Fulltone OCD Obsessive Compulsive Drive Pedal V2

OCD-V2

AMPS... if you've ever owned a GREAT amp, like a Marshall 18 watt, a VOX AC15 or a Marshall JTM45, and if you have a place where you can crank them up loud, then you know what I'm talking about. Smack a power chord and you (not only) hear the fundamental notes, but you get (count 'em) 4, 5, even 6 additional overtones ringing into a feedback... notes that you can whistle if your ear is good enough! Think Zep's *Ocean* or *Custard Pie* or classic tones, including James Gang, the Beatles, AC/DC, Free., and so on.

Back off the guitar's volume and there are a dozen great other sounds at your fingertips... Clean, spanky sounds, with all the highs and lows still intact. And a Tele still sounds like a Tele, a Les Paul like a Les Paul.

PEDALS... (until now) just can't hold a candle to what a good amp can do if you are really picky. You not only lose all the touch sensitivity, but forget about those complex Harmonics. (For me) It's always been somewhat of a compromise using Overdrive pedals... until now. Ladies and Gentleman, I am proud to introduce the Fulltone OCD. I made this pedal for me, but I think you might like it too.

NO PEDAL gives you that sweet tube amp distortion feel... until now!! The tone wizard over at Fulltone, Michael Fuller, managed to pull off the near-impossible... and he has the Obsessive Compulsive Overdrive to show for it. This baby gives you those gorgeous overtones you want when you're cranking it.

Overtones so powerful and obvious as they ring into feedback that you can practically whistle them.

When you back off your guitar's volume, you'll find that the Obsessive Compulsive Overdrive still hangs onto a range of other tonal possibilities.

You can go clean and spanky with this bad boy, without taking the personality out of your guitar of choice... your LP sounds like your LP, your Strat sounds like your Strat. Get ready for responsive, thick overdrive. The Obsessive Compulsive Overdrive if for guitarists who are OCD about their tone.

THE NEW FULLTONE OCD V2

The OCD is the biggest selling boutique overdrive ever made, with over 250,000 sold since its inception in late 2004. There are no signs of it slowing down. The OCD has received many slight tweaks over the last 12 years, often incorrectly identified as “version 2, Version 3, V4, etc.” In reality there has always been only Version 1, with very slight variations making V1.0 through V1.7.
Today marks the release of a new OCD Version 2, with enough positive changes that it warrants an explanation.
First off, It’s important to note that we have retained the same skew, look, pricing, and MAP as the previous version.
Visually, V2 has slightly smaller “OCD” and “Fulltone” logos, along with “Built in the USA” under the Fulltone logo. All Fulltone products are built in the USA, the V2 now says it.
Next, the IN & OUT jacks are placed exactly at the halfway point of the left & right sides on V2, whereas with all previous versions the jacks were located more towards the bottom.

 
Looking at the V2 display box you can see the larger decal and addition of “With internally selectable “True-Bypass” or “Enhanced Bypass.”

 
 
Improvements with the OCD V2
NEW output buffer (when pedal is turned on) which eliminates it from being influenced be effects that came after it. Translation, your sound remains consistent regardless of placement in today’s more complex signal-chains, loopers, and pedalboards. This buffer also had a positive effect on the sound, it reduced loading on the pedal’s hard-clipping stage, allowing more sustain of both the sound and the overtones.
NEW Class A configured discrete 2N5457 JFET input section, raising the input impedance from the previous 330K to 1 mega ohms and increasing the dynamics…resulting in significantly better interaction with both single coil and humbuckers.
NEW  Internal switch to choose between ”Enhanced Bypass TM” & True-Bypass, and with no popping sound in either mode. No other company offers EB because I invented it.

The problem with True-Bypass:
True-Bypass (TB) switching was the ultimate way to achieve a clean signal path for many years. Everything’s different now, most guitarists have elaborate pedalboards with 10 or more pedals being the norm, and tremendous potential for signal and tone loss with the many cables, connectors, and other pedals involved in the chain. There can be so much signal loss that it sounds nothing like the sound of a guitar with a cable straight into the front of a great tube amp. Uninspiring.
 
What’s the pedal industries’ solution to this problem for the last 40 years?
A couple of simple Field effect Transistors (FETs) wired for “unity-gain.
What’s the benefit to this old style unit-gain FET bypass?
You reduce the loading effect that occurs using long lengths of cable, and you remove the loud “popping” sound when switching the device on and off.
What’s the major problem with this old style unity-gain FET bypass?
Although my ears always told me there was signal loss, with the help of a world-class Electronic Engineer (using some very expensive test equipment) we were recently able to document that each unity-gain FET buffer cuts the gain between 0.3-0.4 db.. Mostly in the low-Mids and Bass frequencies. And with two FETs per pedal required to couple the IN & OUT path, that’s a seriously-audible loss. Even worse, it kills the dynamic response, i.e. it kills the difference between picking soft and picking hard! I’ve always felt this, but you can see it on the scope.
 
What’s the solution?
Configuring the switching FET’s Class-A!
When you wire a FET for gain, “wiring it Class-A,“ all the dynamics return, even if you only configure it with the slightest amount of gain, for example 0.3dB.
In fact the dynamics get amplified, allowing even greater control of expression for the person playing through it than if you were playing through a guitar and just one cable straight into your amp.
THIS is why people rave about old EP-3 Echoplexes, they know they love what it does to the guitar’s sound, but they don’t know WHY. But the problem with EP-3 preamps is that they invert your signal, boost treble, and cut bass, something that Fulltone’s Enhanced Bypass does not do.
With OCD V2’s Enhanced Bypass you get this benefit whether the pedal is turned ON or OFF.
This means that just having the OCD turned off in your signal chain makes the whole rig sound alive, fresh, and more powerful again.
I’m excited about the new V2 OCD, as is everyone who has plugged into one!