Maxon OD 820 Overdrive Review
Maxon OD 820 is one of the Vintage Series effects lists which is slightly larger than other Maxon designs. Truly one of those overdrives that are quite attractive by design and look vintage.
The Maxon OD-820 is designed for use with tube amplifiers for the best possible sound. My first experience seeing the OD-820 gave the impression of being quite ‘wow’ because the construction looks solid and sure enough, it’s really good. Maxon’s consistency in producing pedals that don’t look cheap.
For those of you who don’t know, Maxon is also the producer of Ibanez’s Tube Screamer TS9 and the manufacturer of the TS-808 model which was quite popular in the late 1970s to early 1980s. So, it can be said that there is a long history of the design expertise of the Maxons from Japan.
This overdrive pedal belongs to the transparent pedal category which means this pedal has the advantage of being clean-boosting and designed to produce “transparent” gain that doesn’t color your guitar sound. A clean boost is also useful when You just want to temporarily increase the volume for a guitar solo. These pedals can help You adjust the edge-of-breakup sound or push distorted amps into the higher gain territory. If You are happy with the sound of your guitars and amps and just want to add a drive, the Maxon OD-820 is the solution.
Maxon OD 820 Overdrive Specs and Features
- Overdrive
- Unique voltage doubling circuit with very large headroom
- Reacts very precisely to every picking nuance or playing dynamic
- Controls: Drive, Tone, Level
- LED: Effect On
- Footswitch: Effect Bypass
- Input: 6.3 mm jack
- Output: 6.3 mm jack
- Power supply connection: Barrel connector 5.5 x 2.1 mm, negative polarity inside
- Power consumption: 200 mA
- Power supply via 9 V battery or 9 V DC mains adapter (not included in delivery – suitable mains adapter: Art.409939)
- True bypass
- Dimensions: (W x D x H): 145 x 110 x 50 mm
- Weight: 900 gram
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The experience of using this pedal in the last few months seems to be enough to convince me that this pedal is worth buying. After trying it out, I think this pedal can accommodate the needs of guitarists who don’t need high gain. However, if it’s used in the music I’m in, I can only use it as a booster when I’m playing solo parts just to temporarily turn up the volume.
The Maxon OD 820 features standard 808-style tone control. However, the entire pedal runs at 18 volts via an internal voltage multiplier that improves clean headroom and delivers a larger output with a more complete frequency response than a typical 808 circuit—in other words, no midrange spikes! Although the 820’s circuit runs at 18 volts, it can use standard 9 VDC via batteries or a standard external power adapter.
If You are interested, another advantage is that the OD-820 has a buffered, mechanical bypass switch with a low impedance output, which allows it to use long cable lengths or other effects units without signal loss.
One more thing that interests me the most is the noise level at higher volumes with very little OD-820. Another point that represents the character of this Maxon series is that the bass response remains tight and focused and in some ways I consider the Maxon OD 820 to be a type of Tube Screamer.
