GearDump

For those of you familiar with the Deja Vibe line of products that Fulltone has offered the MDV-2 shouldn’t be to big of a shock. For the rest, the MDV-2 is essentially a period-correct Uni-Vibe stand in. There are features and sounds unique to this pedal that really get to the core of what a real univibe can do. Just check out the proguitarshop.com video from youtube.

As is normal, Mike Fuller declined to comment on this story. Fulltone’s history with the Deja-Vibe started with the original Deja Vibe. It was later trumped by the Mini Deja-Vibe. The Deja-Vibe and Mini Deja-Vibe are great clones right down to the matching of original photo resistors and lamps. For those not in the know, Uni-Vibes are an optical phaser. They use photo-resistors and some lamps inside the pedal to actually create the phasing effect. The Dunlop Univibe that is currently manufactured has photo-cells to but they are nothing like the originals since those parts were no longer being made. Fulltone has apparantley started producing NOS parts for these pedals. The Deja Vibe 2 was the first pedal that Fulltone produced that came with a speed control. The original univibe had a speed control that plugged into the box (which was actually about the size of an echoplex). The Deja Vibe 2 somewhat resembled a Morely Wah pedal in that configuration. Early this year the MDV-2 was unveiled to essentially replace the entire Deja Vibe product line. The MDV-2 looks like a Fulltone Clyde wah except for it’s cream colored casing. Under the hood are the electronics of a complete Deja Vibe including all the controls, an LED and some modifications to the Speed Control circuit.

The Deja-Vibe 2 had a switch the user pushed to turn the speed control on or off. The MDV-2 has an ingenious always-off unless rockered slightly forward operation–the best part is Fulltone actually managed to make a true-bypass pedal with this configuration. I’ll spare the lecture on why you might not want true bypass for another article but if you’ve ever built or modded pedals then putting true bypass in a pedal like this would be difficult to say the least.

Most importantly, does the MDV-2 give those watery textures offered by the other Deja-Vibe products and does it come close to the original Uni-Vibe? In a nutshell, Yes. The MDV-2 actually sounds closer then the Dunlop “reissue” and is frankly the best main-stream uni-vibe clone on the market. It is slightly pricey but if you want those tones without the rediculous pricetag and maintenance fees the MDV-2 might just be the ticket. Hell, even Robin Trower, who has depended on a Vibe pedal of some sort has been spotted with each of the Deja-Vibe products at different times.  If you know Fulltone’s build quality, it is excellent. The parts are top notch, the boards are easy to work with for repairs and are amongst some of the most reliable designs on the market.

Fulltone MDV-2 at www.fulltone.com

Gearmandude did some shootouts on the OCD and it’s various versions. To be perfectly honest my love for the OCD started when I decided I wanted an overdrive pedal again and was tired of the standard Tubescreamer/Boss lineup. I am a big fan of Robin Trower’s playing and tone so I investigated his rig from a few years back and discovered that he was a heavy OCD user. Robin Trower now uses a signature Fulltone Overdrive which is allegedly very similar to the OCD.

For shear versatility the OCD seems to be one of the most amazing overdrives I have ever touched. It can get really gainy and do a distortion kind of effect or you can set the gain back and crank the volume to get a huge volume boost. When I heard there was a clone of it put out by Danelectro I decided to give that a whirl—and for the money who wouldn’t? It is a very similar pedal to the OCD but lacks the hi/lo switch. Honestly I think the OCD V4 I own sounds great at medium gain settings but the Cool Cat Drive sounds better when the gain is maxed. The Cool Cat actually sounds a bit grainier when used with no power tube saturation but when played through cranked tubes it looses that quality completely. Many players cite the Digitech Bad Monkey as a great budget OD but I think the Cool Cat has it beat dollar for dollar. I might be comparing Apples & Oranges though since the Bad Monkey is a budget Tube Screamer and the OCD is something entirely different.

In the versions video you can see that Mike Fuller at Fulltone has made a lot of modifications to the circuit since it was originally released. At some point I want to get one of each version just so I can have them in my tonal pallet for recording purposes but based on the video I think the V4 is the swiss army knife of the OCD’s.