DOD FX101 Grind Distortion

Very easy to use. 4 knobs (Blast, Rumble, Burn & Fear) that equal master volume, low & hi EQ, and gain. Mine came w/ the box, manual & warranty card, all for only $25. How cool is that. Meant to be use bewteen gtr & amp. 2 outputs: line out and speaker simulated out. Stick w/ the regualr line out. The speaker sim just shaves a tiny bit of high end off, IMO.

Here's where it shines: I bought this AND the DOD FX100 Integrated Tube Harmonic OD pedal at the same time, to see which pedal would work best between my Edwards ESP Les Paul 1959 reissue and my brand new Hawkins 18 watt pair-of-EL84's w/ 2 12AX7s premap guitar head & cab. A & B'ing these two pedals and this one won hands down. I sold the IT that same day! That's it! So if yer considering the two, for me; it was a no brainer. The IT sounded shirll at times, and uninspiring. But the FX100 sounds like a real extra tube has been dropped in my amp! And this is a quality tube amp to begin with, but Hawkins are built to do the Huge/Overblown sound. but w/ this pedal, getting that sound and all points inbetween are no problems at all! No exra noise at all. Best of all, it can be used effectively w/o overtly colouring the sound of my guitar, because my gtr is the shizzle, too! The speaker output (there are two outs: spkr and regular), however, is a lil useless, as I would never recommend going from ANY pedal straight into a board, unless yer going for that one Led Zepp "Rock and Roll"/Jimmy Page straight into the board-sound.

DOD that's built like a tank. Newer 1990's metal housing w/ heavier duty switch, not like the older DODs that had the two little hex bolts on the plastic pedal part. Someone once said DOD fixes every pedal sent to them for a nominal price. Can't verify that; but if they did, that'd be great!

Never spoke to 'em, but hey! That's a GOOD sign! Cause I never NEEDED to!

Compared to the IT FX100 Integrated Tube pedal, this baby is the ONE to beat! This does an outstanding job of simulating an extra tube in yer sound chain. To me there are only 2 DOD pedals: this one and the Corrosion (FX70C: no longer made). the FX70C fer overblown OD & this one fer that classic plexi rhthym "chunka-chunka" sound. Oh, I do love this pedal! If you find 'em at the price I paid ($25) buy them ALL.

the controls are your basic drive, level, hi and low, but with silly names like ass and face or something...

at any rate, anyone with an ear and some hands can dial it in.

there is also a speaker output (?) but i haven't paid it any attention.

let me prefeace this with this statement. i F*ing HATE dod. i used the word HATE and preceded it with F*ing.

then i pick this up at pawn shop for $20 because i felt kinds sorry for the old fella behind the counter.

i took it home with plans to list it on the ebeast as soon as possible to (hopefully) get my money back.

just for kicks, i plugged it in first to make sure it worked. i was using a fender katana, modified with obl (bill lawrence) pickups, through an all tube red knobbed fender dual showman.

KRUSH! where did this come from? it sounds great. i swear it. now, it will not due if you are pretending to be eric clapton (you know who you are). but i have to say that i dialed in the most monstrous actual rectifier type blast ever. i am talking explosive bar chords and searing single notes. this is the sh*t that killed elvis. not your smooth overdrive or your easily marketed blink 198,789 (or whatever they are on now), but ball squeezing screaming tones that are almost out of control.

keep in mind that this is from a guy who has been playing for almost 20 years, professionally for 10 or so. i am not easily impressed. but this thing was designed to turn your fender into a giant stack of dual rectifier mease goodness, and i have to say that it does.

now, it is a dod. their switches are shite. open the box and you will no doubt find mickey mouse ears in there somewhere. so far i have only used this pedal at home, but i will be using it on stage at the voodoo music festival in new orleans in october (voodoomusicfest.com). no, i will not tell you what band i am in, but i will say that i am playing on the first day.

i will have several backups, as i would never trust dod. but since this one has not yet done anything weird, i am not going to judge it by past experience. therefore, i am leaving this blank.

support? that is what my boxer briefs are for.

we play music with as many elements of traditional middle eastern music as elements of sonic (;) destruction. clean angelic refrains to music that makes your dog hide under the bed. this really helps for the latter. i can pretty much use whatever gear i want, and i am currently choosing this for my ear smashing tones. like i said, it doesn't do the barely broken up brown overdrive thing. but that is not what it is for now, is it?

Ya, it easy to use like most pedals... You know plug it in and turn some knobs.lol

Its better than my rolland cube 60, only because its built in factory distortion is some how shot?Its sounds pretty good but i do have to agree with some other reviewers that it is kind of hard to find the right sound.

Its reliable most of the time but ive had a problem when I would hit the switch and it wouldent work untill i kicked it a couple times but that only happend once.

I got the Grind pedal at a music store in welland ontario called Central Music and there was a big box of second hand pedals and so i grabbed the one in best condition and traded it for a crappy guitar. I mostly play punk and metal, but there is the odd time i'll play a diffrent genra. Im goin on my 3rd year playen and i own A Strat-copy- and a rolland cube 60 and a truetone 12 watt.soon im buying a epiphone G-400 or a Gibson Les paul. also i will be buying a Marshall stack.

4 knobs, blast, rumble, burn, fear. damn, near impossible to find the perfect balance between the highs and low, always to much of one.

reminds me of the bad sounding grunge pedal crossed with a big muff. has lots of sustain, thick creamy sustain, but it sounds like shit. i've used it with guitar (mostily strat copies w/ bridge humbuckers) and basses (mostily passive p-bass copies) and the best sound i got was from a mexi-strat + grind pedal + fender 25 watt bass combo.
two weird points: 1. the output has always been really low, even with the blast maxed. 2. when running a bass through it, it kind of almost turns clean and really weak when you hit certain notes, other notes are super distorted?

just because it worked the last time i messed with does'nt meen anything, it's a DOD. to quote me frend, "it's like fisher-price for guitarists."

nope

i have no clue why i still have this, beyond it's pure joke value. better yet, all new guitarist should be issued these as a reference on how not to sound. if someone stole it, it'd be more their lost than mine.

Its a pretty standard use pedal, the stupid control names are a bit confusing to the beginner but easy enough to figure out.

my current setup is pretty basic, I run a epiphone SG400 lefthand version into a old solidstate laney linebacker 65W I rely on distorion pedals as the laney distortion is crap. This was my first distortion pedal, brought on a tight budget, at the time my beginner ears thought it sounded pretty good but now I know better. This pedal gives a mushey sort of overdrive sound, I find it has very little definition, even with endless tweaking of the knobs it still either sounds too muffled or too buzzy and harsh.
I play mainly punk and hardcore and find this pedal is useless for any fast sort of riffs as the notes all just get blended together.
My favourite use for this pedal is to just max the gains on everything and go for some wacked out sounds, kind of a limited use.

havent had any problems with it, though the footswitch doesnt seem quite as sound as the boss ones

overall I wouldnt recommend this pedal unless you are a beginner and can pick one up real cheap, it might sound better than a crappy amp distortion, but only just. I have hardly touched this thing since I got a boss HM-2 not that the HM-2 is all that brilliant either, its just clearer and heavier

What a great pedal!4 knobs and an excellant eq!

The sound is refreshing with no mud,high piercing,fuzz or buzz.Able to get a good solid crunch and move it to an excellant long sustaining distortion with abit of a bite.It sounds like a genuine amp breaking up but you can do it at low volumes.The bass is round and firm (like my big German woman Hilda)and the treble is not piercing.They blend well together to make a well balanced sound.Probably one of Dod's best pedals!It's really fun!

Yes!

Dod is very reputable and backs their products!

Highly recommended because of it's transparancy and balance and ability to go from a light overdrive to a good distortion.This is a sleeper and to bad it isn't that well known or Dod would keep making it.It beats Digitechs Hot Rod Distortion because it really does emulate a tube amp.

It's as easy to use as any other stompbox, no bells and whistles just bare essentials. As usual, DOD have decided to be rather twee and give all the control knobs silly names (BLAST, RUMBLE, BURN and FEAR I believe).

The manual brings a little smile though - "If you are in a Miami Sound Machine covers band, this is probably not your setting.". If you ARE in an MSM covers band, this is the wrong pedal full stop. Alternatively, this is the wrong pedal end of story, depending on your taste in tone.

A little note here - I will point out that when I bought this pedal I'd only been playing 2 1/2 years and didn't really know the difference between good and bad tone. Now I've been playing almost 6 years and I know what I like, tonewise.

This pedal is alright for a cheap one. I liked it a lot as at the time I was using it to cover up the mistakes in my playing... not that it worked anyway, I just sounded crap.

Maybe it was the fact I was using cheap as chips equipment, maybe it's because it's a distortion box and I don't like distortion (too much compression not enough note definition). I now have better equipment and a better ear for tone and that means I hate the sound of this pedal.

It's crappy, edgey distortion. With character yes, if you like harsh buzzsaw guitar sounds. Some do. I prefer bluesy AC/DC style heavy overdrive sounds. In some ways I love the fact it sounds nasty, but it's totally useless to me now.

It's hardly Boss and it's got a lot of plastic on it. My one started to get messed up as soon as I bought it. After 6 months the on/off switch started to get erratic and wasn't as smooth as before. After a year the battery connections came away from the PCB. Not good.

Would I use it on a gig without a backup? I wouldn't use it a gig! In fact I wouldn't use it at all now, even if it was reliable. Even Line6 Flextone amps sound better than this, and they're crap!

I play mostly classic rock/punk these days. When I bought the FX-101 I was heavily into Nirvana, Soundgarden and other grunge bands and I thought this pedal made me sound like them. Listening back to recordings I made in those days, it doesn't.

I think if you like a particular type of tone this would suit you. When I say I hate it and I think it's crap it's purely because my taste in sound has changed. I traded this for a Boss OD-2 TURBO OverDrive and I liked that pedal a lot more. I also own a Boss GT-6 and I love the drive tones on that, even if they are digital.

What do I love about it? The fact you have a choice of whether to use it or not. Also, the speckled grey finish on the metal work looks good. What do I hate - the tone, the crap construction.

If it had been stolen now, if I still owned it, I wouldn't be too bothered about losing the actual pedal. It helped me make a lot of noise back in '99. It's rubbish now.

Easy to use and find various overdrive and distortion sounds

This is on of the best sounding devices in it's class.As a young player of the 60's we would tend to overload our speakers to get that rumbling stones sound.This unit emulates that very well.That same sound can be achieved playing through a Vibrolus with the volume to abot 4 or 5.After having played through various distortions like Visual Sound,Tech 21 and Carl Martin,all of which have their merits,this one deserves consideration as being well engineered and thought out.The eq is well balanced in that there is good definition between the bass and treble with no mud.I can turn the bass knob up and not overwhelm the treble to where it is drowned out and the treble and doesn't pierce your ears to where you think your gonna die.The distortion is unique and there is no hint of any midrange honk or buzz saw roar.From a soft crunch to a good drive that has ample sustain and doesn't over run itself,this pedal gets an A+.I'm surpised this pedal hasn't gotten more reviews or sold better as it really is a Diamond in the rough.I think DOD is really underated in much of it's pedal designs as this one matches many boutique models in features and beats the price .It uses the BA4558 op amp that may be somewhat unknown but really delivers in sound.

Somewhat questionable as the drive knob on the unit cuts in and out occasionally.

Never dealt with them but expect a reputable company like DOD to respond.I think DOD is owned by Digitech and is no longer using the DOD name and may be due to some stigma that has been attached.I own the new x-series Multi chorus by Digitech and highly recommend it

For rock and blues this is a very versatile pedal and can achieve the TS808 sound to some very hot distortions and I highly recommend it.I use it through a Peavey Ranger and Peavey Prowler and it responds very well to those amps probably due to the good eq's on them and 12" speakers for a real rock roar.

The only thing that makes it hard is the goofy names for the knobs...(fear indeed) the speaker jack is a nice addition, it seems to knock some of the harshness out to the signal. Haven't use this out for recording direct and never will.

The EQ can get outragious. The highs can be ice picks, but you can rollit off. The bass can be just as extream but again. controll it. I have giged with it and got away with a twin reverb when I used a Carvin X100-B in the studio full tilt.

fresh battery is a must, but no problems at all.

It is a distortion pedal! it will never replace a tube amp turned up. But it will get a good sounding distortion at a reasonable DB level. I've played rock music for about 30 years now and wish I had this nice a pedal in the seventies. I'm not sure the hype for "classic" pedals is justified but I like this one better. I wouldn't pay the going price for a tubescreemer although I consider it the standard, It's just too much. I sold a Big Muff before buying this one and feel good about it.

pretty easy to figure out what the controls u just got to experimint

i was looking for a grind dist and all i got was bad tone
i own alot of different amps from marshall to vox to hiwatt to fender
line6 spider tried it on all of them even with hooking it up in stereo
and could not get a deccent tone

i will say this out of all the dod pedals that i own this one was built the best they finnaly got smart and made it so the battery cover would be contcted to the pedal

i have called them before and talked to a live peson and were helpfull

ive been playing for 21 yrs and have quite a collection of pedals
and got to say this one i did not have a use at all for