Oto Driver

Loud as Hell.

The ‘Oto Driver’ is a distortion pedal that has been heavily inspired by the punk Japanese quartet Otoboke Beaver. I discovered their music in 2018 and qucikly got hooked by the blistering pace, the dynamic compositions, and the overall ‘raw’ punk sound that they carry.

In 2022, I caught wind of their first North American tour and was stoked to see they were coming through Toronto. The performance was beyond anything I could have expected. I found myself inspired to persue the creation of a distortion circuit that could abstractly put the feeling of seeing that show, into an instrument.

At the time, there wasn’t much to go off in terms of research for how Otoboke Beaver’s guitarist Yoyoyoshie achieves her sound. On their records there are clear traces of both overdrive distortions and fuzzes, but I couldn’t really nail the sound when playing around with some different circuit layouts. As a result, I decided to aim for a more ‘middle path’.

The result is a versatile distortion that can maintain the clarity of chords, and clean up quite nicely if you don’t want to get too wild with it. However, on the other end, it can still get incredibly saturated with a near fuzz-like crunch and packs an irresponsible amount of volume. This thing will bully amplifiers.

After coming up with a working test model, I got in touch with the band’s manager and asked if it would be cool to try and gift the pedal to Yoyoyoshie. They accepted and the pedal has been with Otoboke Beaver ever since their 2024 North American Tour.

Pedal Features:
– 3 band EQ: Bass, Mids, Treble
– Volume Control
– Gain Control
– Custom Buffer Stage
(scoops mids, shapes highs, provides stronger output from amp)
– As orange as you can get

Otoboke Beaver links:

Bandcamp: https://otobokebeaver.bandcamp.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/otobokebeaver/

Website: https://www.otobokebeaver.com

Guitar Magazine Article: https://guitarmagazine.jp/interview/2024-1129-otobokebeaver-amp-pedal/