Maxon OD808 Overdrive

The Maxon OD808 is an analog overdrive pedal from Maxon, designed by Japanese electronics engineer Susumu Tamura and first released in 1979 for the Japanese domestic market¹²³. Seeking to create a circuit to compete with the Boss OD-1, Tamura built a pedal whose circuit was then licensed by Ibanez and released worldwide as the TS808 Tube Screamer, making the 808 design one of the most copied, cloned and modified guitar effects ever made⁴⁵⁶. Maxon describes the OD808 as known for its warmth and organic, tube-like quality, and as a pedal that responds precisely to playing nuances while letting the instrument's natural tone come through⁷.

The design goal, in Tamura's own words, was not the overdrive effect alone: "With the OD808, the design goal was not to obtain the overdrive effect alone but to create the sound of the guitar amplifier and overdrive pedal combined"⁸. He developed and tested the pedal mainly through a 1968 Fender Twin Reverb and a Vibrolux Reverb⁸.

The controls: Overdrive, Tone and Balance

The OD808 carries three knobs, labeled "Overdrive," "Tone," and "Balance," which is the same control Ibanez calls "Level" on its boxes¹⁵. Guitar Player's 2000 review of the reissue described them as Overdrive, Output and Tone controls delivering low to medium-gain tones⁹.

Vintage Guitar's reviewer found that although the effect can get pretty dirty, it is not as harsh-sounding as some overdrives and does not produce a saturated "heavy metal" gain, instead responding to the player's attack¹⁵. DIY builders on the Guitar FX Layouts blog have noted the tone control can sit too dark for most of its travel in a home build, with one builder fixing it by swapping in a C10k tone pot¹⁷.

Inside the circuit: JRC4558 and feedback-loop clipping

The heart of the pedal is its clipping arrangement. Where many overdrives clip the signal in a dedicated stage, the OD808 distorts the signal in the amplifier circuit itself, using a signal-distorting diode (a Panasonic MA150 in the original) located in the amplifier stage's negative feedback loop. Blog author IvIark notes this yields a smoother, milder, more natural distortion, and that when Maxon developed the design it was an industry first¹⁷.

The reissue is built around the same JRC4558 dual op-amp chip used in the original 808⁹¹⁰. The earliest narrow-case pedals tell a slightly different story: Tamura evaluated Fairchild UA741 and Motorola MC174 op-amps for the trial manufacture, and the Fairchild UA1458 was eventually adopted for the earliest OD808/TS808 narrow-case pedals⁸. Aion FX's analysis of the original small-box version found two MC1458P dual op-amps, a chip with nearly identical specs to the 741, and op-amp input and output buffers instead of the later transistor-based buffers¹⁸. The original also differs from later Tube Screamers in having two ICs rather than one IC and two transistors¹⁹.

Tamura also involved a second pair of ears in voicing: the final determination of almost all of Maxon's pedals was done by guitar instructor Shiro Tanigawa, who created the sample settings printed in Maxon manuals⁸.

History and versions

The OD-808 originated from Nisshin Onpa, an original equipment manufacturer of guitar pickups and electronics, and was the brainchild of engineer Susumu Tamura. The design was unveiled in 1979 for the domestic Japanese market under the Maxon brand, with a circuit closely resembling the Boss OD-1, albeit with symmetrical clipping and a tone control³. The circuit was then licensed by Ibanez and released worldwide as the TS808 Tube Screamer⁵, the pedal most famously used by Stevie Ray Vaughan³.

The reissue story has two stages. Maxon introduced a Reissue Series around 2000²⁰, and in 2004 reissued the OD-808 in its original 1979 enclosure¹⁸. The reissue features the same controls as the original, only with a standard stomp-type footswitch rather than the square "chicklet" style footswitch of the 1970s²⁰. Inside, the positions of the output resistors were reversed and their values increased to reduce noise, a change builders report has no audible effect on the sound beyond lowering noise levels¹⁷. Premier Guitar's buying guide notes the reissue uses the same JRC4558 chip and has a lower noise floor than the original, useful when pushing high-gain stacks¹⁰. One builder comparing original and reissue reported the only difference he could hear is that the newer model got more headroom, with the crunch coming later¹⁷.

For the circuit's 40th anniversary in 2019, Maxon released a limited run of 400 units with drive, balance and tone knobs in the classic three-knob configuration, plus circuitry modifications by Tamura for more transparent and articulate sounds and improved dynamic response. The first 40 pedals were hand-signed by Tamura at $400 each, with unsigned pedals at $199²¹. A Robert Keeley-modded 40th Anniversary version followed, also limited to 400 pieces with 40 signed by Keeley, at $199 unsigned; it adds a mini-toggle switch to go between original and Max-Gain modes. Keeley described it as "everything a classic OD808 is, just maxed out"²². Maxon also released variations including mods from Catalinbread and Pigtronix for the anniversary²³.

The Maxon OD808X Overdrive Extreme is a modified version of the OD808, made in Japan, with Drive, Tone and Level controls²⁴²⁵. Guitar World's review gave it a Gold Award²⁶.

What reviewers and builders said

Published reviews of the 2000 reissue were positive. Guitar Player's Darrin Fox wrote that "the OD808 Overdrive ($195) is no secret," praising its low to medium-gain tones⁹. Delicious Audio's roundup of Tube Screamer clones and reissues says the Maxon "gets close to the TS808, at a fraction of the cost"²³. Premier Guitar calls the reissue, made by the original designers of the 808 circuit, "a faithful reissue full of that trademark compression and low-end cut"¹⁰.

Players quoted in Guitar World's classic-gear feature put the 808 sound in context. Mike Piera judged that "The Tube Screamer gives you a nice boost and a nice warm midrange, which works especially well in Fender amps," with good compression that tightens up an amp's low end³. Mick Taylor was more qualified: for vintage-style Strats and black-panel-derived amps something TS-flavored is essential, but the compression that works for clean Fender amps may not suit humbucker-and-crunchy-amp players³.

DIY builders on the Guitar FX Layouts blog, working from vero layouts of both original and reissue, mixed praise with caveats. One builder with 1N60P diodes found "a classic glassy sound, like tubes just at the point of break up," adding that the pedal is "very limited, but what it does do it does brilliantly"¹⁷. Another reported his build was "much better than my TS9 RI"¹⁷, and a third called a diode-tweaked build "absolutely beautiful od!"¹⁷. On the original's construction, Analog Man's Mike Piera is blunt: the OD-808 is actually a TS-10 circuit using the TS9/TS10 output section, the pots are really cheap and break easily and cannot be replaced with a normal pot like a TS9's, and the circuit boards are a little fragile. His verdict is that the OD808 is only recommended for pedalboard use where it will not be moved or stepped on much¹²²⁷. Analog Man offers its own 808/SILVER mod for the pedal²⁷.

The enclosure itself earned comment in a Tokai Registry review: the packaging is reminiscent of MXR pedals with its thin metal box and large footswitch, and the OD808 weighs less than the TS9 Reissue and a bit more than the TS10²⁸.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions