The MXR Timmy Overdrive provides a huge range of gritty, textured tones that enhance your rig’s sound while preserving its fundamental voice - and in an MXR mini housing, it’ll free up serious pedalboard space. The pedal’s based on a design from veteran pedal builder Paul Cochrane that’s widely celebrated among high level pros, from first-call Nashville player Kenny Greenberg to first-call L.A. player Lyle Workman to rockstar Brad Whitford. When Paul decided to bring his pedal to a wider audience, he chose to work with the MXR design team. “It’s an honor to work with MXR,” Paul says. “My first ever pedal was a Phase 90.”
Thanks to Paul’s inventive implementation of clipping options and tone controls, the Timmy Overdrive is a dream come true for working guitar players. The Clip switch provides three different clipping styles for a multitude of scenarios, whether you need a big, bold always-on sound with a ton of headroom to slam the front end of your amp, a more compressed and saturated sound for fat chords, or anything in between.
The Bass and Treble controls offer further refinement in two key ways. First, they’re cut-only, keeping your signal’s character intact while making it super easy to dial in a clean boost. Second, Paul wired the Bass control to affect your pre-OD signal so that you can your maintain low end at lower Gain settings and the Treble control to affect your post-OD signal so that you can adjust the top end to keep dirty settings smooth and musical.
Finally, the MXR design team worked with Paul to select an op-amp that perfectly complements his expertly crafted design. They chose the LF353, a component well-respected by Dunlop engineers for providing high output, high gain, and hi-fi signal delivery. The resulting MXR Timmy Overdrive is a professional-grade must-have for players who want sweet, harmonic breakup that responds to playing dynamics and maintains a rig’s personality at a fraction of the standard pedal size.
