Before the term was standardized, “overdrive” used to mean a great many things in pedal parlance. Univox released one called the Uni-Drive that sounded like a fuzz. Ibanez released a pedal called the Overdrive, but it was actually a slightly modified Big Muff. The follow-up to that—the Overdrive II—still featured hard clipping. Not to be outdone, a small company in Kalamazoo, Michigan called Systems & Technology in Music, Inc. (Systech) released its take on the word “overdrive”, called, well, the Overdrive. With all the liberties taken on this word, the Systech specimen might have been the wildest, featuring a hot-rodded op-amp and a resonant band-pass filter that they called “EQ”.

Our Misnomer is our fully-loaded take on the Systech Overdrive, and she’s a good one; despite its relatively simple topology, the band-pass filter changes the tone so much that there’s not much else out there like it. It sounds sort of like a cocked wah with an extremely narrow passband that makes it sound more like a synth than any wah circuit you’ve heard. To counterbalance this, we’ve added a clean blend control and the ability to apply the EQ circuit to just the wet side of the circuit or both wet and dry sides. Rolling the Blend knob all the way down allows you to use the filter on any effects placed before the Misnomer. There’s a lot of variance to be had here and it all adds up to a criminally overlooked circuit that needs a slot on your board.

The original Systech device has a tendency to mud up and compress mightily, and the Blend control goes a long way to mitigate this, giving the tone some breathing room by adding just a hair of clean back in. Bass players (and yes, this thing RULES on bass) will love it for preserving the instrument’s low end by dialing in an equal mix.

Because the Blend splits the incoming signal, this means that any other effects switched on before the Misnomer are also part of the mix. Use this to your advantage to mix your dirt pedals together in parallel—with or without the Misnomer’s filter on the dry side.

Rolling the Blend down to minimum gives you the exact same thing you put into it. You can then flip the switch to “Mix”, applying the filter to the dry signal and thus your other effects. Use this to your advantage, feeding your existing effects into the resonant filter for some extra seasoning.

FREQUENCY This knob sweeps the onboard high-Q band-pass filter from 122Hz to 900Hz as you turn the knob up. Band-pass filters let the defined slice of frequencies (the width of that slice defined as “Q”) pass through, while rolling off those above and below the slice. This control sounds most comparable to a cocked wah but with a much narrower passband.

VOLUME: The classic loudener, presented without comment.

WET/MIX TOGGLE: This switch gives you the ability to apply the Frequency knob to both sides of the Blend control or just the wet side like the original. This lets you use the Misnomer’s filter on any other pedal you place before it by turning the Blend knob all the way down.

BLEND: Unlike the original, the Misnomer is equipped with a clean blend circuit that splits the circuit in two. One of those heads into the rest of the Misnomer and gets filtered, distorted and processed. The other gets sent directly to the Blend knob so you can mix between them. When this knob is all the way down, only the dry input signal is heard. When it’s all the way up, only the sound of the Misnomer is heard.

GAIN: Up is more distorted, down is less.

The Misnomer accepts a 9V center-negative power supply capable of providing at least xxmA of current (nearly all of them do, and over is fine). Plugging anything other than this (higher voltage, wrong polarity, AC, etc.) into the Misnomer will either cause it to not work (best case) or break and void your warranty (worst case). Don’t chance it, check the power supply to make sure yours is correct!

Having done just over 70 unique Kula’s Cabinet blog posts spanning over 60 years of guitar equipment history, we’ve encountered a lot of questions and comments about individual pieces of gear, but there is one overarching inquiry we’ve received far more than any other: “OK, but what do they actually sound like?”It’s a very fair question, one that really has no immediate and good answer. For as many people lavish praise on internet gear demo channels, there are as many detractors that don’t want to hear people that play in their style. So we had an idea: why not let you decide?We’re relaunching our Cabinet articles along with a parallel series, conveniently called the Cabinet Series. With it, we aim to supply you with the same tools used by popular artists throughout history, with quality-of-life upgrades as we see fit. In other words, all of the good and none of the bad, unless of course it interferes with the character of the original.We’ll be revamping some of our pieces to reflect this as well, supplying you with new information, starter settings, and specific tracks where you can hear how the greats used their stuff. See you in the Cabinet!