I first met John when he was touring Australia with his band Baroness when they were supporting Metalicca. I didn't actually know much about his band at the time but their tour manager rang me on a Sunday and said they'd like to come and meet me. I was at the workshop (under my house) so they all came 'round and John asked if I'd take a look at their guitars for some quick servicing.
We talked a lot and seemed to hit it off. Our mutual love of punk and ethics was a great starting point for both of us and I met them the next day in the shop with the guitars all serviced.
Next time I met John he was playing an instore in my shop with Scott Kelly from Neurosis and we got to sit down and talk again. We talked pedals, guitars, amps, music .......... and we hung out at the show that night.
I'd sent John a few pedals to try out after our first meeting and they were all used extensively on their album Yellow & Green. We kept talking about what he needed for Baroness and what I could do to get there and over the years we've stayed good friends and do that hard "I'm thinking this ind of tone" by email thing.
Baroness toured again for Soundwave and John did a print signing (he's an amazing artist too) in my shop while the amazing Coliseum played and John bought one of my ODP666's as he was after a "drive pedal". I worked on his guitars again the next day before heading to SW to see them play and after the show John mentioned how much he loved the ODP. We spoke by email for a while and he was using the ODP as his main drive into either my Ram Head or Red Mud depending on the tone he's after.
We started talking about more drive options and I thought I'd make something special for John that might be more ....... versatile for his sounds. As he was using my ODP I figured I'd use that and add a TYMEXAR for more gain. John likes to cascade effects together to build a tone and these two two, while being similar in circuit have characteristics all their own. I have made a similar pedal for Steve Turner from Mudhoney which was these two pedals in one box, with a Ge/Si switch for the TYMEXAR and a series order (OD-Di/Di-OD) switch which he uses a lot.
I figured with John I'd make something ....... less conventional using these two circuits and since I'd just made a pedal for Dylan Carlson using the TYMEXAR circuit with the option of no clipping, and I loved it, I thought I'd offer this one on Johns version.
So this is an ODP666 first in the chain followed by my TYMEXAR as I think this series works best. I then added the three way mini toggle switch which gives you the option of germanium clipping on both circuits, which I've never offered on the ODP before, silicon clipping on both circuits OR no clipping on both circuits, which I've only done for Dylan's TYMEXAR before. Both pedals can be run separately or cascaded and like all my pedals have a standard Boss style 9V adaptor and true bypass on both circuits.
The ODP and TYMEXAR circuits both work extremely well with both Ge and Si clipping and with both circuits on no clipping the frequency response is much bigger and the whole pedals is more open, responsive and full sounding. There's obviously not as much "gain" without the diodes but the pedals overall volume is huge and there's still enough grit from the 741 op amps to give it a nice drive. With the first gain down and the second up it's a very usable light overdrive into heavy and the other way around is an overdrive into a dirty boost, especially with the no clipping setting.
I hand polished the stainless steel enclosure especially for this one I like the way it turned out. I might look at getting a bunch of boxes polished like this to use for special occasions and one-offs ? The face plate is from my speaker cabs/amps and stamped with "JOHN01" for obvious reasons.
So, off to it's new home where hopefully John will be able to incorporate it into his sound and make some great music with it.