Never been one for effects but...

[davebungo]

If you're cranking a valve amp and getting a nice tone, can it be further improved by using an overdrive/distortion pedal? or does it just mush up the sound.  Just wondering 'cause I've never tried it.  i currently use the amps boost switch for lead tones.

[coreybox]

there is no way to accuratly answer this questin due to that is is largely an opinion. if you like the sound you have, why change it? more than likely though since this is an effects forum, people are going to recommend effects for you to use. whether it is your thing or not i would not know. a booster will keep your guitar and amp tone intact, but just push the valves harder, causing a very natural sounding overdrive. i prefer this sound, but normally its is at a ear busting volume level(i use a 50 watt 4x12 amp though, so smaller amps would be better for this). overdrive boxes (tueb screamer ect.) also yield(what a great album) a similar tone to the breaking up of an amplifier. these are better to get that tone at a lower volume level. distortion/fuzz pedals are super saturated over the top gain sounding. these tones are normally not availible by just cranking up a tube amp, unless the amp is specifically designed to give you this sound (mesaboogie...ect.).  based on that you should have some idea of what sound you want, and then what course of action you can take to get something you are happy with.

[lightningfingers]

Dare I say rangemaster? I LOVE that pushing a overdriven valve amp, but it requires that you turn the gain down a little, or you get the hissssss. ROGs Peppermill sounds good driving a valve amp too, and it doesn't mess with your guitars tone.

[petemoore]

Since you're here...Build yourself a 1Q booster, NPN Boost in the beginners section has a few more parts than an LPB, excellent booster, everything should be there info wise for a solid start.
 I say this because I have valve amps, and strongly suggest that there are tones you have yet to find. They are very widely variable tone wise, modding a pedal to your, your guitars, and your amps taste is quite likely what you will soon realize you've been missing. YMMV.
 The Mileage I'm getting from my rig has improved by leaps and bounds since I started reading here, there, and everywhere linked from here, and building.
 Check out alot of reads clicking from the links above.

[jmusser]

I suggest you build and use the Buzz Box. It's virtually transparent, and you'll never know it's there (hee,hee,hee). I'm just kidding, I'd go with the Crash Sync. It's a lot more subtle.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Since you're here...Build yourself a 1Q booster, /quote]

ROFL! I read that as "I.Q. Booster". I sure would be up for that!!!

[petemoore]

I shouldn't be so easy about it.
 It takes about 100USD to get a decent start, depending on how applicable your existing tools are.
 There's plenty of good stuff being built and sold, if you knew what you might want [IMO doesn't really take that much to get a half way decent tube amp to sing...booster, Fuzz, maybe 1 or 2 more things and you're on your way, especially if amp is reverbed], all  your stuff will probably be about ready to go in a few days.
 Options these days are a problem of 'too many', in the 60's IU they we're 'too few'...
 Finding the tones in a tube amp is what 'the forum has me building' has done for me. Copping a great tone has never been better, and I've been saying that for years now.
 You could choose the 'ol DS-1 on the cheep, pencil tip iron, a few parts...Buy Boutique [might take some figureing...dude bought one with the 6 voice input switch, booster and Fuzz...looked good], DIY...takes time to figure out, voice and tune...IMO worth it.
 IF you're into DIYing it or not, consider describing your amp, how many tubes, what kind of sound it makes on it's own, what kind of guitar you use, what types of tone would you like to hear your guitar make ? ??

[KORGULL]

I think if you use the overdrive/distortion pedal's controls conservatively - a little tone shaping, a bit of volume boost, and not go heavy on the distortion it might sound good and suit your needs. Seems like a simple boost pedal would fit the bill also.
Personally, I find that the sound does get "mushed"/muddied when I try to use pedals with a high distortion setting on an amp that already has nice distortion happening.
I usually use the distortion pedals on the clean channel only.

[RDV]

I personally like pedals that change the tone of my rig a bit, rather than add a ton of mushy distortion. I use a Runoff Groove designed "English Channel"(run with only a very slight boost) just to give my Marshall a little Vox flavour. It makes life a bit less boring.

RDV

[bwanasonic]

If you're cranking a valve amp and getting a nice tone, can it be further improved by using an overdrive/distortion pedal? or does it just mush up the sound.  Just wondering 'cause I've never tried it.  i currently use the amps boost switch for lead tones.

The simpler and more *primitive* your valve amp, the more likely you will benefit from external stompbox gain stages. If you use a tube amp that already has *modern* cascading gain stages (boogie, dumble, etc) , you may not hear much benefit from some of the classic OD/ booster pedals. If you have an earlier, simpler gain structure amp, then you may benefit from either an input pounding boost (Rangemaster, Micro- Amp, MosFet Boost, etc) , or a basic OD unit ( TS, Fulldrive, etc. ) . Of course a major factor in the whole equation is what is practical volume-wise. If you are able to crank your amp on any given gig, then you have less of a need for external devices. If volume is a luxury you can't often afford, then boosters and ODs can prove their weight in gold.

Kerry M

[davebungo]

IF you're into DIYing it or not, consider describing your amp, how many tubes, what kind of sound it makes on it's own, what kind of guitar you use, what types of tone would you like to hear your guitar make ? ??

Thanks for all your comments.  OK, I used to use a '73 Les Paul De-luxe through a 100W JCM800 Amp and Cab, with a micro-amp for boost.  I made a duplicate of the MXR pedal which allowed me a 2 stage boost which worked well.  Great sound but perhaps my tone was a bit ordinary.  All that changed when my gear was stolen.  So now I use a '73/74 Telecaster Custom (the one with a humbucker at the front) thorugh a Trace Elliot Trident 100W 3 channel EL34/ECC83 *monster*.  Great amp but a bit unreliable (and heavy).  Again, I feel that my tone is great in some respects but perhaps a bit boring when it is played again and again.  Perhaps a little thin.  I heard that the way to get a *great* tone was to use EQ before AND after the gain stages but I haven't tried this yet.  Perhaps I should consider building an EQ pedal plus a "coloured" booster.  I love the sound of Pete Townshend generally esp. stuff like "We won't get fooled again".  Thanks again...

[petemoore]

IF you're into DIYing it or not, consider describing your amp, how many tubes, what kind of sound it makes on it's own, what kind of guitar you use, what types of tone would you like to hear your guitar make ? ??

Thanks for all your comments.  OK, I used to use a '73 Les Paul De-luxe through a 100W JCM800 Amp and Cab, with a micro-amp for boost.  I made a duplicate of the MXR pedal which allowed me a 2 stage boost which worked well.  Great sound but perhaps my tone was a bit ordinary.  All that changed when my gear was stolen.  So now I use a '73/74 Telecaster Custom (the one with a humbucker at the front) thorugh a Trace Elliot Trident 100W 3 channel EL34/ECC83 *monster*.  Great amp but a bit unreliable (and heavy).  Again, I feel that my tone is great in some respects but perhaps a bit boring when it is played again and again.  Perhaps a little thin.  I heard that the way to get a *great* tone was to use EQ before AND after the gain stages but I haven't tried this yet.  Perhaps I should consider building an EQ pedal plus a "coloured" booster.  I love the sound of Pete Townshend generally esp. stuff like "We won't get fooled again".  Thanks again...

EQ's I buy, they take alot of pots, are difficult to do, relatively, and at the price of a GE7, or MXR EQ...you decide. Also they're generally noisy, probably a result of all the passives, pots, and gain recoveries.
 WOuldn't be so bad but you'd have to use rotory pots unless you can figure how to mount sliders good.
 You can shape the frequencies with less adjustability using fixed, passive components and a pot or three, and get very close to the same result, except you can't shape a smile with the sliders.
 Jfets, great performers, Stratoblaster. Just a suggestion. This would [like any booster] make your tube amp sound 'more' like your tube amp.
 Also added to the input of a Distortion will add Distortion.
 For an Excellent TS type build, take a look at the Tube Reamer. Simple, very effective, tunable, nice Mild to Med. OD sounds.
 SOmething like those two would almost certainly get alot of tone mileage from a simple tube amp, or clean side of a Tube Amp.

[Mark Hammer]

If you're cranking a valve amp and getting a nice tone, can it be further improved by using an overdrive/distortion pedal? or does it just mush up the sound.  Just wondering 'cause I've never tried it.  i currently use the amps boost switch for lead tones.

It would be a mistake to assume that tube/valve amps act in some single solitary fashion, or that what people like about them all relates to the same factor/source.

So what is there that might deliver the tone some folks desire?  There is the preamp stage, there is the power amp stage, there is the output transformer, and there is the power supply.  All of these contribute to whatever nonlinearities and distortion that might be imparted by the amp.  Some folks love transformer distortion but have no opinion one way or the other about other sources.  Some folks love the preamp distortion, and never really set their master volume high enough to note any of the other sources.  These are the folks that are pleased by the inclusion of a solitary 12AX7 in a digital multi-FX box.  That's not a criticism.  Rather, that's just to underline what different parts of tube/valve processing add or don't add to the image of an ideal tone that they have in their mind.

Then there is the issue of "sag" and what the power supply imparts to the dynamics and bite of the sound.  What any stompbox might do for the preamp, tonewise, might take away from what the power supply normally does dynamics-wise.

Then there is the issue of speaker breakup.  Speakers are generally rated to handle much more than the amp can deliver, and with the gain structure of the amp, conceivably MUCH more than the amp can deliver....given normally occurring input signal levels.  Should the input signal be hotter, and the speakers pushed a little harder, that may well bring out the tonal best in the speakers (well at least according to the user).  Of course, when you have a powerful amp and cab, and unprotected hearing, it becomes difficult to ascertain how much the desirable and undesirable aspects of your tone come from pushing or not pushing your speakers, simply because your hearing acquires many artifacts at higher decibel levels.  Clearly, the separation of different amp sources to one's tone is easier to accomplish with lower power amps.

Certainly one thing to keep in mind is that amps, just like stompboxes themselves, produce harmonics of whatever you feed them.  The amp has absolutely no way of "knowing" that part of the signal it is receiving is already harmonic content and shouldn't be "re-harmonicized" or redistorted.  In that respect, yes, your signal WILL turn to mush if you set up an amp to distort and feed it an already distorted signal.  On the other hand, a preshaped input signal, with just a touch of additional harmonic content, fed to an amp adjusted to add just a little more harmonic content, can sound glorious.  The key would seem to be in the interplay BETWEEN these elements, and how the whole signal chain is planned out.  There is no reason why it should necessarily sound great or necessarily sound awful.  It's in the setup.

One of the things that CAN be nice about stompboxes is that they can be setup to pre-shape the tone to bring out the best in the amp itself.  For instance, if a boosted input to the amp is going to indiscriminately crank out higher-order harmonics, then maybe the smart thing to do when you boost is to trim the high end to yield primarily lower-order harmonics being produced by the amp.  In some amps, the gain structure and the availability of a secondary set of tone controls or other tonestack/channel will permit the user to step on a footswitch for an overdrive, but dictate what the overdrive tone will be as well, quite apart from how the controls were set without the boost.  If an amp lacks that capability, then sometimes a stompbox with toneshaping is just what the doctor ordered.

[KORGULL]

On the topic of EQ pedals - I had a Boss graphic type and it was noisy (at any setting) it added (slight) weird overtones. It was O.K for some years but eventually really got on my nerves and I got rid of it. A friend had the same experience with his.
I have a Boss parametric type now. -Haven't had any noise problems with that one.
If you are looking into building something - check out the article on the geofex.com site entitled: Simple, Easy Parametric and Graphic EQ's, Plus Peaks and Notches.