Description
Co-designed with Eddie Van Halen himself, the MXR EVH5150 Overdrive is built to cover the full arc of his tone—from the raw, biting edge of his early recordings to the tight, articulate high-gain sound he favored later on. At the heart of the circuit sit multi-stage MOSFETs, hand-adjusted to emulate the feel and harmonic richness of a driven tube amp, no matter what amp or cab you’re running into.
On the board, the layout gives you real control over shape and behavior, not just volume. Gain and Output handle drive amount and level independently, while a 3-band passive EQ stack lets you carve mids, scoop or push bass, and dial in top-end bite to match your guitar and amp combo. Flip the Boost switch when a solo needs extra push—it adds gain and compression on demand without a separate pedal. The Gate control, running on MXR’s Smart Gate circuit, keeps high-gain hiss and hum in check so your rests stay quiet even at aggressive settings.
Where you place it matters: run it in front of a clean or lightly-driven amp for amp-like breakup with a personality of its own, or stack it ahead of an already-dirty channel to push into thicker, more compressed saturation. True bypass switching means it stays out of the way when off, so your dry tone through the rest of the board remains untouched.
- Developed directly with Eddie Van Halen
- Multi-stage MOSFET drive circuit for tube-like saturation
- Gain, Output, and 3-band passive EQ controls
- Boost switch for extra gain and compression on the fly
- Smart Gate noise-gate circuit with dedicated Gate control
- True bypass switching in a durable housing with EVH artwork
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