Dirty Textures

[JasonE]

Excellent topic, I will be learning from this thread as I am now looking for a pedal to plug into my live setup (HB SE + Cube street) for the odd occasion I'll need to rock a solo with my vocalist.

I've never had any problem dialing up a smoother gain on my Mark 5 with the 6L6's but I don't use it for these gigs, and I've never had a lot of luck with pedals. I find OD pedals limiting as the gain structure is low and I have to push it too hard, then distortion pedals are mostly too high gain and rolling them back doesn't get me the same results as rolling back the gain on my tube amp.

Was looking for a cheap fix and don't want to spend a lot on something I'll use only once in a while so I stopped by a music shop to try some pedals. After trying an MXR"Timmy" (poor overall tone, slightly fizzy) and a Rat (fizz city as soon as you turn it to one) I was left bewildered with my lack of knowledge & experience with stompboxes so I guess I need to observe more.

There are a number of methods for getting great dirt tones out of pedals. One thing that I do more of now than I used to is I dial the pedals up for my lead tone then I roll my guitar volume back to get the sound I want for my rhythm tones. Then when it is time for a solo, just roll the volume up and it is there. I have many pedals that work well for this.

Another method that I use is to stack two OD pedals. I find that if I set the gain low on them I can get great dynamic sounds from them and if I stack two OD pedals set to a lower gain, I can get a tone with more gain without losing my dynamics. It sounds better to me than using one pedal with the gain turned up higher.

It took some years and a lot of testing to get to these techniques. I don't know what your budget is or what exactly you are looking for. That makes it a little difficult to point you to some pedals. Two that I would say to look at because they are really great sounding pedals that are in the lower price point range are the Wampler Triumph and Wampler Phenom. I bought both of them last year and was very surprised at how good they sound. They deliver a sound that you expect from a pedal that costs more than double. I ordered the Triumph first. Then I saw a demo of the Phenom. I thought it was going to be too much gain and have a tone I wasn't gong to like because it is called a distortion pedal. That is an unfortunate naming of a great pedal. It is really more of an OD and has great tones at lower to mid gain ranges. Both of these pedals respond very well to volume knob changes.

 

[László]

One thing that I do more of now than I used to is I dial the pedals up for my lead tone then I roll my guitar volume back to get the sound I want for my rhythm tones. Then when it is time for a solo, just roll the volume up and it is there. I have many pedals that work well for this.

I do this with amps, too.

Another method that I use is to stack two OD pedals. I find that if I set the gain low on them I can get great dynamic sounds from them and if I stack two OD pedals set to a lower gain, I can get a tone with more gain without losing my dynamics. It sounds better to me than using one pedal with the gain turned up higher.

I sometimes stack a Suhr KokoBoost into a low or medium-gain overdrive. The boost itself is beautifully shimmery, even at unity gain, but hold the switch for a second or two longer with your foot, and it becomes a sweepable mid-to-upper-mid boost.

The mid-boost option helps it cut. Though the OD stack gives you smooth saturation, there are times when the cost of stacking two OD pedals is a loss of dynamics that puts the note a little too far back in the mix. So what sounds good when you're alone can disappear with a band or in a recording.

Any good EQ pedal can do this trick. Boost at the frequency you like just a few db, raise the output level of the EQ a bit, and you get pretty much the same result. Sent into an OD, the combination of added saturation plus cut can sound pretty sweet with the right pedal.

 

[JasonE]

I do this with amps, too.

I sometimes stack a Suhr KokoBoost into a low or medium-gain overdrive. The boost itself is beautifully shimmery, even at unity gain, but hold the switch for a second or two longer with your foot, and it becomes a sweepable mid-to-upper-mid boost.

The mid-boost option helps it cut. Though the OD stack gives you smooth saturation, there are times when the cost of stacking two OD pedals is a loss of dynamics that puts the note a little too far back in the mix. So what sounds good when you're alone can disappear with a band or in a recording.

Any good EQ pedal can do this trick. Boost at the frequency you like just a few db, raise the output level of the EQ a bit, and you get pretty much the same result. Sent into an OD, the combination of added saturation plus cut can sound pretty sweet with the right pedal.

I use a Friedman Buxom Boost and a WMD Utility Parametric EQ in a similar manner. The Buxom Boost has an active EQ in it. It is very powerful. A little tweak of one of the knobs goes a long way. The WMD EQ is nice because it has three adjustable bands in it. You can sweep for the frequency then set the Q then the volume, cut or boost, then the overall volume of the pedal. There is a lot of overlap in the three bands so you can really dial in what you are looking for. I have used both of these to boost into the front end of my Twin Sister and they work great for this.

Another thing I did accidently when going through my compressor pedal excursion last year is that I was testing the compressors on the Twin Sister with the channel set clean. I turned on one of the compressors and I had it squishing a decent amount and had the volume set to make up the loss in volume. It actually put the clean channel on the Twin Sister into OD. I had never thought about boosting my amp with a compressor. It was like the compressor started the compression and the amp took it into an OD compression. It sounded really good. I was really shocked. I should play around with that more now that I am remembering that I did that.

 

[László]

It was like the compressor started the compression and the amp took it into an OD compression. It sounded really good. I was really shocked. I should play around with that more now that I am remembering that I did that.

Sounds like fun, actually. I'm going to try it!