OVERDRIVE- MXR EVH 5150 Overdrive ... the MIAB comes of age!

MXR |EVH 5150 Overdrive

$200.00 USD

It has been out for 6 years. It is on the silly level of popularity. I kept
putting off doing a Post on it so long that today I was 99% certain I must have done one. Apparently I had not, lol. 

It represents a milestone in MIAB tech.

The layout is level, bass, mids, treble, gain and boost. It also has a smart gate built in. 

THANX STEVE| In 1989 Steve Greenrod of Marshall amplifiers designed the Marshall Guv'nor pedal. it was the first deliberate MIAB. Yes there were a few OD's that were named to suggest they were a MIAB but they were just a name that the marketing dept of a pedal company came up with to attach to what was often more of a Fuzz pedal than even an OD.

THANX TOM| Ironically Tom Sholtz in 1989 designed the Rockman Smart Gate 

By 2015 American companies like Wampler, JHS and in Germany Wheebo had already refined early efforts to get something that could actually pass the smell test.

The secret sauce for a great MIAB was obvious in principle but not so easy to apply. Why not use JFET transistor which actually sound very tube like and build a miniature tube preamp. Before that everything was a based on an OpAmp with clipping diodes. The Rat, and the Tube Screamer were the key for this. Yes the Guv'nor too.

Timing was perfect to design the 5150 EVH pedal.

The groundwork of others had been done. Any sooner and the results would likely be not just poor but totally embarrassing.

CONCLUSION

It really is quite good. There is an impressive amount of harmonic detail in the sound. 

This and Friedman's BEOD which came out the same year sound very similar are still 

the biggest selling OD on the planet. Like I mentioned, the technology had come of age. 

We now get the so-called even better but it's all just sonic paint taken from the pallet 

of the pre 2015 artists.