I've tried this pedal with both vintage and newer guitars, primarily Les Pauls, Strats and Teles...I will say that these guitars are really good pieces, and they have taken me decades to vet/acquire. I play through vintage and vintage-style amps (Fenders, Marshalls, Voxes, Matchless, Komet).
I found the CJOD to sound best at higher drive settings, into Vox style amps - at higher gain settings, the notes had a nice bloom to them, but I found it to be voiced similarly to the Landgraff DO (though much brighter and harder edged than the LDO). Most of the lower gain sounds were just painful to my ears. Frankly, I was a bit underwhelmed given the almost mythical status of this pedal. I found better high gain tones in other pedals (to my ears), and again, I didn't care for the lower gain settings of the CJOD at all.
Reliability/Durability:
The reliability is decent, though it is apparently unrepairable if it were to break. The entire circuit it encapsulated in hard black epoxy (it looks like someone dropped a deuce on the circuit). I guess there's a fair chance you'd be SOL if it were to break - from what I gather, the manufacturer is a great guy but a bit cranky - I hear he has a bad taste in his mouth over these pedals.
Ease of Use:
The pedal/effect under review is the Clay Jones OverDrive, widely known as the CJOD. No manual was supplied with the pedal, though it is quite simple to use. It has three unmarked knobs: (1) gain/drive level, (2) tone, (3) volume. It's relatively easy to dial in the drive and volume knobs, but I found the tone knob to be very trebly with all of my amps, so the useful range was only about the lower 20% of the tone knob rotation.
Customer Support:
No idea - see above. I gather that the builder has bad juju over these pedals. I'd hate to ask him to repair one (especially if you are not an original owner).
Overall Rating:
In summary, I was very underwhelmed - this was a decent overdrive, but I have many others that I preferred for *my* preferences for tone. I paid too much money for it, and yet (to my surprise) I still sold it for a profit.
The mythical status of this pedal is a bit ridiculous - it's a friggin' pedal fer chrissakes....it's not going to make a huge difference in your tonal chain. Buy any one of the reasonably-priced great boutique OD pedals available today, and invest a few hours learning some new licks or writing a new song - you will be far better off than spending a boatload of $ on a used CJOD.
