JHS Overdrive Preamp

The JHS Overdrive Preamp is an overdrive/preamp pedal from JHS Pedals that recreates a piece of DOD history most players have never seen: a prototype 1970s DOD 250 that predates the gray-box pedals everyone assumed came first. JHS owner Josh Scott found the unit, serial #75, the 75th DOD pedal ever made and one of the first ten DOD Overdrive/Preamps ever sold, and cloned it with help from DOD's original circuit designer David Oreste DiFrancesco¹².

In JHS's own words, the circuit keeps the character of the familiar 250 but pushes further¹²³:

The pedal is part of JHS's normal lineup at $179.00 USD, with a discounted yellow overstock edition at $79.00 USD¹².

A DOD 250 clone with more grit

The story starts with a pedal that, as Scott tells it, "didn't exist." The familiar DOD 250 Overdrive Preamp, first sold in 1974, is the gray-box overdrive with two knobs. But the unit Scott found was something earlier: a DOD Overdrive/Preamp in a large gray folded metal enclosure that, as JHS puts it, resembles Electro-Harmonix more than DOD, and it lacks the "250" model number entirely¹⁴⁵.

Scott studied a second early big-box unit too, which used a completely different clipping arrangement with more gain, and that second arrangement is the basis for the pedal's slider switch¹⁶. MusicRadar's Jonathan Horsley frames the finished product as "a work of stompbox archeology," Josh Scott's clone of one of the earliest Overdrive Preamps, with more grit and gain than a stock 250 and more content in the lower mids⁷.

For a player, that means the Overdrive Preamp sits in the same family as the DOD 250: a simple op-amp overdrive with hard clipping, but voiced with more gain and grit overall and more distinctive low and midrange than the gray-box circuit¹⁶.

The controls: Gain, Level and the clipping slider

The control set is minimal, in keeping with the original 250's two-knob layout, plus one addition the original never had⁸.

The slider is the interesting part. In the down position, the pedal replicates the clipping from the earliest version of the 250 Preamp, the recreated V1 #75 unit⁶¹. In the up position, clipping from a later version is used, which Pedal of the Day's reviewer describes as "a more open, louder and clearer signal"⁶.

One deliberate change from the original: JHS modified, or in its words "corrected," the level control wiring from the #75 unit, giving the production pedal much more volume on tap than the prototype had¹⁴.

Power

The Overdrive Preamp requires standard 9V DC center negative power and consumes 51mA¹. That current draw is modest by modern standards, but it is several times what some preamp-style pedals draw, so it is worth accounting for on a crowded pedalboard. The yellow edition shares the same power requirements and 51mA draw².

From a prototype DOD 250 to the yellow overstock edition

The find itself dates to 2019, when Scott says he "stumbled across a pedal that didn't exist"⁹. The pedal reached players in 2022, and JHS marked the occasion with a limited run: 250 limited edition pedals built in the same big box format as the original prototype enclosure, released through Reverb⁴. The standard Overdrive Preamp, in the conventional 4.7" x 3.7" enclosure, joined the normal JHS lineup¹⁴.

The yellow edition came later. JHS is "blowing out the last of the 2022 PCB overstock remnant in a yellow colorway," priced at $79.00 USD, a $100.00 saving over the standard version, and excluded from JHS's Welcome15 and SMS discounts². It is the same circuit: a faithful replication of the V1 #75 unit with the same controls, the same slider switch and the same 51mA draw, in a yellow finish².

What reviewers said

MusicRadar's Jonathan Horsley covered the pedal and noted that Josh Scott of JHS Pedals has called the DOD 250 "one of the greatest pedals ever made," context for why JHS built its own version of the circuit⁷. Reviewers found the pedal versatile, with tones one described as "so unique, it's like discovering a sound you had in your head for" years but couldn't quite place¹⁰.

Pedal of the Day's reviewer highlighted the slider's two voicings and pointed to Scott's written history of the 250 on the JHS site, noting that "Josh's deep dives into this kind of stuff are legendary, and this one is no different"⁶.

JHS's own demo video walks through the pedal's sounds, including settings like the Silicon clipping mode with the gain low on a neck pickup¹¹.

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How it compares

Against the modern DOD Overdrive Preamp 250 reissue, the JHS pedal offers the earlier prototype voicing, more gain and grit, and the two-position clipping switch the DOD pedal does not have. Players looking at other preamp-flavored overdrives can compare it with the Walrus Audio Voyager Preamp/Overdrive or the Trickfish Overdrive Preamp, both of which take a different approach to the preamp-plus-drive idea. Within JHS's own range, the JHS Morning Glory Clean covers the lower-gain, transparent side of overdrive¹²⁷.

Videos

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Questions