Educate me on distortion pedals

Travisthedog

I've never been much of a high gain player - Getting what I wanted usually by stacking my spark booster into whatever drive pedal I own at the time.

However there are few tracks in our set where I'm thinking that this isn't enough

I've watched a lot of YouTube vids (for what they're worth) and I really like the Mesa throttle box

What are your pedals du jour for high gain mayhem and has anyone played the throttle box?

mike_l

NO tried aThrottle box. Yet. But, on paper they look good.

How high gain do you want to go?

Slayer? Maiden? Deep Purple?

Slayer I'd go with any Hi-gain metal-type distortion pedal. Personally I have a Boss Megadistortion.

Maiden Probably a Boss JH-1 Jack Hammer.

Deep Purple A Boss GV-2, or if you can find/get one a Mk1 Guv'nor.

Depending on your taste in amps an MXR Distortion3 is also a nice dirt pedal, though lower gain than it sounds.

 

allicio

There's only one pedal for this job! Get the dr scientist elements from smudgelad Absolutely amazing for high gain. Covers a metric tonne of high gain sounds! And low gain too for that matter!

MtB

I've had the Dr Scientist Elements and moved on to the Throttle Box. Both excellent pedals and great ranges of gain - from bluesy overdrive to full on distortion. From recollection there are examples of both for sale in the classifieds here. For me, the Elements just had too many knobs and toggles to play with, and in this case I prefer simpler controls. 

monquixote

I've had an absolute ton of Distortion pedals. 

It really depends what you mean by high gain. 

A few pedals that might interest you:

RAT/Turbo RAT - The best Classic Distortion pedal IMO. Very much in the "Diodes screaming for mercy" rather than the "amp in a box" school of things. 

Suhr Riot / Joyo US Dream - High Gain but smoothish American sounds

I would say Super Crunchbox, but I'm pretty sure I bought mine of you. I'd call that fairly high gain Marshally sound

Bogner Ecstasy Red - My current squeeze awesome high gain mayhem with infinite amounts of shaping, but very pricey. 

If you want an "Add a high gain channel to my amp" type of a thing then try one of the AMT pedals like the C2

Very reasonable for how good they sound. 

As mike points out the Jackhammer is stupid cheap for how good it sounds, but it's quite fiddly to dial in.

crunchman

I tried the new Mesa pedals not long after they came out.  I was not impressed.

Fulltone GT-500 is good.  Depending on how much gain you want, something like an OCD or BB pre-amp might be ok at the top end of their gain range.  You'd need the OCD on the HP setting.

You could always get another low/mid gain pedal and stack it with you existing pedals.  You could have different flavours of low/mid gain drive that way as well.

juansolo

@JDE is selling one of my modded Dr Boogey pedals in the classifieds for a frankly silly low price (and a fuzz).

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/9475/fs-juansolo-ko-amps-koi-od-durham-sexdrive-gmd-luther-drive-price-drop#latest

To be honest if no bugger buys those, I think I'll have them back, because I can't actually build them for myself that cheaply!

ThePrettyDamned

+1 for Juansolo.  

Also, I love the duncan powergrid, which is a fet based distortion and is just a really thick sound, without having any fizz or nastiness.

ICBM

I like the Rat, it's still one of the best-sounding distortion pedals ever, and very versatile - especially if you get some sort of derivative that allows you to switch diode types to emulate some of the different versions. (I particularly like the RATII and You Dirty Rat.)

I also like the Boss DS-1, although I know a lot of people don't. I agree it can be fussy to dial in - to the point that it often only has one good setting, with some amps - but it's just a classic distortion sound. It's *meant* to be a bit harsh .

But I prefer the DF-2 Super Distortion & Feedbacker - even just as a straight distortion pedal. It's not quite a DS-1 with a feedbacker added, the circuit is very slightly more like a Rat. Probably my favourite distortion ever.

The Big Muff is also great, although there are a confusing number of versions and models which all sound (in some cases extremely) different. My favourite is the Integrated Circuit Big Muff , which is tighter-sounding than the classic discrete-transistor versions and like most Big Muffs is more of a distortion than a fuzz, in my opinion.

mike_l

monquixote said:

As mike points out the Jackhammer is stupid cheap for how good it sounds, but it's quite fiddly to dial in.

Really? I found a sound I like almost straight away.

monquixote

mike_l said:

monquixote said:

As mike points out the Jackhammer is stupid cheap for how good it sounds, but it's quite fiddly to dial in.

Really? I found a sound I like almost straight away.

Plenty of good sounds in there, but sweepable mid controls take a bit of fiddling with and you have to have the confidence to turn the bass almost off. 

Drew_TNBD

Steer clear of boutique ones. They're bullshit.

Maxi

juansolo said:

@JDE is selling one of my modded Dr Boogey pedals in the classifieds for a frankly silly low price (and a fuzz).

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/9475/fs-juansolo-ko-amps-koi-od-durham-sexdrive-gmd-luther-drive-price-drop#latest

To be honest if no bugger buys those, I think I'll have them back, because I can't actually build them for myself that cheaply!

I'd have thought the Dr Boogie would be worth at least £40 s/h You cant really make one for much less unless you buy parts in bulk .
Its a great sounding circuit . I love the way Jfets (j201's) clip . Even the supposedly low gain pedals grind with those buggers in .

juansolo

We actually make that one a little differently. It has a couple of J201s in there. A full set gives it too much gain IMO. Nobody ever biases them properly either, tending to do it by ear which is incredibly random.

FWIW:

Ours run J201s in Q1 and Q2, and 2N5457s in the other positions. We use the fetzer valve formula for biasing, (0.6 x supply voltage) + (0.7 x positive cutoff voltage). As an example a 2N5457 with -1v cutoff would be biased at 5.4v + 0.7v = 6.1v.

For buffer stage at the end we use a 2N5457 with the highest cutoffs we've got. We also swap out C16 for a 10nF to remove some high end fizz.

As for the costs, the PCB alone is £10. In raw parts there's at least £35-40 there. With the price of genuine J201s at the moment, probably more. The UltraStoner (fairly full-on muff) is very similar.

Cirrus

Personally after having tried a whole bunch I've settled on a '90s Rat II as my favourite distortion. My second favourite would definitely be the ZVex Distortron.

BUT, it's so amp dependent that results vary wildly. I think the single biggest thing to watch for is the low end. Some distortion pedals have big low end that either sounds huge or totally mushes out the amp; you've got to tailor the amount and character of the bass and low mids to suit the amp's response at those frequencies - most importantly, how it distorts the low end and what the knock on effects are for headroom and the ability of the amp to deliver the midrange.

Since most distortion pedals have pretty rudimentary tone controls, usually either a simple low pass filter or a knob that blends between "everything below x frequency" and "everything above y frequency" (Big muff being a good example, think DS-1 and SD1 too?), finding a pedal that matches your amp's headroom and distortion response at different frequencies is mostly about lots of trial and error which is why people can end up flipping pedals so much.

Obviously pedals that do have a bass control are that much easier to tailor to your amp; I used a Line 6 DM-4 for a year of live gigging and recording because it was so easy to get things to sound good with proper BMT tone controls! I've settled on the Rat II because it works brilliantly with an AC30 on the edge of breakup. If it was a different amp I might well end up hating it.

Maxi

I recon your method probably steers it away from being a one trick pony . Ive built a few of them , a couple for my self and one for my bro .

I cant fault the G.M schem for brutalz but the original Mesa rec emulation does not translate particularly well to backed off gain but then Ive never owned a high gain distortion box that does .

I was pretty impressed with the voicing  . Cap and resistance values over all create that Mesa rec signiture tone . More amp like than I would ever have believed before making one .

Its just the crunch tones that are missing on mine .

viz

I thought everyone starts off with a Boss DS1? I use a Keeley DS1 for normal and a Keeley MT2 for barootle.

mike_l

monquixote said:

Plenty of good sounds in there, but sweepable mid controls take a bit of fiddling with and you have to have the confidence to turn the bass almost off. 

Agreed on the bass, on the JH-1 and GV-2 both are barely above 0.

I didn't find I needed to fiddle with the mids too much, just turned the bass down, add treble/mids to taste, and gain to taste.

 

Bidley

If I had to use a pedal for my sounds, it would be a Rat. It might take a little while to dial in but I'd be surprised if you can't get what you want out of it.

mike_l

viz said:

I thought everyone starts off with a Boss DS1?

I hated the one I had. Found it too harsh. But that might just have been my playing, and (at the time shitty) amp.

I might just try another.....

nickb_boy

I haven't tried a throttle box but have owned a v twin since the late 90s. Despite that, if you want to check out a versatile distortion box and can track one down at a reasonable price the Emma Electronic Reezafratzitz is one tough pedal to beat.

I've had both the v1 and v2. The v2 has extra tweakability but I would recommend either depending what you can find. There was a v2 up on EBay that may be worth a look (I have no idea who is selling or if it is still there)