DOD FX102 Mystic Blues Overdrive

2 band EQ - Drive

Simple to use.

I really liked this at first - But i wanted it to "warm up" my solid state practice amp. It did an OK job but i really tried to hate it after that. When i plugged it into my marshall artist amp it really did shine. This is switched on in most songs and the gain is set low adds a little bit of body to my sound.

minus point for bypass.

The jacks have become a little loose over the years - but that can be tightened. I dont know if its 100% reliable but ive never had problems. I dont see many people playing these so if you can grab a backup.

Never had to deal with

Its got less body than most overdrives ive heard, and thats why its good. i wouldnt use it for lead tones too much. ive got a fuzz which i set on low gain for that anyway.

Its probably my fav pedal but i cant give it full marks because of the jacks that loosen, the plastic stomp and the smaller knobs(Ive never liked that about boss pedals either).

Turn it on and you get instant tone and boost.
It has four knobs, level and drive knobs on the ends,
treble and bass in the middle. A common configuration, easily mastered.

When I first plugged the Mystic in I was in the store.
Ibanez S370, Mystic, into Fender Vibrolux Reverb.
I got compliments from people in the store. The tone turned heads. Very nice. I must admit though the Vibrolux is one of my favorite demo amps of choice, if they have one in the store. It always delivers sweet stuff.

I would think it would be dependable enough.
It's an electronics device. I always look at pedals that way. If you pour beer on it and stomp on it like an ape you could probably expect problems, otherwise I think it should hold up quite well. In all fairness the plastic warrants a 9, all the DOD's have that plastic pedal switch. It seems sturdy though.

Didn't need it yet.

This pedal is good for Blues and nice toneful guitar playing. I don't find that it is trebley at all like someone stated in another review. That sounds like it's the other gear he's useing or the amp, guitar settings. I don't know I just don't get any bad treble vibes from it.
It's more like a nice warm boost that is very useful.
I played mine through solid state(Princeton 65) and tube
(Vibrolux Reverb, Marshall 401) amps and it delivers the same desired boost. I think players have created a stigma that DOD pedals cost less therefore they are inferior to other brands. If the pedal sounds great and it's cheap consider it a bargain. I remember in the 70's when you had to have MXR pedals or you didn't have the gear. I bought the Ibanez versions at the time because they were cheaper and I was 18 and I didn't have the money to buy the MXR's,
they cost more. Now those old MXR pedals are going for half as much as the old Ibanez pedals now. So it turns out I had the gear at the time and I wasn't even aware. It's crazy players are paying $400.00 for pedals I paid $30.00 for back then, and the MXR guy was looking down his nose at me.
Getting back to the Mystic I think you can't go wrong buying this pedal. I'm going to give it a 9. It could be a 10 if the Low and High knobs had more umph. The Flashback Fuzz I have seems to possess the same shortcoming, but all said the Mystic Blues Overdrive is a fine pedal.

Yes, I know, "it only has 4 knobs"; but read the instructions or download them at DOD's site or just remember "this pedal is meant to be used with an already overdriven amp". It sounds like crap used with a clean amp ! All ratings are for my suggested set-up !

"Usable" sound, not exactly outstanding. I like my tubescreamer better, the salesperson at the store recommended the Boss Blues Driver. I called DOD and the rep. there said it gets that "Stevie Ray sound" (this was before I went to the store). I pretty much had my mind made up I wanted it. You must turn up the overdrive on your "tube emulation" trans. amp (in my case a Crate 30w. with 'verb)to get a "warm" (but not distorted) sound (about 10-11 o'clock). Then doodle with the Mystic Blues' knobs. Use Strat NECK pickup only ! This pedal is way BRIGHT. I can't get a decent sound with the bridge or middle p.u.'s. The sound I have managed to get is somewhat "SRV-like" but nowhere near as complex! Also I play nowhere near the "SRV-level", but manage to cop a few of the legend's licks.
Simply, the Mystic Blues pedal overlays the thick-punchy-bass tone of the single-coil p.u. with a bright overtone. Increasing the drive on the pedal gives raunchy distortion sounds.

As others have noted, well constructed; knobs have "feel of quality",etc.

The DOD/DigiTech/Johnson people always take my calls or answer e-mails. I've never had to have any product repaired.

For my purpose, I can only get a usefull tone as suggested above. Wish I had bought the Boss Blues Driver, considering all the good reviews and such. This pedal has more electronic components in it than the Iba. Tubescreamer, but I like the t.s.'er best. The Mystic Blues yields the best tones using the (single-coil) neck pick-up; but it's so bright I'd say a neck humbucker might sound good too. The Mystic Blues does not sound good run into a digital multi-fx. It sounds thin, bright, and just plain crappy when used with a clean amp.

How hard can it be? Seriously? you step on the li'l thing and you go. It has four knobs (obviously...the picture shows it) which are main level, low, high, and the drive. Nothing complicated.

This box has an odd (odd is a good word in this case) mellow sting to it. I can't really describe it, but it feels smooth and yummy while grinding into my ears. It's very versatile; I've used it thru my fender jazz bass, my fernandes vertigo, and many other axes, and it can kill thr any of them. Surf to punk to whatever, this is a good box. It sounds absolutely fab along with my Danelectro FabTone, but sounds lovely alone, as well. I have no complaints in this department!

This thing is an anvil. like most of the other folks who've reviewed it have said, you could drop it, kick it, throw it, or run over it with a car...it wouldn't break. Definately something I'd take on stage with me and not have to worry about harming.

I haven't needed to contact the people at DOD for any reason, so I wouldn't know how easy they are to deal with.

The Mystic Blues is bliss.

4 knobs, one switch. It would take an idiot to not know how to use it. I was able to get good sounds out of it in 5 minutes at the store.

Peavey raptor plus (strat-copy) into my peavey solid state practice amp. No noticable noise unless i use it before another distortion. It works good for Clapton, SRV, some hendrix, all the good guitarists. if you set the gain at about 9 o'clock, it will really brighten up your clean sound. setting the gain about 1/3 the way up, it really adds character to my cheap, digital sounding heavier distortion. It's probably one of DOD's best pedals.

I'm not very hard on my pedals, so it should hold up for a long time.

never dealt with the company

it works great. It doesn't sound as good as a vintage fender amp, but it didn't cost 3000$ either.

its pretty simple to use, control for bass treble level and drive.
maual is pretty crappy, its like two pages. but when I turn my amp off the pedal goes on?

sounds pretty good. good for its price, but dont expect it to sound like a tube amp or somthing, it just adds a smooth bite to your distorted amp. I play a frontman 15 and a squire strat(need new equipment!)

Its a tank, could throw it out a window(dont try it) you can depend on this for a gig without backup.

hasn't broke never needed to deal with dod

I play classic rock(hendrix, zepplin, direstraits) some alternative (blink 182, goo goo dolls) and very rarley a little metal thrown in. I have been playing a couple of years. If it were stolen id buy a boss overdrive instead (a little better in my opinion) I have owned this pedal for about 5 months and havent had problem overall it a good sounding pedal with a good price.

Any moron could use this pedal, although I found the manual to be pretty weak on giving you settings and crap like that.

I play it threw a fender frontman 25 and a squire strat and it gets better distortion than I get out of my amp and has plenty of sustain. The ditortion can be a little weak though.

woulden't brake if you ran over it.

First DOD purchse

good tone for price but if it got stolen I would buy a danelectro daddy o. My friend has one, he payed $10 more but it has a better tone.

The ease of use is fairly easy. The chimps at the zoo could probably handle it. After all, it only has four nobs!!!

I run a jackson performer PS-4 to a peavy classic thirty tube amp with the pedal in line behind a danelectro fab tone. I think the sound quality is great. It seems to fill the gap between the amps mild distortion and the absolute death-metal tone of the fab tone. I like it a lot.

It's not tried and true like my fab tone but is looks like a sturdy pedal. But on the other hand, when you compare it to a danelectro it just doesn't seem so mighty.

Overall it suits my needs and gives me a good medium level of overdrive (not too much and not too little). I think its great.

It's pretty easy to use. Level, Low, High, Drive. Took me about a minute to figure out what each one does.

Alot of people are using this pedal, wanting it to be a distortion pedal. Let me take a moment to say, this is *NOT* a distortion pedal. I got this pedal because I was finding my leads to be a lacking something.. and I wasnt sure what. I played on this pedal, and found what I was looking for. Turn on whatever distortion you use, then hit this pedal, your leads will go wild. It gives them this insane sustain that just seems to last forever, and it changes the tone a good bit, depending on how you have the settings. All in all it just sounds awesome, but make sure to turn it off as soon as youre done playng your lead, its a bit noisy when the distortion is on. Oh, and I play on a Fender RocPro 1000, using a stratocaster and a telecaster.

I havn't had any problems with it yet, it looks to be better made than most DOD pedals ive seen. Seems thicker and just generally well made. I would use it without a backup.

I havn't ever had any dealings with DOD.

I play everything from classic rock to Smashing Pumpkins style grunge. Ive been playing for almost 5 years now, and I've seen crap, and I've seen beautiful things, so i can safely say this is a very nice pedal. It gives my sound an extra punch when i need it. It sounds very "Smashing Pumpkins - Gish" on the settings i usually use, but im finding i can get everything from Metallica to Jonny Lang. One thing i wish it had is a distortion boost of some sort, something i could hit and just have the sound explode, like on an old Fender Blender. Other than that though, I'm totally satisfied with this pedal and I would buy another one if i lost it.

Pretty easy to get a good sound out of it. Normal knobs like level, drive, high, and low. Each one does what it says it will do.

I liked it alot when I tried it in the store. I used a real nice Marshall JCM2000 and a Les Paul. It had a great creamy overdrive that just ripped your face off. I could get that tone from Foreigner's first album that I've been looking for so I had to have it.

Unfortunately, after I got it home and played with it through my Fender Princeton Chorus I thought it sounded kind of weak. It didn't have that ballsy punch that it had with the other guitar. Oh, my main guitars are a Squier Strat and a really cool Kramer Striker with humbuckers. It added some rip to the amp distortion, but nothing I couldn't live without. Consequently, I returned it later the same day. No use spending good money on something that doesn't really alter your tone much.

Overall, it's a cool pedal. I think you can get them for about $50 or so, from what I've been told. Next time I'd like something with a little more distortion. It sounded great through a Marshall, but Marshall's already have killer distortion.

This is a pretty typical distortion/overdrive pedal. It has a Level, Low, High, and Drive knobs. Unlike DOD pedals of yore, there aren't any cute names for the knobs. The manual is pretty useless and seems to be geared toward a teenager who wants to make obnoxious sounds, almost like it was written for the grunge or death metal pedals. This could be on purpose since you can't get a decent, moderate, overdriven sound of this pedal.

To put it simply, this pedal sucks. It's supposed to be a relative to the TS-9, but it doesn't cut it. I've tried for almost a year to figure out how to get decent tones out of it. I've tried it with my Peavey Bandit, Silverface Princeton Reverb, and Blackface Champ. I tried it with a power adapter and different types of batteries. I tried it with single coil, P90, and humbucker equipped guitars. I could never find a position where the sound was anything like I'd want. Perhaps the think I most disliked about the pedal was that it seemed to make the tone too trebly. I'd often crank the low up and the high down, but this seemed to also wipe out upper mids, resulting in a muddy tone. If the high was up slightly past 1/2 way, it always became too shrill. Kicking the drive up resulted in more of a distortion than overdrive sound and, when cut back, it never gets clean enough to use as a subtle, on the edge, boost.

It's built like most other DOD pedals, no better, no worse.

DOD needs to do something about their website. They've been promising to put additional content, most notably manuals, online from at least two years. Somebody should have gotten around to it by now. After all, how long does it take to scan in a document?

I play blues, classic rock, and rockabilly. I wanted an overdrive pedal and I got this one as a gift, probably based on my praise for my DOD EchoFX, which I like a lot. I'll have to continue my search for a "holy grail" overdrive pedal that doesn't cost a bundle, but for now I'm happy with my SansAmp GT-2 for solid-state amps and recording and my Peavey Hotfoot Distortion for use with my tube amps.

Simple, straightforward knobs do it all: Level, Low, High, and Drive. I didn't get it w/a manual (it was a gift, a music store demo -- that's the way to go to save $$$).

When using single-coil pickups (esp. neck, middle, and in between), this pedal will give you a VERY expressive, bluesy overdrive. It made both my el-cheapo Washburn Lyon (superstrat) and prized Ibanez RG more responsive than they've ever been with ANY distortion effect I've used. Though I'm not a blues player, I appreciate the pedal's ability to give me SRV, Buddy Guy, Hendrix, and Kenny Wayne Shephard tones. HOT TIP: set your Level knob under 50% because this baby is LOUD when engaged; if you don't, the volume boost will drown out even the loudest drummer and you may get a feedback problem! Otherwise, it doesn't suck tone or introduce any noticeable noise. I've only used this pedal inline between my guitar and Fender Studio Eighty-Five's clean channel (65W 1 x 12" combo). Sweet.
Downside: I'm a heavy rock player, so I'm always looking for a lot of gain. But if you're looking for a resonsive, expressive overdrive, this box is the sh*t, and has plenty of singing gain for blues, and works well for most rock rhythm backing parts. But gainheads be warned, this is not the pedal for you. No crunch to be found. (Makes sense to me with a name like Mystic Blues.) Don't waste your money on a vintage TubeScreamer. In a blind test, I bet no one could tell the difference -- and I have a great ear.

I've only had the FX102 for three days, but it seems like a sturdy metal box to me that will take some abuse (not that I condone that sort of thing!). I haven't used it on stage with my band yet, because I'll need time to work it into our songs and integrate it into the FX chain w/Boss ME-6 multieffect, HR-2 Harmonist, and Crybaby wah. My rating below relfects the comparision to Boss pedals I've used. I find the Boss pedals' switch isn't that reliable because of the adjustable screw on the battery door. Sometimes you really have to jump on 'em to engage them, or spend too much time playing with that plastic screw.

I can't emphasize enough what an awesome blues tone this will give your solid state amp. I'm sure it will do wonders with a tube amp, too. I think the word that best sums up this pedal is "expressive." I can't wait to hear it with my Peavey TransTube Express 112s, which is already has a pretty responsive solid-state overdrive (100X better than my fuzzy Fender Eighty-Five). If lost, I wouldn't buy it again because it was a gift and I rarely play blues, country, or rockabilly. But if my style changed to blues, I'd buy the first two I could get my hands on -- one for home and one for the gig rig.