Friedman BE-OD 5-stars Reviews

Not an overdrive....

This pedal is no tame overdrive to get your tone a little crunchy. If that's what you want, you may want to stay clear of this stomp box. This is an -honest to God- distortion pedal. It's also the best sounding distortion pedal I ever bought. And like all great distortion pedals, this one goes right in front of the amp, that's where it does it's best work.

Killer sound !

High quality pedal, I love the tight knob, I can get any tone with it, from grunge to blues and everything in between.

Great for high gain sounds mostly

It responds great to the guitar potentiometers, but the main feature is high gain stuff. I used it with jhc - double Barrel - morning glory side. It gives "balls" to the Friedman.

Great pedal

I play it trought Mesa Boogie Express 5:50+ combo at badroom volume and it sounds great. I have an Mxr Evh 5150 overdrive and it sounds great too, but to me the Friedman BE OD have more natural and organic sound. The sound is rich and open, even at the high amount of gain it stays clear and articulate. When you play a chord you can hear every single note. The evh 5150 sound more darker and compressed.

Fat Distortion

This thing rips and is an absolute machine. Should be on everyone’s pedalboard.

Simply amazing!

I’m not sure words can even describe how good this pedal is… It came yesterday and today I tested it for the first time on my band’s rehearsal. Plugged it into an old, very used and abused Bugera in the studio and it just made a rock/metal monster out of it. Very thick and convincing overdrive and a real amp feeling. Straight out of the box sounds simply amazing. All sounds are very easy to dial and the knobs are very responsive.

Watched nearly every video about it before the purchase, but all the videos can’t really represent how good this thing sounds. A must have pedal on every board! And now my amp can stay at home for rehearsals and smaller venues.

the best distortion ever

the best distortion I ever play in my life

BEst OverDrive

I bought this pedal because I needed to play metal and hardrock with a band and the only amps we had were a Fender and a Vox, which are great amps, but without pedals they won't do metal. When I first played this pedal I immediately fell in love with it and it has continued to impress.

It is also a versatile overdrive: it could be used as just a boost, it could be used for chugs, for leads, for 80s style metal, but also for modern stuff.

If you are looking for an overdrive pedal for the heavier stuff, look no further, this is the pedal!

Sovereign !!!

great pedal from the first moment it came I liked it! wide range to make your overdrive / distortion sound, and of course I am in love with the tight potentiometer

The best overdrive pedal ever

This pedal is worth every penny you spend on it.... a great sounding overdrive pedal that sticks that low end thump into any amp.

A must have pedal

I found it bringing best results in front of clean tube amp, sound unreal wit my custom build plexi preamp with vox ac power section. It also shines just straight into logic pro or scuffham amps sgear where i ll add just speaker emulation. It is ultimate rock tone but u can get wide spectrum out of this lil box

Great pedal for OD/DS!

What to say, it could be noisy when you want to really crank it up for some metal tones and high output...but if you use it as Overdrive for Blues/Rock, it would do the job if you like the color of it. The tone and sound is exceptional IMO.

The Brown Sound in a pedal

It's so nice to have the Friedman BE sound so readily available, it's no wonder this is one of the most popular overdrive pedals. I would have preferred to have the input and output jacks on the top of the enclosure, but other than that this is just a great pedal. I've set the internal trim pot to the lowest setting and I still get so much gain out of it. The Tight control is one of the best features, switching the sound from muddy to super tight. Just buy it and stick it on your board, you won't regret it.

Friedman BE-OD review

Best distortion pedal ever.

Not really versatile but what it does it does better than any pedal I've ever tried.

Pity it doesn't have a mid control, but not a big deal.

Would love to upgrade to the deluxe but this is amazin as well.

As advertised

My brother uses this as his primary drive pedal.

This Friedman OD pedal is really a Friedman amp in a small package.

One con from my experience is that you really need to know what you are dialing, otherwise it will not sound as you want, but that is with a lot of other effects as well.

The Instant Inspiration Machine!!

I got this pedal after seeing Tosin Abasi and Aaron Marshall using it and I decided this was going to be my high gain pedal and I have to say this pedal lives up to the expectations but here is the kicker: This pedal is very high maintenance!

You can get amazing lead sounds without the need of jamming the knobs up and down and it gives you the high gain you want quiet easily.

What I absolutely adored about this pedal is it can give you the most spanky single coil mid gain sound(with a humbucker guitar) when you take the gain to 9 o'clock, bump the presence up, put a compressor in front and roll off the guitars volume when using the inbetween pickup selection and you have the most beautiful spanky modern sound!

Apart from the amazing sounds that this pedal delivers I have to say this is a quite noisy pedal and doesn't go along with electrical interference so you have to be careful with the way you power them.

Pros:

1) Amazing lead and high gain chugga chugga sound.

2) Amazing spanky sound.

3) Not muddy and quite articulate

4) Tight knob

Cons:

1) No mid knob.

2) Not so flexible as far as it's gain structure.

3) Quite noisy

One of the best distortions

This is a high gain pedal. With the EQ and the Presence / Tight control you can tweak the sound to fit any guitar and amp combination. It has the best high gain sound coming out of a pedal. The only downside is that the gain range isn?t that wide, at low gain settings it?s already high gain enough, so one needs to play around with the guitars volume knob to get a decent overdrive sound besides the awesome distortion. A bit noisy too.

Incredible pedal

I must say that this is one of the most versatile overdrive/distortion pedals I have ever played. This pedal can go from the crunchy AC/DC sound to more overdriven Aerosmith/ Guns N' Roses sound to the LA glam metal sound to even more harder thrash metal sounds. It will take some time to tweak it, but once you get used to this pedal, it will give incredible overdrive/distortion tones.

It's also built like a tank, so it will probably last forever.

The only con about this pedal I can think of is that it doesn't have a power supply included with it, but that's no big deal.

One of the best ever overdrive/distortion pedals!

I have lots of pedals vintage and new and this one is definitely one of the best pedals I ever bought, period. Initially, I bought it for a very specific reason: My main amp is a Marshall 2555 Silver Jubilee. It is a fantastic amp, but in some cases I needed a little bit more gain AND an overall tighter Bass response. Well this pedal did the trick! The "Tight" knob does exactly what it says and be warned: This pedal has a LOT of gain which sounds fantastic at any setting. Depending on your amp and needs, you can use it both as an overdrive and a distortion pedal as well. I have tried it both ways with fantastic results. You definitely have to experiment with the internal trim pot to find your ideal overall gain level/response. All the EQ knobs are very sensitive even to the most minute adjustment. It's really a "5 star" pedal, I only wish it was just a little bit better quality-wise and especially when taking into account its relatively high price. You really have to try this pedal to see how fantastic sounding it is.

Really is hard to fault

Probably my most expensive pedal, but having seen so many reviews I took a leap of faith and this really is quite a pedal.

Firstly it is not overdrive, unless you are heavily overdriving your amp with a significant boost, we are well into the territory of distortion.

On the standard setting, there is way too much drive for me, don't get me wrong I play very heavy rock and I was already pushing it at 10 o'clock. So, the trim adjust inside the pedal is VERY useful as this can tailor it to your preference. I now have mine set to 9 o'clock and it takes me from substantial overdrive to all out distortion without going extreme.

The tight and presence knobs really allow you to 'match' this pedal to your rig perfectly.

Soundwise .... it is without fault. You have a cranked Marshall (since a Friedman is essentially a 'tuned to near perfection' Marshall) through pretty much any amp. Even at very high distortion (with my trim setting) the guitar still retains it's character and the pedal is great fun.

For light to medium distortion my OCD beats anything dead, but entering into distortion none of my other pedals come close to the sound of the Friedman BE-OD.

Only one start lost on quality, concerning the case. My OCD feels like it will take a tank running over it, this also goes for my Digitech and TC pedals, whereas for this price, I would have expected more 'beef' to the casing, it feels like thin aluminium.

But as I say, sound wide ..... I am very happy.