# Sooo... Revv G3 vs Friedman BE-OD?



## Sogradde (Sep 5, 2018)

I tried to find proper reviews of both but most of the time the reviewer just plays some dadrock and we all know, the cool kids want chuggz and br00tz.

Has anyone had the chance to try them against each other? I'm looking for something similar to the 5153 red channel. Not too fuzzy, nice mids and tight. Any recommendations?


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## budda (Sep 5, 2018)

Why not just get a 5153 and save some money then?


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## Sogradde (Sep 5, 2018)

Because I have one already.


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## Vyn (Sep 5, 2018)

...why not get both? #pedalphilia


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## shred-o-holic (Sep 5, 2018)

The Friedman isn't as thick as the gain for the 5153. It's a more focused heavily modded Marshall tone to me. Would love to try a REVV


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## Turgon (Sep 5, 2018)

I have the Friedman and think it's a good pedal. I have the internal gain trimpot around the middle, because I use it both as a standalone Dist and as an OD in front of the amp. Alone it's okay, but not as brutal as the revvG (based on YT-Vids). The biggest downer is the missing Mid-knob. Tosin runs an Empress ParaEQ after his BE-ODs and his tone slays... 

To use it as an OD in front of an distorted amp is a bit over the top, but you can good results mainly due to the Tight-knob. That being said, it can get kinda noisy...

I'm actually thinking of dropping the BE-OD and getting the Revv...


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## Mike_R (Sep 5, 2018)

I haven't tried the Revv, but I did pick up the BE-OD a few weeks back. I've run it in front of my 5153 and as a preamp in the effects return or straight into my interface. I've been playing with it dialed somewhere between thrash and a modern metal tone. I haven't been really able to get it to do the 5153 red channel sound, but I also had the 5150 pedal and felt that couldn't really do the red channel either. I do like the BE-OD though. If I had a Marshall with a lot of gain I don't know that I would need it, but it does get me somewhere in the JCM/JVM ballpark but tighter for not a lot of money.


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## mpexus (Sep 5, 2018)

Mike_R said:


> but I also had the 5150 pedal and felt that couldn't really do the red channel either.



Isn't the MXR 5150 just the Blue Channel? At least that's how it was marketed.


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## Mike_R (Sep 5, 2018)

mpexus said:


> Isn't the MXR 5150 just the Blue Channel? At least that's how it was marketed.



Yes, and it was fairly close to the blue to my ears. I haven't found a pedal that sounds like the red channel on the 5153. The G3 doesn't quite get there in the demos I've heard either, but I haven't played with one in person.


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## TheWarAgainstTime (Sep 5, 2018)

Where is @Deadpool_25 when we need him most?


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## Sogradde (Sep 5, 2018)

Thank you guys for your replies so far!


Vyn said:


> ...why not get both? #pedalphilia


Why do you hate my wallet, man?

@Turgon and @Mike_R
Do you feel the BE-OD is particularily dark? The few high gain demos I saw made it seem like you need to crank the highs to get away from that "blanket over the speaker" kind of sound.


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## Vyn (Sep 5, 2018)

Sogradde said:


> Thank you guys for your replies so far!
> 
> Why do you hate my wallet, man?
> 
> ...



Gave up on saving money years ago xD Generally speaking if it came down to two or three products that I couldn't choose between I'd just get both or all three, then after a few months of living with them I'd sell the ones I didn't like/wasn't using. Or in the case of pedals, keep all of them and display them on a big arse bookshelf xD


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Sep 5, 2018)

I feel Friedman tones are in fact pretty dark. Lotsa growly mid range but not a lot of high end presence.


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## Mike_R (Sep 5, 2018)

I have the treble at around 1 o clock and the presence on the pedal at noon, feeding into a 5153 effects loop with the amp presence at about 3 o clock. So I guess the higher frequencies are boosted some, but it doesn't sound overly harsh or fizzy to me. Running it straight into an interface/IR I turn the presence on the pedal up to about 3 o clock.


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## protest (Sep 5, 2018)

I feel like AmpTweaker or AMT might be better options if you're looking for that specific tone. The BE-OD is a really nice pedal. I always ran a slight mid boost with mine, and it turned it into a monster. Not sure it was a 5150 kinda tone though.


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## Bearitone (Sep 5, 2018)

If you want chugz and br00tz i highly recommend Amptweaker and AMT.


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## Gmork (Sep 6, 2018)

kindsage said:


> If you want chugz and br00tz i highly recommend Amptweaker and AMT.


Chugga chugga Brootz brootz ... Kill me


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## Turgon (Sep 6, 2018)

Sogradde said:


> @Turgon and @Mike_R
> Do you feel the BE-OD is particularily dark? The few high gain demos I saw made it seem like you need to crank the highs to get away from that "blanket over the speaker" kind of sound.



Yes, I have to crank the Highs and Presence pretty much to get sounds that I like. Truth be told I almost crank the treble on any distortion tone.


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## Deadpool_25 (Sep 6, 2018)

I did have both and compared them back to back. Both have a lot of clarity. The BE-OD definitely seems a bit more scooped sounding, so if you want some good mids, you might prefer the G3. It has a mid knob, while the BE does not. With that said, between the two, I definitely preferred the BE and sold the G3. 

Kindsage recommended AMT and I quite agree. I have the R2, P2, and M2 (and the F1 is on its way). They do lack the insane clarity of the BE, but still have plenty and they all sound amazing. The P2 (and R2) through my 5150 loop is badass (only did that to try it of course). As much as I love the BE I don’t think it’ll be on my new board. The AMTs will.


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## Bearitone (Sep 6, 2018)

Deadpool_25 said:


> I did have both and compared them back to back. Both have a lot of clarity. The BE-OD definitely seems a bit more scooped sounding, so if you want some good mids, you might prefer the G3. It has a mid knob, while the BE does not. With that said, between the two, I definitely preferred the BE and sold the G3.
> 
> Kindsage recommended AMT and I quite agree. I have the R2, P2, and M2 (and the F1 is on its way). They do lack the insane clarity of the BE, but still have plenty and they all sound amazing. The P2 (and R2) through my 5150 loop is badass (only did that to try it of course). As much as I love the BE I don’t think it’ll be on my new board. The AMTs will.



Clarity comes from presence which my Mosvalve 500 has PLENTY of. That said you can grab the new Amptweaker Depth Finder if you want to add a presence knob (and resonance knob) to your signal chain


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## mnemonic (Sep 7, 2018)

BE-OD is really cool, it kind of straddles the line between distortion pedal and preamp. It’s very loud for a distortion pedal but doesn’t quite have as much volume on tap as a preamp. 

It’s kind of picky about clean channels you run it on. Seems to sound it’s best on amps that don’t have a bright cap. I wasn’t super impressed with it on my recto’s clean channel, but into the FX return in modern mode, it sounded crushing. 

Comparatively, running it into my Fryette 2/50/2 was a bit disappointing, it was boxy and flat, basically sounded like a distortion pedal into a power amp. But the 2/50/2 is pretty neutral as far as tube power amps go. 

Into various clean amp channels in my axe FX, I got some awesome results, my favourite were the ODS100 clean and the Jazz Chorus clean channels. 

The tight control is cool and it takes a boost well. It also works well as a boost itself if you turn the internal gain trimpot down low. 

Due to no mid control it does benefit from putting a graphic eq after it, but I like to do this with most stuff anyway. 

Never tried the G3 but it does look really cool.


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## Werecow (Sep 7, 2018)

Sogradde said:


> I tried to find proper reviews of both but most of the time the reviewer just plays some dadrock and we all know, the cool kids want chuggz and br00tz.
> 
> Has anyone had the chance to try them against each other? I'm looking for something similar to the 5153 red channel. Not too fuzzy, nice mids and tight. Any recommendations?



Wouldn't the Mooer 005 be better for you then? It's a modeller pedal based on the 5153 red channel. Some big bands even use them for fly-away gigs now.
Or do you actually genuinely mean just similar, as in not exactly the same?


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## Wolfhorsky (Sep 7, 2018)

As much as i love BE-OD, I LOVE the OMG part from my rk5 flyrig. Simple and perfectly balanced mids, bass, prescence. I also like Strymon Riverside. It is now possible to use MIDI to have lots of presets and to change them simultaneously with other stuff via MIDI.


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## KnightBrolaire (Sep 7, 2018)

revv sounds sick


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## Sogradde (Sep 8, 2018)

KnightBrolaire said:


> revv sounds sick



Cool video, I like Paul's stuff alot.
The G3 sounds really really good in this one. I suppose it's a bit more flexible than the BE-OD aswell.


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## rexbinary (Sep 15, 2018)

You might want to wait for the Friedman DP-OD to release. It will have a mid knobs for mid range boost.









http://stompboxsteals.blogspot.com/2018/01/teaser-friedman-dp-od-deluxe-be-od.html


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## Steinmetzify (Sep 16, 2018)

Sogradde said:


> I tried to find proper reviews of both but most of the time the reviewer just plays some dadrock and we all know, the cool kids want chuggz and br00tz.
> 
> Has anyone had the chance to try them against each other? I'm looking for something similar to the 5153 red channel. Not too fuzzy, nice mids and tight. Any recommendations?



Don't know about both, but tis is my exact pedal into a Fryette PS into a Mode 4 Marshall cab.....Jer is a bro and asked to demo it. 

This is wat we got...


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## Sogradde (Sep 17, 2018)

So, I "randomly" happened to buy a Helix LT (New Gear Thread soonish) and I'm quite satisfied with my tones for now. I can definitely hear the hot-rodded Marshally vibe in the Helix' Friedman model and to my surprise, I like it alot.



rexbinary said:


> You might want to wait for the Friedman DP-OD to release. It will have a mid knobs for mid range boost.



This is really cool. Is the Channel switch like "HBE On/Off" or what does it do? I'm not too familiar with Friedman amps.


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## shred-o-holic (Sep 19, 2018)

So many great pedals out there. Definitely has my interest. But for those who say the BE OD sounds better that sort of is a buzz kill if that's the truth. My Strymon Sunset trumped the kick ass BE OD.


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## BranchDavidian (Sep 20, 2018)

I have the 5153 and the rev g3. They achieve very similar high gain tones. The g3 offers something closer sounding to tube distortion than say, the tightmetal line (which are nice as well but the rev beats them)

when i wanted a more portable live amp I bought the 5153, the g3, and tightmetal pro (ran the pedals into a powerstage 170) to have a shoot out. Ended up keeping all 3. The rev gets closer. Which is a hell if a statement considering im pretty sure the tightmetal pro is built by the same guy that worked on the 5150


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## shred-o-holic (Sep 20, 2018)

This stuff is so subjective. I didn't even like the 5153 pedal. Much preferred the Friedman and then the Strymon.


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## mnemonic (Sep 20, 2018)

On top of all that subjectivity, preamp pedals, and even moreso distortion pedals, are also greatly influenced by the sound of what you’re running it though.

I was doing some experimenting yesterday, with my BE-OD clone and VH4 clone. I found that the VH4 pedal (drive pedal output) into a clean channel without a bright cap sounded dark and distant and shitty. But preamp-output into that same clean channel sounded great (had to keep treble and volume low though, like 9:00).

However, enabling the bright cap on the clean channel made the drive pedal output of the VH4 sound great. Conversely, the BE-OD hates clean channels with bright caps, it sounded like a can of bees. Disable bright cap, and it sounds great again.

And that is just one single capacitor in the circuit path. Then you’ve got the difference in voicing between a fender blackface clean, fender tweed clean, Marshall clean, whatever other amp clean, etc. If you’re using them as preamps into a poweramp, there’s a great difference between a Marshall poweramp, Fryette poweramp, Mesa poweramp, etc.

More and more I feel like pedal demos are about as useful as pickup demos. Meaning, almost not useful at all unless you’re planning on using the exact same signal chain. Good for getting an idea of how the controls work and how much gain is on tap, but not a whole lot more.


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## Sogradde (Sep 20, 2018)

mnemonic said:


> [...]


I'm going to put my ignorance on display here but I always thought preamp pedals were meant to go straight into the poweramp? I'd assume running it through the amp's pre first - no matter how clean - will still colour the sound (more or less negatively)?


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## mnemonic (Sep 20, 2018)

Sogradde said:


> I'm going to put my ignorance on display here but I always thought preamp pedals were meant to go straight into the poweramp? I'd assume running it through the amp's pre first - no matter how clean - will still colour the sound (more or less negatively)?



Yes, preamp pedals meant to go direct into the power amp, but that power amp (and cab) will color the sound. Sometimes significantly, sometimes less. 

Just because something is a preamp though, doesn’t mean you _have_ to run it that way. The VH4 pedal has two outputs, a ‘drive pedal’ output meant to go into the front end of a clean amp, and a ‘preamp’ output meant to go direct into a power amp. The ‘preamp’ output is a lot brighter, hifi, and louder. But you can use either whichever way you prefer. 

The BE-OD is technically just a distortion pedal, but again, if you want to run it direct into a power amp, you can. 

I think Revv have been purposely ambiguous about it, because there aren’t really any set rules about how things have to be used.


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## Sogradde (Sep 20, 2018)

I see. The more you know..


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## Wolfhorsky (Sep 20, 2018)

I will just add that Henning’s pedals reviews are the most usefull because he always test them with different amps.


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