An overdrive revelation

Kalimna

As a slight counter to the overdrive/distortion posts at the moment, I'll pass on something I discovered at a practice last night.
For some time I have been building pedals at home on veroboard (mostly overdrive/gain/boosty pedals) but have struggled to come up with a tone that I was entirely happy with. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that my current amp is a Blackstar TVP 15 (in itself a fabulous lump of black noisemaker - just not necessarily a good pedal platform), but also that I have been playing quietly at home.
Anyway, I was playing around with stacking the overdrives, and with a bit more volume to it (i.e. heard alongside drums and bass) the tone was utterly glorious. Thick, crunchy barking overdrive/distortion.

The pedals I used were clones of Catalinbreads CB30 (Vox AC30-inna-pedal) into a Catalinbread Naga Viper (treble-booster) which was then fed into a Voodoo Labs SparkleDrive clone. I tended to keep the Naga viper on all the time (it even ended up making a Les Paul neck pickup sound scarily Strat-ish), and added in the Sparkle for more overdrivve and the CB30 too every so often.

With any luck, they will sound even better when lined up in front of a valve amp

Cheers,
Adam

Ro_S

that's the intended purpose of a treble booster

Kalimna

Ok, that I didnt know. The three pedals still worked nicely together into a Blackstar