Mad Professor Simble Overdrive Mk2

Transparent overdrive that cleans up with your volume knob and leaves your guitar's voice where it was.

Transparent overdrive can be one of the harder things to get right - or at least it's one of the pedals that guitar players are quite picky about . Plenty of pedals promise it, and most of them either take something out of your guitar on the way through or add a voice of their own that you then spend the rest of the night working around. The Simble has been an exception for a long time, and that is why it has held its spot on so many boards.

Lassi Ukkonen designed it to behave like a good amp rather than a box sitting in front of one. Back your volume knob off and it cleans up. Dig in and it pushes. The range is wide enough that a single setting covers clean boost, an on-the-edge crunch, and a singing overdrive depending entirely on how hard you play. Whatever it is that makes your guitar sound like your guitar comes through intact.

For the Mk2, Mad Professor went back into the circuit with Ukkonen and made the revisions he had wanted to make. The result is a more open sound with more headroom, and a contour control that reaches further into the bright end of its range. That last part does more work than it sounds like it would, since it gives the pedal room to sit correctly in front of a wider spread of amps and pickups than the original did.

If you are building a new board and want a low gain pedal that stays out of the way of the instrument, this is a good place to start.