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Dean Markley Overlord Classic Tube Overdrive
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Dean Markley Overlord Classic Tube Overdrive
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mooseherman mooseherman
Published on 03/28/10 at 13:30
This is a tube overdrive pedal. It is a simple pedal in that it only has the 1/4" input and out put, and can be powered with an adaptor that comes with it. It cannot be edited on a Mac or PC and is not rackable in any way. It doesn't have any audio or MIDI connections, either.

UTILIZATION

The sound effects editing on this pedal is easy. There are five knobs which is more than typical for an overdrive. The key difference here is that there are the normal knobs for Volume and Gain, but also 3 EQ knobs (bass, mid, and treble). This makes sculpting the sound much more intricate and exact. There's really no need to use the manual because it's a pretty simple setup.

SOUND QUALITY

This is a decent overdrive pedal. It's a good pedal for electric blues players who need to kick up their tone. I'd only recommend this pedal to blues/light rock/folk rock players, or guys who aren't trying to get too much drive from it. It's mostly a subtle enhancer, not a heavy distortion. The main selling point of this pedal is the EQs. While I do really enjoy playing with many stomp-boxes that only have one tone knob, they do sometimes have a problem with coloring the sound too much, or more often, robbing me of some of the tone. This pedal is unique in that it can be set in a way that in only increases the amount of overdrive/distortion without actually changing the tone that comes naturally out of the amplifier. This is a big deal, since many blues/rock players only kick these pedals in when they want a beefing up of the sound. They aren't necessarily trying to alter their tone drastically. Even beyond that, if you do want to alter the sound a lot, that is possible, considering that there is such a wide range of EQ settings available.

OVERALL OPINION

This is a pretty solid pedal. I like the ability to pinpoint the EQ settings that you want so that you can maintain similar tones while going between clean and overdrive. However, a noise gate is necessary, since the unit does produce a bunch of unwanted noise and hiss. Also, it doesn't have quite enough range for me. I'd say this is for the less adventurous tone-seekers amongst us, those who want consistency and reliability more than anything.