Maxon has recently released three new overdrive pedals and a new take on an old favorite delay. What sets these pedals apart from traditional reissue pedals is the fact that Maxon has taken existing designs - notably the AD-9, OD880 and OD820 - and rather than rehash them into yet another vintage reissue, has instead used them as inspirations for new designs. All of the new effects feature Nine Series cases and mechanical, true bypass switching. The results of their efforts are the AD-9 Pro analog delay, the OOD-9 Organic Overdrive, the OSD-9 Overdrive Soft Distortion and the VOP-9 Vintage Overdrive Pro. Being fans of all things Maxon, we were anxious to plug these babies in.  |
I have to admit to a love/hate relationship with the original Maxon-made Ibanez AD-9. Years ago, I would sort through several to find a "good" one in an attempt to replace a coveted but ailing RE-201 Space Echo. I would dig the AD-9 for a few months, then slowly begin to notice its shortcomings - most notably uninspiring, dull sounding delays - eventually casting it away and renewing my search for a replacement. After invariably tiring of the replacement, I would find another "good" one at a pawn shop and repeat the process.
Recent Ibanez AD-9 reissues not made by Maxon offered up little more than reasonable prices and lackluster delays, making me keen to see what Maxon had in store for the AD-9 Pro. First up is an increase in delay time to 450 milliseconds, achieved through the use of four proprietary MC4107D IC chips. An RMS level sensor, an 18dB dynamic range and a max input level of +12dB helps deliver analog delay goodness to all sorts of signals in a quiet-as-a-digital-church-mouse fashion. Another plus is the Single Head/Dual Head mode switch. Single Head mode allows the AD-9 Pro to deliver standard, bucket brigade-style delays. In Dual Head mode a midstream delay signal is added to simulate the sound of a multi-head tape delay, providing ping-pong and ambient delay capabilities. Mechanical true bypass switching further ices the cake.
The clarity and added delay time give the AD-9 Pro more flexibility than the original by a wide-margin, allowing it to work well for both Gilmour and Edge-type ambient delays, as well as crisp slap-back and Albert Lee-inspired, I''m-not-really-playing-this-fast double stops. To quote Tim and Eric, "Great job!"
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Two of the new pedals - the OOD-9 and the OSD-9 - are based on Maxon''s OD880, which are currently fetching prices that make originals too valuable to Velcro. The OOD-9 Organic Overdrive features a JRC 4558 op-amp found in the Maxon-made Ibanez TS808 and TS-9, rather than the 741 op-amp found in the original Maxon OD880. This combination of circuitry and op-amp gives the OOD-9 a - you guessed it - more organic feel than the typical Tube Screamer variant. The characteristic midrange honk is still there, just not as pronounced as in a TS-9 reissue or even the VOP-9.
The OOD-9 passed the first acid test of providing convincing overdrive through a clean tube amp. Single coils provided great dirt, despite Maxon''s ad copy proclaiming that "the OOD-9 compliments humbucker-equipped guitars perfectly by offering a creamier, thicker overdrive than the OSD-9." In fact, I''ve usually found that overdrives based on the 808 circuit tend to get too thick with humbuckers; they seem singularly suited for giving single coils humbucker-like midrange compression and a bit more oomph, making me keen to release the Lester from the case and put their claims to the test.
What greeted me was some nice, UFO-like crunch with the Level knob set just past unity and the Drive knob set anywhere from noon to around three o''clock. There were lots of cocked-wah like mids tempered by plenty of warmth. At higher distortion settings the OOD-9 harkened back to the eighties, perfect for some Fastway or Motörhead covers. The OOD-9''s characteristically nasally but not un-appealing tone and gobs of gain on tap made coaxing feedback a breeze.
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The second of Maxon''s new pedals based on their OD880 is the OSD-9, but this time around Maxon keeps the 741 op-amp firmly in place, giving the OSD-9 a tone as fat as a Christmas goose. It also gives the pedal an admittedly seventies vibe. I plugged a LP into the pedal and out to a tweed Deluxe style amp and was able to cop Marc Bolan''s crunch on "Ride a White Swan," which is never a bad thing. The OSD-9 can get really close to fuzz tone duties, and would be perfect for that good-time rock n'' roll band you''ve been dreaming of putting together. Molly Hatchet, here we come!
Of course, my Strat and Nocaster also sounded great through the little green box. The Overdrive Soft Distortion features the same two-knob layout as the OOD-9 with the same Drive and Level designations. The OSD-9 sounds good, but seems to be more of a one-trick pony than the ad copy on Maxon''s site would suggest, although that same ad copy also indicated that most people don''t get 741-equipped pedals. Maybe I''m one of "those people," and for those people, Maxon has the OOD-9, which features the nice, safe, familiar JRC 4558 chip. But anything that makes it this easy to rock convincing T-Rex tones has to be worth it for just that, right? Now if I can just remember where I left my dragon embroidered satin bell-bottoms and my size 11 Mary-Janes…
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The VOP-9 is also an updated vintage reissue, but instead of basing another pedal on the OD880, the Vintage Overdrive Pro is based on the OD820, a pedal developed in the mid-nineties as an alternative to the glut of boutique, ''screamer-ish ODs being released at the time. In that respect, things haven''t changed much since rock stars all looked like lumber jacks.
Housed in the ubiquitous Nine Series chassis, the VOP-9 borrows the OD820''s JEC NJM4558D op-amp and negative feedback loop clipping diode. The original pedal operated at 18 volts for improved dynamic response, while the VOP offers selectable 9 or 18 volt operation for additional, surprisingly vast tone tailoring.
The VOP''s control layout will be familiar to Tube Screamer aficionados, sporting knobs for Drive, Tone and Level. What may not be familiar is that the Drive knob acts as a blend control between the clean and distorted sounds, meaning that when the Drive knob is set to zero, no clipping is present. With traditional ''Screamer-derived designs, clipping is always present. This allows a broad range of tones to emanate from the VOP-9, from clean boost to balls out raunch.
Rolling the Drive - or clean/dirty blend - to around one o''clock, Tone at noon and Level between noon and one o''clock delivered tons of gain and output. Just for giggles, I A/B''d the VOP with a particularly nice, modded TS-9 featuring a JRC4558D chip, and the VOP walloped it as far as gain and output at the same settings. As far as the corresponding tone, "wooly" seems like an appropriate word. This pedal seems well suited for folks who are convinced that traditional Tube Screamer circuits are much too polite.
The Final Mojo
If one of these three overdrives isn''t capable of satisfying your boost needs, chances are nothing off the rack can. They offer great tones and bulletproof construction in iconic, attractive packages. The lone holdout is the AD-9 Pro. While the increased headroom and clarity is appreciated, the AD-9 Pro is still a subtle analog delay, dutifully serving those with discerning ears, but it may be too refined, ultimately disappointing players who dig greasy tape and bucket-brigade delays.
Maxon
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Lehle P-Split Iii Signal Splitter
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TAG3 C | Yamaha TransAcoustic Guitars - YouTube
For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.