Best sounding overdrive?

[jtn191]

I wanna know what to buy next  

[pandadandan]

This is a similar question to "best tasting sandwich" but I'll humour you.  Mysterioso for a very natural sound.

[rowland1]

It's impossible to pick one. I voted for Yellow Shark, but Serendipity and Neutrino are awesome too.

[stevewire]

Out of the overdrives here, I have only built the Yellow Shark and Aristocrat.  I will say so far the Yellow Shark is my favorite overdrive of any that I have owned.  I just received a Seredipity and Sunking boards in the mail yesterday.  I am sure I will have to try the Silverfox and the Quasar at some point.  I really highly recommend the Yellow Shark.

[masterlk]

I agree...impossible to pick...I have only built one Madbean OD(Sunking) so far and really like it so I won't vote because I have nothing to compare it to. But..I really like several different overdrives. I should have a separate pedal board just for overdrives, distortions and boosters!

[irmcdermott]

I haven't built many of the ODs, but I love my Neutrino and some people have borrowed it for gigs and everyone loves it.

[jkokura]

I've probably built more of these than average, but I can't vote. It's like asking a pregnant woman what they're craving these days - it can change. Each overdrive is very different, and they all have places where they would be more or less appropriate than the others.

Perhaps a question id rather answer would be "which Madbean Overdrives have you built, which is your favorite, and why?"

I have built so far, or am building:

Aristocrat
Darkside (building)
DeadRinger (building)
EgoDriver
Grapevine
Neutrino
Serendipity (building)
Silverfox
Sunking
Yellow Shark

I like the Sunking and Neutrino a lot. The Aristocrat is pretty great too. Didn't like the Grapevine or Yellow Shark much, but I'm tempted to try the Yellow Shark again. I like the Sunking best I think, because it's very versatile and sweet sounding. I miss it when it isn't on my board.

Jacob

[mjcyates]

Each overdrive is very different, and they all have places where they would be more or less appropriate than the others.

Totally agree.

So far I have built

Deadringer
EgoDriver
Grapevine
Neutrino
Serendipity
Silverfox
Sunking

My favorites from this group are Neutrino and Sunking

[mjcyates]

Forgot that I also built a Slow Loris. For a rat style pedal it is great in my opinion.

[B_of_H]

for light breakup: the yellow shark

for mild breakup with mids: sunking or t-bagger or serendipity with SOS mods

for cranked amp overdrive meets distortion: the egodriver

[eniacmike]

these are the ones I have built. lately I have been playing a strat into a blues jr. and so my favorite od's have been ts808's, and the glitteratti.

EgoDriver - hybrid od/distortion, versatile, loves jcm800's, tons of bass, if I could only bring one pedal it would probably be this.
Faultline - more for bass but sounds great on guitar too, really low noise, thick stonesy "can't you hear me knockin" tone
Glitterrattii - ultimate tubescreamer. the baxandall tone stack rules, very versatile. the tone knobs feel really great (like pulling draw bars on an organ)
Grapevine - another low noise pedal, sounds really good however I didn't like the tone knob on this (sounds like a blanket over the amp unless cranked) and "rawk" mode didn't really do it for me.
Neutrino - you can build this a million ways, if you have an easy break up amp or any kind of fender amp it sounds awesome. strat+neutrino+blues jr. is awesome
Serendipity - I was in love with this pedal for a while, it has a supernatural compression where it doesn't sound squashed but you have more sustain, and it is really versatile if you switch guitars/amps alot.
Silverfox - this pedal is awesome. extremely versatile. I would like to build one with all the trim pots on the outside. basically a tuneable tubescreamer. I love barber and everything they do is amazing.
Snack Shack - this is a Si fuzz face. should be in the fuzz category, but if you roll back you do get a decent overdrive/distortion type sound. I never liked Si fuzz faces until I tried this one. Its the only one with Ge-like clean up.
Snarkdoodle - the red llama was the pedal that got me into building becuase I wanted one cause tom petty had one and they went for way too much on ebay. It sounds really good, tons of volume on tap, gain goes from hybrid to borederline tone bender style fuzz. stacks really well too. totally battery hog though.
Sunking  killer buffer, lower punchier mids than a ts9. stacks well,  you can pretty much leave it on all the time. I don't really care for the cranked gain on this but anything up to half way is good.

[pauloman80]

Not only is it really, really hard to choose, but as the saying goes: diff'rent strokes fer diff'rent fokes.  I'm a Tubescreamer guy.  A buddy of mine swears by his OCD, but it doesn't do anything for me.  I added a Krankosaurus build several months ago and am building a Sunking right now because I've been wanting to try something a bit different from my Tubescreamer-based rig, branch out a bit.

[B_of_H]

I just built the snarkdoodle...I highly suggest it as it only took me about an hour start to finish along with costing almost nothing (low parts count, all I had to buy was the chip).   I would guess that all in all it's about as inexpensive and simple a circuit as you'll find on here that does more than boost your signal.  Worst case scenario is that you spent about $20 on a great pedal that you'll find a use for at some point.     

it sounds fantastic IMO, makes me want to play mike campbell licks for hours. 

fyi: an A or log taper works better for the volume pot IMO

[dwstanford]

I just tested my dead ringer build and for my setup, it's the best overdrive I've ever heard.  I have used several tubscreamer variants, but this one is by far my favorite.  The overdrive is very warm and natural without a ton of gain (until you engage the boost section)  It sounds great on bass guitar as well.  I have not tried the yellow shark yet, but I am very interested to do so.  That may be my next project.

[Haberdasher]

So far I've built the egodriver, faultline, neutrino and silverfox.  They are all good in their own way.  My favorites from that group are Egodriver and Silverfox, and I like to stack them.  They sound good with my amp, and that's the thing- you just have to experiment around & find what works for your particular equipment and playing style.  The beauty of diy is it only costs about 30-40 bucks to find out, as opposed to 180 or 200 if you're paying boo-tweek retail.

I'm building a Sunking and probably a snarkdoodle pretty soon.  Truth is, I want to build them all.  I definitely gots da sickness.