While we’ve heard about the ODR-1 Overdrive from Nobels for years now, it’s not the most widely-known drive out there, but is apparently a staple of the Nashville sound, and has been for a while. This green beast falls into an overdrive category somewhere between the Klon and the Tube Screamer, with similar controls, but a voice all its own. Recently, the Nobels crew released the ODR-Mini, a smaller version of this classic pedal that boasts the same killer tones, excellent boost and crunchy overdrive. We were lucky enough to get our hands on one, and, let us tell you: the hype is real.
Small, inexpensive and full of tone….these three things don’t always go together, but they fit perfectly into the makeup of the ODR-Mini. Using three controls to deliver a creamy, natural overdrive sound, this little green beast gives you the same sounds as its older brother, but in a compact form. Level and Drive control the output volume and gain respectively, but the Spectrum parameter is what sets this guy apart from its counterparts. Giving you a warm midrange, this tone control boosts the highs AND the low-mids, enabling you to instantly fatten up your signal, without too much of a mid-range punch, and with enough overall crunch to put it squarely into the rock and roll category of pedals.
How these companies cram the same sounds of their effects into smaller and smaller enclosures is a mystery to us all, but we like that the option is there, and that putting together a great-sounding mini board is no longer an impossible task. While we’ve never owned an ODR-1 for ourselves, if it sounds like the ODR-Mini as everyone says it does, we’d sure be happy to check one out one of these days as well. Cheers to everyone at Nobels for a great little piece of gear – check out their website for more info, and hear the ODR-Mini in action in our demo below!
GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES, CONTEST INFO, SEE OUR LATEST DEMO VIDEOS AND MORE:
