers: Copy this circuit and take the ball and run with it. We do not need one more op amp based fuzz crap pedal. What we need is a new generation of pedals that truly preserve your guitar tone and make your amp do the work. I never would have thought my Marshall could generate so much distortion but without sounding like a train wreck. I'm curious if this pedal falls into the "happy accident' category like our good old vintage marshalls with their mis-matched transformers etc, or it was carefully thought out and exactly as it was intended. What ever the case, this pedal is a werewolf of a pedal!

One knob for volume. No footswitch. This may be the easiest pedal in the world to use.

No one cares what gear I use.

This thing is a pre amp. I use it to plug into the recorder without using an amp when recording. You could also use it for gigs to plug into the PA. It avoids that flat dead sound of an instrument straight into the PA. I lend my bass player this at gigs to save him lugging an amp around. Careful with the volume knob because it could easily damage the PA if you max it out. It's got buckets of gain on tap.

I also use it as a booster pedal. Using this pedal first in your pedal chain means that your overdrive and fuzz pedals scream and my MXR Blue Box sings. This is very useful for my experimental noise music. The only trouble is that you can't turn it off... With conventional music you might end up with too much gain and fuzz if it were on all the time. I guess you could use a line selector or AB box to turn it on and off but it's really too much work and no one's really going to bother.

There's not really any noise other than you'd expect from a booster. If you have a noisy set up then it will boost the noise thats already there. It might hiss a bit, but it's very quiet for something so loud.

It's solid metal. It's an MXR style case, rather than the usual DOD case with plastic footswitch. You're not even going to step on it either. Inside there's three resistors, a capacitor and a transistor. That's it. I have a toy ray gun that has more components than this. Very reliable.

DOD suck for support. They've never ONCE replied to me ever.

This pedal does what it's supposed to, it boosts the sound or acts as a pre amp. It has lots and lots of sweet sweet gain. Mmmmmm. You can't turn it off because there's no footswitch so you can't really use it as a booster unless you leave it on all the time. It does make me sound better and gives me a hotter signal. To drive your overdrive pedals (or a tube amp) with this really sounds cooking.

I think it would be a useful tool for recording, and you can pick them up for next to nothing. It's much cheaper than a POD or amp simulator. Not as versitile as a POD obviously, but it gets rid of that dead sound of instrument into PA. Useful solution for anyone on a budget.

This pedal doesn't do much but it does it's job. The more enterprising musician could even add an on/off footwitch and have a budget MXR Micro amp or Zvex super hard on.

One knob for level, simple folks!

Basically this pedal boosts your volume level. Thats all it does. It does this very well. This pedal is capable of producing a LOT of gain. You will probably never need to max it out, unless you are trying to blow your amp. But it doesn't alter the tone of your amp at all, just makes it louder.

It seems pretty reliable. I bought it used but im guessing the pedal is from the 70's, and its still kicking (its older than me!!). Its entirely made of metal, looks a lot like the mxr style pedals. It doesnt run on ac power though, so make sure you have a fresh battery in there, cause you have to unscrew the bottom to change the battery. So I'll subtract one point for no ac power in.

I feel as a booster pedal, this one does a great job, and will obviously take a lot of abuse. The two things which hurt it in a guitar setup are: 1) there's no footswitch, which means you have to leave it on all the time, or connect it to some sort of a-b switcher, and 2) theres no led, (but this makes sense since theres no footswitch because if its in your signal chain it on). I primarily use it as a mich preamp for recording into my computer, and for this it does a wonderful job, it can bring up the level immensly without adding noise or distortion, and can be used on any instrument. I feel i got a great deal, esp. considering what i paid for it (also the fact that it is vintage, and i haven't seen any other reviews for it which leads me to believe that its a rare pedal), but if your using it in a guitar setup you might want to go for an mxr micro amp, (which seems like the exact same pedal, but has the led and footswitch).