The maxon is the go to pedal for tube powered amp players in metal, but it is absolutely versatile for hard rock or an overdriven tone. In my personal experience I use it to tighten and accentuate my head's preamp in-line to the head and it just sounds amazing with a Peavey tube head or a Mesa. Adds attack and punchy harmonics to your tube tone.

The pedal is a vintage-looking pedal with very basic options but that are incredibly flexible when used in combination. Particularly the tone knob does a world of difference for the punchy-sharpness of your tone. It's all that you want in a straight forward over-drive.

For me this pedal is relatively easy to use, but it takes some getting used to, you have to really try it for a long period of time to find out how it truly affects your tone, it takes a while to find that middle ground where it doesn't cover up your heads tone, but acts as an accentuation and adds to the sound rather than replaces it. But after a few hours you can get there.

Absolutely solid construction as can be expected from Maxon and their durable construction. I don't go by endorsements from artists but this pedal is a staple of Adam D (Killswitch Engage/Times of Grace) and always makes his rig sound amazing and has used it without a hitch for years. Extremely durable. I've owned 2 of them already and hold great resale value.

It's still pricey for a working/casual musician, at around 150$, not really a price jump from many other similar pedals in it's class, but would love to see it at around $100. Still, incredibly great value considering it's durability, resale value and awesome tone.

Never had to deal with them, they've never broken down on me.

Simply a staple in my rigs for years now.

Active Musician, Recordist

Metal/Blues/Extreme Music

This OD808 is great for that hair raising SRV tube tone. Why spend another $50.00 ($169.00 total) for the Ibanez model, you get the same tone, smaller package and color. As for my musical style, I am all over the place and this pedal fills the void of the blues!The amazing thing, I am using this with a Digitech Rp50 only using the amp modeling, reverb and delay (basically all that is descent), Boss EQ-7, and Ibanez CS-9 (chorus).I am going to be getting in a few days the "YMJ dod" pre-amp/overdrive, put this in front of the OD808 and see what happends. Oh.....if your pick-ups are hot ie. "pearly gates", get the MXR "smart gate"....it helps kill the noise!

simple.....but the word "Balance"?.what is that about!

MXR construction is the best, Maxon lack the weight thats why I give this a 9.

Better value than the Ibanez model.

Never had to contact, no issues with product( fingers crossed).

What more should I say. Its just a pedal that does what it was made for.

23 years/home computer based studio /fanatic hobbyist

Rock/Metal/Jazz/Neo-Classical/Blues

Very chuncky overdrive. Perfect OD to push your tube's front end! Very responsive OD pedal and doesn't mush up my tone at all! I use this to push my 2ch Triple Recto for a great different taste to the amp already great front end! The triple recto has a more smooth distortion at high gains, and this pedal take that and chunks it out a bit, making an already great tone better. Restrayned.com

It has volume, tone and overdrive levels. Not much to tweak, although they all are very respoinsive. I put my amps gain level around 50% or at 12 o'clock, and the Maxon's OD at slightly higher than 12 o'clock. The volume is at max to push the amp a bit, and the tone slightly less than 50% at around 10-11 o'clock. Make the amp crunch perfectly yet still retains very subtle picking notes as well as giving full chords life to where each note is heard!

Great sounds come easy, although I had to play with my amp a bit to get what I wanted. Once I found it, I never mess with it much.

Built like a tank. Enclosure is strong, and the switch functions as it should. The tone knob did loose the little screw holding it on but thats easily replaceable. I bought mine used, but would gladly pay full retail for this pedal!

It's a great price for a pedal that has found a perm home on my board and in my studio! I WILL NOT REPLACE THIS PEDAL FOR ANOTHER!!! I have finally found the tone I was looking for.

Have never needed to use support.

I want this pedal, if stolen it will be immediately replaced!

25+ years

Metal/rock

Skull crushing Metal.

14 years

Metal

Nice sound with a 5150 as a boost or slight gain addition....very sweet sounding, yet can get gritty. The problem I had was all settings sounded relatively similar.

Pretty straight forward

I like how it loos but it does feel a bit fragile? Maybe it is me? Worked fine though! Not real noisy at all!

A bit spendy for it...if it were $20 cheaper, would be great!

They responded to my emails!

Recording engineer....semi-pro

Metal, Classical

Original Vintage TS808 sound. The original Ibanez TS808s actually had Maxon boards in them, just the Ibanez name on the front!

As far as tube screamers go, it covers everything.

3 Knobs, pretty easy to figure out!

Built like a MXR pedal. It's not like its a cheap plastic pedal...

Original TS808 for like $50 cheaper then the tainted Ibanez Reissue? Best value there is as far as tubescreamers go.

You won't need to worry about this...

I'm a fan of the MXR style pedals, plus green's my favorite color!

Hobbyist

Blues Based Rock, Classic Rock, Blues