What order do you have them in?

The Electro Harmonix OD Glove is essentially EHX’ take on (clone of) the Fulltone OCD. Both are FET overdrives and both have the tone knob and tone shaping toggle. The OD Glove uses MOSFEt circuitry and the OCD circuitry has changed over time. I think the latest is JFEt as in EHX’ ehxtortion pedal. The OD Glove has one extra very important feature that I think makes it superior to the OCD, that is internally switchable operating voltage – 9v or 18v. Running the pedal at 18v internally like the Soul Food (EHX’ take on the Klon Centaur) gives you more headroom and changes the feel of the pedal. It changes how the pedal responds to the guitar’s volume control or how hard you’re playing the guitar. If you’re compressing the signal, either with a compressor or a distortion that is creating compression, BEFORE the OD Glove, then that will make the OD Glove less responsive. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s just the way pedal order affects things.

Another feature of the OD Glove (and the OCD which is why it’s so popular) is that it has a HUGE range of gain and the lowest level of gain (overdrive) is as transparent as its highest level of gain (distortion). That’s what makes it an overdrive/distortion rather than just a distortion.

The MXR Super Badass is an op-amp based distortion. Its main claim to fame is the three band active EQ. EHX currently makes a few distortions with more than one tone control. The Deluxe Big Muff Pi, the EHX Tortion, the Metal Muff with Top Boost, and the Operation Overlord all give you direct control over the mids. Currently EHX makes two op-amp distortions that I know of – the Metal Muff (all versions?) and the Big Muff Pi Op-Amp. So, the closest thing that Electro~Harmonix is currently offering to the MXR Super Badass is the Metal Muff with Top Boost. Both the MXR Super Badass and the Electro~Harmonix Metal Muff with Top Boost are op-amp distortions with three band active EQs.

I can’t compare the gain of the Metal Muff to the Super Badass because EHX doesn’t publish that, but you can hear in demos that they are both equally massive.

The Metal Muff gives you a greater cut/boost in the bass than the Super Badass – 14dB vs 11dB.

The Metal Muff gives you a greater cut/boost in the mids than the Super Badass – 15dB vs 12dB. That’s massive in the MM by the way.

The Metal Muff gives you exactly the same cut/boost in the treble as the Super Badass – 10dB.

Additionally, the MM has a foot switchable “Top Boost” circuit that “provides an extra ‘bite’ by boosting a narrow band of high frequencies.” Sounds like a very high-q (narrow band) boost. Lots of people say that it’s extremely annoying, but I’m sure it does the job of cutting through the mix in a loud live setting.

If you haven’t, you might want to experiment again with placement and the use of the internal 18v~9v switch to see if you can get closer to what you want that way.

If you were thinking about using the MXR as an OD into the OD Glove to drive the front end of the Glove into distortion, I wouldn’t expect that to work well. MXR->EHX, I would run the MXR maximum dirty and the EHX with lots of headroom (18v) and clean (low gain). I would start there and remember that the superpower of the OD Glove is its CLEAN boost and it’s signature tone switch. Going the other way, EHX->MXR, you would pick 18v if you want to be able to clean up your sound or control the dirt with your touch, 9v if you want a super compressed smooth buzzy fuzz. Start with the gain all the way down on the Glove and the gain about half way on your Super Badass, then see how turning up the VOLUME on the Glove affects the distortion on the Badass. Play back and forth between using the output volume without distortion from the Glove and using distortion (gain) on the Glove to add additional distortion to the Badass.

FET distortions (Glove and OCD) and op-amp distortions (Metal Muff and Super Badass) distort the signal differently. One is symmetric the other is asymmetric. So the order makes a big difference as well as how much distortion each one is providing. There’s a big difference between distorting an overdrive and overdriving a distortion. There’s also a big difference between overdriving a distortion and distorting a distortion. Finally, there’s a big difference between symmetrically distorting an asymmetric distortion and asymmetrically distorting a symmetric distortion.

Hello, thread revival for discussing similar scheme.

I am thinking of getting the Glove to further push the MXR FOD which I already have, aiming for having the option for a more “metal” tone.

Would the above approach of Glove->FOD work like with the Badass, as a boost “cranking” the marshall amp simulations of the FOD?
Or the other way around could be of any use?
Would any other EHX drive pedal work better for what I have in mind?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts