Nobels ODR-1 notes

[bwanasonic]

After a recent thread mentioning the virtues of the Nobels ODR-1, I picked up a *silver* model on Ebay. When it arrived, I hooked it up to a dual-loop pedal and A/B'd it with my vintage TS9 (808 resistors, 1uf caps replaced with metal film). In it's stock form, it's quite a nice, transparent mild overdrive, with no *nasal* quality. Even with the gain cranked, it is comparable to about 9-10 o'clock settings on the TS9. Useful, but never one to leave well enough alone, I heated up the soldering iron, preparing to swap the drive and volume pots. As others have noted, what appears to be the main (only?) difference with the *silver* model vs. the older *green* model, is the 250k and 50k pots are in reversed positions. The pedal is quite easy to work on , although some aspects of it's build quality leave a bit to be desired. After the swap, the ODR-1 now has a *proper* amount of gain for my purposes. It transistions really well from clean to overdriven tones, and maintains the original quality of the guitar tone quite well. It does not roll off bass like the TS9, but this could be a drawback in a live setting. The so-called lack of bass of the TS9 is really more of a feature than a bug in many live band settings, where it is often better to leave the bass requencies for the bass player. The ODR-1 is very quiet, even when slammed with a RAT 2 ( a nice combo for more extreme gain styles). Overall, a really nice *transparent* variation of the TS9, and a pretty good value. Though I'd avoid really *stomping* on the control knobs, as that whole section of the pedal is a little wonky. The schematic is available at Nobel's site for those desiring to apply it's design ideas to a DIY project.

Kerry M

[jimbob]

I dont recall NOBELS? Whats that brand?

[AL]

Nobels is a German company and they're not really known in the US.

http://www.nobels.com/

You can download all of their schematics on their site and the tech department is very helpful as well.

The ODR-1 is a really nice, transparent overdrive. If you can find them they are priced very reasonably. I'd recommend checking them out or at least, as Kerry said, look at the schematics and get some ideas.

I have two ODR-1's and on ODR-S. I'm in the process of repairing one of the ODR-1's and the other two are on my "pedal board" (which only has 4 pedals)  :lol:. I can't seem to keep a DIY pedal long enough to get to use it, which I guess is a good thing.

AL

[MartyMart]

I LOVE those ODR's too !
I have one original "green" one, a dark green ODRS which has more eq
and a newer silver ODR-1, to which I did the same "swop the pots" mod.
Fabulous overdrives, which I'm not even tempted to "mod" at all !!

Marty.

[Gilles C]

I have a Fender Stereo Pack which is the same as the Nobels Stereo Pack, and it sounds very good.

I suppose that Nobels designed the circuit for Fender, or something like that, which is a good sign I think...

A nice thing to note is that I downloaded the schematic from Nobels site to mod my Stereo Pack. Just to correct an output level which I found too weak.

Well... the schematic on Nobels site was already modified and all I had to do was to use the resistor values of that schematic.

Another good point for Nobels.  

Gilles