Stomp Under Foot Overdrive 8-Fifty

The Stomp Under Foot Overdrive 8-Fifty is a limited edition overdrive pedal, handmade in the USA, that recreates the rare final version of the Ibanez OD-850/OD-9 circuit. Stomp Under Foot describes it as a modified Ram's Head inspired circuit with a reworked tone section and increased output, delivering what the maker calls "a fuller, more balanced sound that retains its body as the tone control is turned up, along with smooth, harmonically rich gain that delivers classic sustain while preserving clarity and note definition"¹. It sits in the same family as the maker's other hand-built pedals such as the Stomp Under Foot Cosmic Queen, the Mean Green Machine and the Serenity.

What it does to your sound

Stomp Under Foot's own description points to two things a player will notice: a tone section that keeps the pedal's body as it is turned up, and gain that stays smooth and harmonically rich while holding note definition. The increased output and reworked tone section are the maker's changes to the original circuit, so this is not a straight clone¹. As with any overdrive, how it sits in a rig depends on where it runs relative to other overdrive pedals and gain stages.

The maker's stated features for the pedal are:

• Modified Ram's Head inspired circuit¹
• Reworked tone section¹
• Increased output¹
• True bypass¹
• NOS through-hole components¹
• Handmade in the USA¹

The Ibanez OD-850 circuit behind it

The pedal's lineage explains its character. The original Ibanez OD-850 was a narrow box pedal produced from 1978 to 1980, with later versions (v4 and v5) adding a power jack². Despite the overdrive name, TONEHOME describes it as "actually a thick, organic fuzz based on the Ram's Head Big Muff circuit"², which places it closer to fuzz pedals than to a mid-humped Tube Screamer style drive.

Kit Rae's history of Big Muff clones adds that "Other than the enclosures, the original OD-850 is exactly the same circuit as the Maxon OD-801 counterpart," and that these pedals have "a somewhat more refined Big Muff sound than other clones of the circuit, due to a modified tone circuit"³. The second edition added an LED and AC power jack, and the OD-9 that followed in circa 1982 used the same pcb as the Maxon OD-801 and OD-850 third editions³. The Ibanez OD9 Overdrive also uses the OD-850 pcb, according to TONEHOME⁴.

Stomp Under Foot says the 8-Fifty is based on the rare, final version of that line. The versions line up like this¹:

Power, bypass and practicalities

The pedal runs on a 9V battery or a 2.1mm 9V adapter only, and it is true bypass¹. The through-hole build with NOS components reflects the hand-built approach Stomp Under Foot uses across its range¹.

Questions