The Timmy is one of the original transparent overdrive pedals. It’s right up there with the Klon and the King of Tone as a legendary pedal. But that’s because they’re really only supposed to help you take your own guitar and amp combo into its own natural overdrive, almost acting as a clean boost to your own signal (but with a little bit of its own mystical mojo).

So in this case, the volume on the pedal essentially controls how hard you want to pummel your amp with fuzzy goodness. So, the MXR CSP027 TIMMY brings plenty of that transparent gain to your pedal board. Unlike most overdrives, the TIMMY actually can give you a proper clean boost, as well as audible graduations in gain from low and crisp to moderate and gorgeous. There’s a lot of texture available, and every setting seems to be the result of a decision rather than a happy accident. This makes you feel that when you sound good, it’s down to you, not a device. But it doesn’t just stop there. In the circuit, the bass cut is placed before the clipping/gain stage and the treble cut is placed after the gain stage. This is different to most other pedals where the EQ section is always post-gain. What this means is that you can get an incredibly focused and tight-sounding drive by reducing the bass before it gets distorted, and you can avoid fizziness by having the treble cut after the distortion is applied.There's something inherently musical about the Timmy's brand of overdrive. It enhances the harmonic response of your amplifier, feeding it some extra juice that you can really lean into and dig in with. Perhaps the most gratifying thing about the Sunset is that, with a lot of volume boost on tap - despite being a digital pedal - it can actually push a tube amp into saturation just as convincingly as an analog drive or boost. While the Mini Foot Fuzz doesn’t claim to be “emulating” any sort of specific fuzz design, its two-knob control and silicon transistors certainly sound like a recipe for a great sounding pedal. What I love most, though, is that it’s absolutely perfect in front of my Marshall Origin 20H. Since I got the MXR Timmy, I’ve started playing this amp again on a regular basis. The two together have given me something I didn’t quite have before – or, at least, something that I wasn’t really doing before.

There are bass and treble controls for tone sculpting, as well as gain and volume knobs so you can dial in exactly what you want it to do. There’s even a voicing switch that eases off on some of the bass frequencies - ideal for using with darker sounding guitars.So what I’ve been doing is using the MXR Timmy to give me a light overdrive sound, straight into the Origin 20H. By modern tastes, it probably still counts as a clean tone, but I think it’s really sweet. How Does It Compare To The Original Timmy v2? The Sunset is an oddity in this list. Although it has an analog JFET gain stage, the heavy lifting is actually done digitally, allowing it to have a much wider range of potential tones inside the unit.

Some of the pedals in this guide are clones of old classics, and others are newer designs utilizing modern technology. However, all of them are great options for anyone looking to add something special to their rig. We’ve even added some buying advice further down this article to help you find the best overdrive pedal for you and your needs. It goes waaaaay beyond preferring buffered or true-bypass switching. You begin to develop a taste, and a set of preferences and expectations. Some overdrive pedals thrive when they’re playing with a tube amp that’s already on the edge of breakup. With the right settings, the best overdrive pedals can really get your amp singing. Some also pair incredibly well with other pedals – for example, a Tubescreamer feeding into a Klon style OD is a classic pedal combo. What is a transparent overdrive? The best overdrive pedal for one person might be something that pushes their tube amp into a more natural overdrive and retains all the tonal characteristics of the guitar, however, someone with a solid-state amp might prefer something that adds a bit more ‘something’ to their existing sound. You can even get overdrive pedals that offer the breakup sound of some classic tube amps. Overdrive can be a great effect to always have on, or it can be used to boost a clean sound for solos, or it can be paired with other pedals – there are seemingly limitless ways they can be used.Of course, a quality tube head (set clean) is needed in the end (before your cab) to really make it all work. If nothing else on this list has piqued your interest yet, or you’re just looking for something more unique than your standard “fuzz” pedal, the Fuzzolo is a fantastic option!