Monte Allums OD-308 Overdrive

I have done some of Monte's mods before. It is literally a paint by the numbers thing. If you know your way around a soldering iron and follow the directions to a T, you will be fine. BTW. I will mention it later but for the guy MUGICIAN who gave Monte a 2 on customer service. Do not listen to him. He wants a schematic to rip off Monte's design. If you look at KLON, Landgraff, and the original OCD's they do not provide you with a schematic and half of them goop their circuits so you can't see them. Monte is selling you a boutique pedal kit giving you the ability to make a quality pedal and have some fun. Dang, and BTW, you don't need a schematic to adjust values and mod it. Not if you know what you are doing.

As with all of Monte's stuff. First class. This out-does the Boss mods because it is a clean circuit with all top notch components. Its thick, its meaty, its edgy, it can be a boost or it can be a distortion and everything in between. Plenty of harmonic, sonic tone here.

Top notch, built like a tank and by me. That's the best part about it. The components are top notch. I only had one LED one time not work and Monte sent me 3 more to replace it just in case.

Here is where I can't bite my lip. I have bought 7-8 projects from Monte. I DO NOT work for him or in any way associated with him other than a customer. Mugician is WAY off. He had a lot of nerve giving a 2. He was upset because Monte wouldn't give him a schematic for HIS creation. Is Nothing sacred. A guy puts all of his knowledge, experience, time, money, sweat, and heart into something, shouldn't he maintain some kind of ownership? Ask Fulltone to give you a schematic to mod the OCD or the dude who made the KLON, or the Landgraff. See what they say. Then after the last reviewer slams Monte, he then says but he is such a nice guy. Lets see him design something magical and give it away for free.

Incredible overdrive for the money and for twice that much. I have modded alot of pedals using Monte's kits and others. His kits by far sound the best. This thing is marvelous. It is 3 pedals in one. A booster, OD, and distortion. I like the fatness of it all. Yes it does have a bit of mids, but without some OD's have no body or dimension. This pedal is multi-dimensional. Its on my board and it ain't goin' anywhere.

Hi, this is Monte Allums and this is in response to the review below. We are working on incorporating an input buffer into the OD-308. For those of you that use buffered pedals such as Ibanez and Boss in your setup you can alleviate the issue by running the buffered pedal before the OD-308. I will be incorporating an input buffer into the OD-308 soon. If you do not use buffered pedals in your setup and want to buy an OD-308 I would suggest you hold off until we fix the issue with the current design. Monte Allums

Like the other review states, this is a DIY kit. The pedal is an almost identical clone to the RAT. The build was incredibly easy (it was the first thing I ever soldered in my life) and only took me about 4 hours. Overdrives are simple circuits and there is nothing confusing about the use of the finished pedal.

Michael Kelly Patriot > Boss DD-20 > OD-308 > Peavey Valveking.

The sounds are decent. I ended up modding the pedal a bit because the mid-spike was way too sharp. The boost does what it says it does, and the Fat and Fine mods are quite distinguishable.

My biggest issue with the pedal is that it does not have it's own input buffer, so unless you're using the OD-308 with a pedal with an input buffer before it, you're stuck with a cocked-wah sound. It's horrid. I feel like this was a poor design choice on Monte's part. He set up a help forum on Yahoo groups and when I asked why he didn't simply incorporate an input buffer in the circuit, he said "because most players play with some kind of pedal with it's own input buffer before their overdrives". What a terrible generalization. Not even close to "most" players play with that kind of set-up (you also have to factor in pedals with their own input buffers that have true-bypass also, for those who do), and this was quite an unnecessary and misguided corner to cut.

The second issue is when you roll your guitar's volume down, huge amounts of white noise are introduced into the signal and if you go low enough on the guitar's volume, the white noise drowns your signal out. I've never owned or played an overdrive that has done that.

I'm just assuming here that Monte is a bedroom player and did not design this circuit with the gigging musician in mind.

PS - I built the pedal without any problems, my soldering actually happened to be pretty damn exceptional (I guess I'm a natural), and I didn't get any components switched around.

This all depends on how well YOU built the pedal.

This was incredibly disappointing. The help forum on Yahoo goes days without activity and is not very useful. I skimmed through a lot of the threads and all I ever seemed to see Monte answering anything with was "you probably soldered something wrong", and while that does seem to be the case a lot of times, it doesn't really seem like a very professional way to go about helping customers. He *is* very nice and friendly, but a lot of the time it seems like he might be in a little over his head.

The reason I rate this category a 2 is not because of the lack of help on the forums, but that Monte hasn't bothered to draw a schematic for a pedal. I emailed him several times and he simply said that he wasn't going to draw one for that pedal. Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind sells an effects pedal kit without the schematic? I'm totally bewildered to Monte's reasoning behind this and am quite shocked at his *many* lapses of judgment concerning the overall project.

If you're going to provide the means to build an effects pedal to the DIY community and you don't produce a schematic, it's a real let down. It can be perceived as lazy, suspicious and irresponsible. The whole reason people do DIY electronics is so they can custom tailor their sound, because 99% of the time, the major corporations that provide our means of making music are letting the musical community down with overpriced and under-performing devices. The same goes for the Boutique builders out there, you should never have to pay $300 for a clone of a freakin' Tubescreamer, it's outrageous. It really saddens me to see the way the business is headed.

Monte, the pedal has potential, but if you stick us with something that (unless we spend another two hours tracing the pedal and drawing our own schematic) we can't modify to our own tastes, you're creating exactly what DIYers are trying to get away from.

First off, I'd like to say that $105 for an almost RAT clone with a few bells and whistles and no schematic and having to build it yourself (while fun!) is a little too pricey. I guess I just had high hopes.

I play a lot of different styles because there's so much to explore, and sticking to one style for the rest of my career would be a waste of my potential.

I focus mainly (at the moment) on Jazz, Funk, and medium hard Rock and the pedal is a little too harsh for what I'm going for. It suffices in live situations for merely the fact that it has such a huge mid-range spike, but even in a live mix it's still to harsh. The EQ filter (like seemingly most ODs) is almost useless, and I find Fine mode is the only usable setting in the pedal's current state. If only I had the schematic, I could mod the thing to my liking...

By all means, buy this thing if you're a hard-core RAT lover, but if you're looking for the versatility this pedal advertises, look elsewhere.

After all the trouble, and still ending up with a pedal that is not quite satisfactory is really uninspiring and incredibly frustrating. I realize now that I'm better off completely designing my own circuit because, well, that'll just be fun.

The OD-308 comes in kit form so if you're not confident or competent with a soldering iron get a tech to build this for you. Having used four of Monte Allums' pedal mod kits I was sure the OD-308 would not prove difficult to construct. All the components were clearly identified and the PDF build manual was as explicit as could be.

The actual building of the pedal, that is the populating of the PCB and linkages to controls, sockets etc took about six hours but I did double check resistor values with a multimeter before applying solder. Likewise polarised capacitors were doubled checked so the build time was a bit protracted but worthwhile.

The case of the pedal is aluminium alloy. I did not want the bare metal finish so I spray painted the case a fluorescent oarnge/red to make it stand out. this was allowed four days to dry/cure before being handled. A top-plate legend was designed and printed onto clear plastic film which was Photomounted onto the casing. One other minor change was use of colour-coded hook-up wire to make tracing runs a bit more obvious. There are not flaws in the OD-308 kit but merely personal preferences that the kit can easily accomodate.

In use the pedal has three rotary pots for Overdrive (gain), EG (tone/filter) & Volume, a three-way mode toggle (FAT, Boost and FINE) and a 3PDT full bypass stompswitch. The heart of the Allums Overdrive is the LM308N opamp as used in the original ProCo Rats which give a firm nod as to where this pedal is headed sound-wise.

Sound quality is what Monte Allums is all about. I never thought I would replace my mid-80's Rat2 but Monte Allums has changed all that.

The OD-308 has three modes, selectable by a mini-toggle switch. In FAT mode the OD-308 sounds like a good Rat but with more presence and body. The Boost option is just what it says, and when it says boost your signal gets a real kick. Finally there is the FINE mode which adds grit to your sound but retains character and definition. The only minor niggle I have is the change in output level as you toggle between modes. Boost is the loudest, FINE is the quietest but I can live with this idiosyncrasy.

There is virtually no background noise and each of the three modes are very distinct in their basic sound pallettes. I suspect that the Boost mode will be seldom be used, I have a Monte Allums SD-808 to take care of that. Both the FAT and FINE options are eminently usable and musical. It's hard to say which is the better simply because they both do different things but very well. I like the FAT mode because it is very Rat-like. FINE mode is dirtier but still well-defined thanks to an LED in the clipping circuit.

The real core of the Allums Overdrive sound is the LM308N opamp. And like the Rat the EQ control operates in reverse (i.e. turning the control clockwise takes OUT treble). Frankly this is the most versatile and best sounding overdrive/distortion I have heard. Most ODs have one good sound but the Allums 308 is spoilt for choice. A most excellent sounding overdrive.

Well... I put it together so I guess I should know the standard of the workmanship. All the components are branded, high quality and high spec. The complete pedal is significantly lighter than say a Boss but there again it has an aluminium alloy and not a steel chassis. I have used E-H 3PDT stompswitches in the past - there is one on my Dirty Rat - so I am confident about their reliability. None of my Allums pedal mods have suffered problems, so I am very optimistic that the OD-308 will give long and reliable service just like its predecessor.

Monte Allums = great service. Very helpful indeed. Cannot be faulted.

For bluesy rock the OD-308 just has to be perfect. My old Rat2 was an ever-present on my pedalboard until the 308 came along. I never, ever thought the Rat could be superseded. Was I wrong!

The OD-308 sits on my mains powered pedalboard. Its contents are:

Boss TU-2 >> Monte Allums CS-3 >> modded Blubber wah >> Monte Allums BD-H2O Plus >> Monte Allums SD-808 >> Monte Allums OD-308 >> Boss CH-1 >> Boss DD-3 >> Boss RV-5.

Amps are Hiwatt DR103 into 2x12 or 4x12 cabs and Lab Series L7 4x10 combo. Two Les Pauls, two Hamers (one with P90s) and WD Music HSS component Str*t.

Even my wife thought the Allums Overdrive sounded pretty good and she is normally the first to be critical. Me? I just love it. And like Monte Allums' other stuff it is amazing value for money even with the ?? falling against the $....