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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Maxon OD880 Soft Distortion Overdrive

The Maxon Company is probably most famous for manufacturing the legendary Ibanez Tube Screamer pedals (among many other Ibanez offerings). Because of this (and especially in non-Asian markets) Maxon pedals were often overshadowed by their Ibanez-branded brothers. But throughout the company's history, they have produced a great offering of effects.

The Maxon OD880 Soft Distortion Overdrive was first produced in the mid 70s, and originals are very rare, especially in the West. It used 3 ICs (741 types) to produce a great transparent overdrive effect. The pedal was reissued in the 90s exclusively in Japan with an updated circuit that used 2 opamps. The layout below is for the original 3 IC version. I've added power filtering and polarity protection. It should fit just fine in a 1590B.



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3 comments:

  1. JDTJanuary 31, 2021 at 2:33 PM

    Verified.

    It is a softer, smooth OD, with lows and highs de-emphasized. I don't mind the low cut, but I would prefer more high end in an OD without a tone control.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Effects LayoutsFebruary 8, 2021 at 10:05 AM

      Thanks for verifying! You can try reducing the value of some of the caps, especially the 2, 100nF caps near the clipping diodes.

      Delete
  2. axedoc2010October 31, 2022 at 2:24 AM

    Love your website! I don't know how to put in a request separately so just leaving it as a comment here - Maxon OD 820 please!

    ReplyDelete