best mxr overdrive pedal MXR Timmy Overdrive Pedal - Effects pedals

The MXR Timmy Overdrive provides a huge range of gritty, textured tones that enhance your rig’s sound while preserving its fundamental voice—and in an MXR mini housing, it’ll free up serious pedalboard space. The pedal’s based on a design from veteran pedal builder Paul Cochrane that’s widely celebrated among high level pros, from first-call Nashville player Kenny Greenberg to first-call L.A. player Lyle Workman to rockstar Brad Whitford. When Paul decided to bring his pedal to a wider audience, he chose to work with the MXR design team. “It’s an honor to work with MXR,” Paul says. “My first ever pedal was a Phase 90.”

Thanks to Paul’s inventive implementation of clipping options and tone controls, the Timmy Overdrive is a dream come true for working guitar players. The Clip switch provides three different clipping styles for a multitude of scenarios, whether you need a big, bold always-on sound with a ton of headroom to slam the front end of your amp, a more compressed and saturated sound for fat chords, or anything in between. The Bass and Treble controls offer further refinement in two key ways. First, they’re cut-only, keeping your signal’s character intact while making it super easy to dial in a clean boost. Second, Paul wired the Bass control to affect your pre-OD signal so that you can your maintain low end at lower Gain settings and the Treble control to affect your post-OD signal so that you can adjust the top end to keep dirty settings smooth and musical.

Finally, the MXR design team worked with Paul to select an op-amp that perfectly complements his expertly crafted design. They chose the LF353, a component well-respected by Dunlop engineers for providing high output, high gain, and hi-fi signal delivery. The resulting MXR Timmy Overdrive is a professional-grade must-have for players who want sweet, harmonic breakup that responds to playing dynamics and maintains a rig’s personality at a fraction of the standard pedal size.