The drive pedal trap

frictionfraction

Pedal addiction .. I'm over it. Those lovely shiny little metal boxes, in lovely hand painted colours, and twiddly knobs, and switches, and little clothe bags, and different coloured lights .... The sweats are starting will I ever be free can I control the urge to flip over to the classifieds where there is a lovely little Klon clone in gun metal finish with a special little switch that clips and claps and just keeps calling my name

tone1

I've had a palmer solid metal distortion pedal on my board for ages. It can do almost anything from light ACDC to Fuzzy Gilmour and the best bit was it cost £26 on ebay. That and a pure boost mooer.

DannyP

meltedbuzzbox said:

I recently removed my double hotcake from my board. I loved the blueberry side with low gain. Great and sparkly with good dynamics but the normal side was a big huge middy blanket (I understand it works great with an AC30 (which it was designed to do)).

I tried a few things from the pedal cupboard but as always the nobels ODR came back out. 

For the heavier dirt and fuzz sounds I use an Empress Multi drive. I can't recommend one enough. 

The 3 biggest things I have found that can cause doubt in my setup have been, guitar switching, different guitars do sound different (obviously) and it takes a while for your ear to settle with the new change (can happen if you have been listening to music before playing too). The same amp sounds different in new rooms or different places in the same room.

The worst has been this forum though. Too many people plowing through pedals swearing that pedal X is the newest greatest hand crafted NOS true bypassed tone machine ete and it is way better than last months pedal x (Strymons as an example) and that you need to cover all tonal options etc. Sometimes it helps to take it all with a pinch of salt 

I think you can get some great sounds out of the guvnor and the hotcake, I wouldn't be in a hurry to replace them.

Yes, I agree with all of that @meltedbuzzbox

I am mostly using an AC30 live (with a Beatles tribute) so I guess it makes sense to bung that back on.

The AC30 lives in the band studio, as does my big board, so fiddling and speculating at home with my left over pedals and my SE5a is never going to give me an accurate impression of how things will sound.

And ROOMS! Rooms make SUCH a difference, like you wouldn't believe. Not just with frequency response/tonal shape but with the amount of dirt that's produced too it seems. Before I became a jobbing muso, I never really realised this. 

The vast difference between rooms is the reason I gave up on Multi-FX and my POD - perfect presets go out the window in a new room and I need to be able to get in there and tweak things without holding down the EDIT button for 3 seconds and scrolling to the right parameter etc. etc. etc!

DannyP

Drew_fx said:

Drive pedals are something I've just never gotten into. I've had a few sure, but they've always irritated me. Scratchy undynamic sounds that amps alone just piss all over.

Now amps... yes... gone round the block with those!

I agree with this to an extent too, I prefer amp gain. It's just my situation playing in a Beatles tribute dictates the use of pedals for the later material.

Trying to get the overdrive sound on Revolution #2 through an AC30 alone would deafen the front row and lead to a possible rift with our sound man. And it still wouldn't sound right.

Dave_Mc

Yeah

Only thing half getting me out of it is not having enough space on the pedalboard- and even then I end up with 3 pedals which sound the same instead of 5. And by 5 I mean 15.

siraxeman

All you need is something like an OD-3 and a tube screamer and stack em for solos. Use one alone for a rhythm crunch. If you must have something heavier then a rat as well.. Any gig then is no probs. Job done. Easy

Fez

ThePrettyDamned said:

It's largely because there are very few pedals that actually sound bad in the overdrive and distortion world.

So when you try the one you rejected because it "was lacking that hint of sparkle this one has", you'll realise it sounds really great anyway and that it could be used for...

So it's normal.

I have a couple of the BYOC Drive pedals that arn't totally great (Brit overdrive) but then the Triboost and Overdrive 2 (Tubescreamer clone with added boost) are great.

Also our hyperthetical hero is a perfectly normal guitarist displaying classic GAS symptoms which can be relieved by retail therapy.

digitalscream

I used to do this, but I've found the cure - find an amp which gives you your ideal two distorted sounds (lead and rhythm). It's usually quite expensive relative to a drive pedal, so the idea of getting a pedal which makes that purchase redundant makes your brain explode. Job done.

MattG

I fell into this trap for a while but i've found my ideal drive setup with a Monkey FX valve sporker as a low-mid gain OD a providence stampede as a high gain crunch and an angry troll to push the valve sporker into mid gain or to send the providence into searing high gain lead lines, or even just to add a little extra hair to the clean of my amp.

Fuzzes on the other hand thats an all together different story...

Rotosound RBF-1

JHS FZiii

Swart Fuzzy boost

DAM Drag'n'fly

Rainger FX Freakenstien

DOD fx66 flashback fuzz (US run)

meaning i still need a fuzz face, fuzz factory, pharoh, foxx tone machine and a few different big muffs at least!

Well i say need, its definitely more of feeding my obsession at this stage xD

koss59

I'm playing in Beatles tribute now mate, I highly recommend a lumpy's lemon drop. About £100 shipped from the states

DannyP

Ah cool @koss59 I knew you were looking into it when we were discussing rotary sounds. Who are you with?

DannyP

Also, for a live drive, I have a few priorities other than getting a perfect "recording" tone.

Can I see the knobs?

Is there enough scope in the tone control to mitigate the effects of the room?

Can I alter the Drive/Gain/Dirt knob without huge level changes that require a fine balancing act with the Level/Volume knob?

The Guv'nor fails at 1 & 3 but my OCD passes the tests.