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Features
The Boss OD-1 is one of the original Boss Compact pedals, released in 1977. It is considered the first "overdrive" pedal, pre-dating the Ibanez TS-808 and the Boss SD-1. The TS-808 took the basic OD-1 design and added a tone control, which Boss borrowed for the SD-1. But the Boss pedals used asymmetric clipping, as they had a patent on it, and Ibanez could not. Asymmetric clipping has a little more volume, edge, and harmonics. Also adding the tone control adds circuit complexity, reducing the pure tone of the OD-1.
The OD-1 was one of my favorite pedals back in the late 80s. I learned about them when I was in Japan working
as a software engineer, as they were very popular there. When I came back to the USA, I would stop into every music store I could, and found several of them, even NOS, which I often sold to the Japanese. Mitch Colby was working at Korg/Marshall at the time, and attended the vintage guitar shows in the New York area which I also went to. He sold me an OD-1 and maybe a CE-1 over 30 years ago. So I thought the OD-1 would be a great pedal to collaborate on, and we call it the OG-1 as it's the Original Gangster.
Some OD-1 users:
- Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath): An OD-1 has been verified as part of his studio pedalboard.
- Pete Townshend (The Who): Starting in 1999, he used the OD-1 to drive his Fender Vibro-King amplifiers and still does.
- Joe Satriani: Used the OD-1 on recordings such as "Ice 9" for lead tones.
- Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac): Utilized the pedal during the latter part of the Tusk tour in 1980 after his previous fuzz box failed.
- Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead): His mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s pedal rigs included the OD-1.
- Billy Duffy (The Cult): Used the OD-1 during the early years of the band (Death Cult era).
- Johnny Marr (The Smiths): Known to have used the pedal extensively as a versatile low-gain boost.
- Ed O'Brien (Radiohead): His 2010 pedalboard featured an OD-1 modified by Analog Man.
- Rory Gallagher: Mentioned using a Boss overdrive for some solos during his career, despite generally preferring a natural amplifier sound.
- Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi): Documented using the pedal live on tour.
- Buzz Osborne (Melvins): Utilized it as a main distortion pedal.
- Toru Kitajima (Ling Tosite Sigure): Visible on his pedalboard in documentation from 2009.
- Jeff Beck: Reported to have used a black-painted OD-1 in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
- Ola Englund: Demonstrated the use of a vintage OD-1 in his modern gear reviews and setups.
We have been working on this pedal and finding parts for a year, and building them since spring 2025, but got busy as usual and only built up a dozen by December. So we will announce them, now and if you can add to cart we have one for you. We will build them steadily from now on, and hope that our old shop manager Analog Alex can build up a few hundred early in 2026.
The early "silver screw" OD-1 used a large quad opamp, with four stages. This Raytheon RC3403ADB was a "ground sensing" opamp. They are hard to find now and sell for about $20 on eBay. They also used another quad opamp in some later originals, the
NEC uPC4741C. In the BOSS BOOK, they say that they stopped using the big chip because they had some failures. After a few years, Boss changed to a normal 4558 dual opamp with two transistors for the buffers, like a tube screamer. They also changed a few capacitor values, all of which hurt the tone IMHO. These specs were used until it was discontinued in 1985. They also used some different clipping diodes in later models.
We have 250 of the NOS RC chips in stock, and another 400 on order, that may be all we can get. We also have more recent (but discontinued) Japanese JRC3403 chips which we have used for years on our OD-1 vintage chip mod. When we run out of the old RC chips we will use the newer JRC ones.
NERD WARNING! We also found that Boss used the wrong type of output capacitor on the OD-1. They used a POLARIZED electrolytic, but it's an AC signal, so we use high-quality Japanese audio spec NON POLARIZED output caps instead. Ibanez used these on the TS-808 and later Tube Screamers, and still does. There is no change in tone in polarized vs non-polarized, but they should be more reliable. We put these high quality caps in your Tube Screamers when you get our True Vintage mod.
The early OD-1 used yellow-striped 1S2473 silicon diodes. These clip close to 1 Volt. This is higher than the normal silicon diodes used in most pedals. This partly explains why the early OD-1 sounds better than later ones (later ones often used a smaller diode). The use of the 1S2473 diode would have given it a fairly high forward voltage, yielding milder clipping and a relatively substantial output level. Original BIG CHIP OD-1 pedals tend to sell for $1000 or more.
Our OG-1 is a tribute to the early OD-1, with all the same parts except true bypass. We use actual Boss VOLUME pots and knobs, which we removed and saved when modifying new SD-1 pedals. We use an AUDIO taper OVER DRIVE pot, for easier control of the DRIVE level. So if you compare an old OD-1 and our OG-1, you may have to have the DRIVE set differently unless up or down all the way, at the extremes they are the same amount of drive. The sound is the same once you set the knobs to the same amount of drive, i.e. 12:00 on OG-1 = 9:00 on OD-1. We use actual HAMMOND enclosures, with a nice yellow factory finish that is quite close to the OD-1.
- True Bypass switch
- Bright LED
- Battery Clip
- Asymmetric clipping with NOS 1S2473 silicon diodes
- Original 14-pin big Raytheon RC3403ADB OPAMP chip
- NOS
- Standard Boss style Power Jack
- Original type resistors and capacitors
- Improved quality RE'AN jacks
- Less noise than the original OD-1.
- Uses 4mA of power when off, 6mA on (LED uses 2 mA).
- No need to use an ACA 12V power supply, 9V is fine but up to 18V is safe.
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Upgraded Classic 
