OD/Distortion Pedals

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dude.....

bixlmalta said:
I use a boss mt-2, don't overdue the distortion and use an equalizer pedal. I find that my distorted sound is ufll of great tone and plenty of individual chord note clarity. I am running everything through a Fender Hot Rod Deville. Don't laugh, I know that it is a 4 x 10 speaker but I tell you my sound is heavy.

i'm not laughing, i have the same setup ...well for about 2 weeks now but i can't seem to get a good sound out of my mt-2 i run it thru my peavey 50 212 and it's great but not sold on it with the fender yet still working...the clean sound is so good i don't really like to play rough unless i turn the od channel on just a lil .....sorry back to the thread now ...lol
 
Just another very simple idea to keep your sound fairly clean while using distortion or overdrive:

Use an Y-box, so you can run your overdrive/tube/distortion pedal in parallel with your straight sound. The overdriven sound is not as obvious as it is mixed with your clean sound, but it may be just enough to give those"complicated" chords a bit of crunch.

Cheers,

Eddie
 
Again, I am not sure if you are using an equalizer pedal. I bought one as a last resort and I will not play a true distortoin without it. You can really blend the tones. Even better than an equalizer pedal woudl be a rack mount equalizer though.
 
An underappreciated pedals is the Boss Blues Driver. You can actually get pretty earthy, organic distortion using one of them. Not exactly metal levels but it easily exceeds the gain on any Soundgarden album.
 
Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-9 and Boss Super Distortion.

Or simply go for a Pod / Pod Pro - they are dropping in price and there are the Behringer substitutes also.

Roland VF-1's appear on Ebay from time to time - another option.
 
Boss

Mega Distrortion - Great all around distortion pedal....
 
The best OD/Distortion pedal I've hever found is with out a doubt the SIB Varidrive. Of course it is driven with a tube(at 110v) so your tube is actually working... It is a cutom built pedal so the price is high $399 list. I've seen some guys get them for as low as $175 used.

I use this as a front end to my 100w Plexi and it's tone city

Good Luck

Shred
 
Definately try different pickups, a favourite of mine is the EMG 85 in the bridge position. I'm surprised it's not used there more as it is a bit more rounded than the 81 and has more mids, sounds much more natural, especially in the bridge. Try running a Maxon 808 and an EQ pedal in conjunction with boosting the gain on your amp (although I'm not sure of the specs on your amp and whether it has seperate channels and/or preamp gain control). I've done this through a number of amp setups, and found the results very pleasing on pretty much all tube amps, it's just a matter of playing around for a bit. Good Luck.
 
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