Ibanez OD-855 Overdrive II

The Ibanez OD-855 Overdrive II is a vintage overdrive pedal made in Japan for Ibanez in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It sits just before the famous Tube Screamer in the Ibanez timeline, and it offers a wider gain range than its successor, running from a warm, organic boost into a smooth, fuzz-like sustain that ToneHome compares to a Big Muff with a softer top end¹.

The pedal was designed by Maxon, whose name appears on the original PCB and inside the enclosure, like other Ibanez pedals of the era². It is rare on the used market, highly collectible, and has never been reissued¹³.

The controls: Distortion, Balance, Tone

The OD-855 has three controls: Distortion, Balance, and Tone, plus an effect on/off switch⁵. Balance is the effect level control, mixing the processed signal against the clean one rather than simply raising the output volume⁵.

Vintage Guitar's 2000 history of Ibanez overdrives described how the controls behave in practice. With Balance and Distortion both at half, the pedal produces a smooth distortion with slight sustain, which the magazine called great for that just-starting-to-break-up type of distortion, and perfect for blues at the midway setting⁵. At lower to mid gain settings it produces distortion tones similar to the TS-808, capturing the natural overdriven tube amp sound with a smooth, sustaining tone and a slight harmonic overtone⁵. Paired with a small tube amplifier like a Fender Champ, it produces very smooth distortion⁵.

The pedal is also dynamic. The distortion reacts to picking attack, and rolling off the guitar's volume cleans up the distortion greatly; Vintage Guitar noted it sounds very nice with single-coil pickups⁵.

With Balance at three o'clock or higher and Distortion all the way down, the Overdrive II produces a very usable, clean signal boost⁵.

The Maxon-designed circuit before the Tube Screamer

Like other Ibanez pedals of its era, the OD-855 was designed by Maxon, whose name is on the original PCB and inside the enclosure². Maxon was responsible for the design and manufacture of the TS808 and many other Ibanez products up until early 2002, as a Zap Guitar review published on Maxon's site recounts⁶. The lineage runs from the Maxon OD808 circuit, which was licensed by Ibanez and released worldwide as the TS808 Tubescreamer⁷, with Maxon making a few tweaks along the way, dropping the OD-808's op-amp input and output buffers in favor of transistor buffers⁸.

The OD-855 itself takes a different clipping approach from the Tube Screamer family. Aion FX's circuit analysis of the OD-855 notes that with its diodes-to-ground clipping setup, it actually has a little more in common with an MXR Distortion+ than with the Tube Screamer's arrangement². That difference in topology is part of why the pedal reaches further into fuzz-like sustain than a TS-808 does.

Versions of the narrow box

ToneHome documents the OD-855 across several series and dates. The first version was produced from 1976 to 1978⁴, the narrow box versions from 1978 to 1980¹, and the standard box versions from 1980 to 1981³. ToneHome identifies five different versions of the OD-855 narrow box alone¹.

Early models had a standard pushbutton footswitch, while later ones used the small, square, silent switch like the TS-808⁵. Vintage Guitar also observed that the paint on early Ibanez pedals seems thin and chips easier, so 20-plus-year-old examples often look worn⁵.

The Tube Screamer went through its own parallel version changes: the TS-808's v1 and v2 are narrow boxes, with v1 (flying fingers) extremely rare and v2 still rare, while v3 to v7 are standard box versions⁹¹⁰.

German list prices give a sense of what the pedal cost new: 155 DM in 1977, 120 DM in 1980, and 145 DM in 1981⁴¹³.

What reviewers said

Vintage Guitar's verdict on the Overdrive II was positive:

The magazine called it quite versatile, praising its clean boost capability and its dynamic response to picking and volume changes⁵¹¹.

Modern builders have also worked with the circuit. On the Guitar FX Layouts blog, a 2013 project reproducing the OD-855 drew praise for its layout quality, with one commenter writing⁹:

After corrections to the layout, builders reported the effect works fine, and one builder's result sounded like an overdrive rather than a fuzz-type pedal, with transistor types not affecting the sound since they serve only as buffers⁹. One quirk of the documentation: the layout image is labeled OD885 rather than OD855⁹.

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