suggest me an OD, here's my needs

[whitewave]

  Hello,
I'm playing through a THD Univalve set to a good crunchy sound.
For the sounds after several tests I find boosters to work better for getting the types of distortion I want, and now I have a self-build AMZ mini booster, a boost build by a very good italian technician (Black boost by http://www.fuzzfx.it/) and a Behringer EQ for more saturation and mid scooped equalization.

Now I'm planning to build a classic OD.  I don't want a crispy, fuzzy, harshy OD but a creamy, bit compressed, with a looooot of sustain one.

What could I build?  GGG Blue?  ROG Tube Reamer?

Thanks.


PS: stock ibanez TS9 sounds awfully with my Univalve.

[AzzR]

Maybe an EHX Big Muff?

[Jaicen_solo]

Sounds to me like you want something like the Bluesbreaker??
Maybe a Shaka would be useful as well.

[whitewave]

 I don't like Big Muff, and I want an OD more than a distortion.

What's bluesbreaker? 

Shaka is the distorion from Aron?

Thanks.

[Mark Hammer]

If you have a Univalve, then maybe what you want is not an overdrive, but a compressor that produces overdrive in the amp.  You don't have to set it for heavy compression.  Use it like a booster with just a bit of compression.

[whitewave]

 Thanks Mark, you're right, Univalve doesn't sound good with standard OD.
In the last months I had two diy TS9 and one TSdx modded to TS-808 (two friends of mine gave me them to try), a wonderful Okko Diablo (this pedal is fantastic on Marshall, really great, but quite unuseful on my Univalve two feedbacks with gain knob) and two boosters.  Boosters sound great because they gave me more saturation from the tone of my amp, it's quite the same sound I can get from the EQ pedal with level fader slightly over 0.
And the two boosters plus EQ pedal are now wonderful for my needs.

I would like only to have a more modern bluesy sound from an OD, are you sure there is nothing I can build?

I think, but maybe I'm wrong, that a compressor will be only another booster in my rig.

Thanks.   

[whitewave]

I'm listening to modded Boss SD-1s.  WOW, that pedal seems to be able to give excellent sounds.
Don't you think it could be good for me?

[Bernardduur]

Colorsound Overdriver; all you need!

[whitewave]

Please, I'd like to hear your comments.

Many thanks.

[Paul Marossy]

How about feeding it an Orange Squeezer?

[Mark Hammer]

For a while, my main amp was (and to some extent still is) an ancient tweed Princeton.  One stinking 6V6 and 4-1/2 watts of Class A single-ended power, somewhat similar to the Univalve (though it would take several hours to read all the posts that Andy Marshall had to field on that one when the "true" class of the Univalve came under dispute on Ampage; geez some folks are anal retentive!).  My "booster" was an old Univox "Uni-Clamp" compressor, set for modest compression, and under the control of an E-H "Hot Foot" treadle controller, fed into an MXR 6-band EQ set for a bit of across-the-board boost.  The Hot Foot would work the utput volume control on the compressor.  Beautiful ultrasmooth smooth overdrive.

At least part of what people want from an overdrive pedal actually IS the compression of range that occurs with clipping.  The tone of the pedal itself may well be secondary.  Indeed, that is part of what so many folks use Tube Screamers (and their clones) for.  If the amp itself can be coaxed into a nice overdrive tone, then all you really need to bring out its best is a hot input signal that keeps a reasonably consistent enough level so that you can aim for a given level of harmonic accentuation with your picking hand and attack, and know that you can keep it up for as long as you want.  I must emphasize "reasonably consistent" because too much compression will produce a rather unvarying tone from the amp.  You want to be able to have a little expressiveness on reserve so that the overdrive and harmonic accentuation can be rationed out to suit what it is you are trying to "say" with the strings at the moment.

A mostly clean booster with a little bit of soft clipping in response to sharp transients (think of it like "ugly limiting") can also help a lot in bringing out the singing qualities of an amp.  This is one of the reasons why so many folks like the Klon Centaur.  From what I understand, it is a mostly clean booster that introduces a wee bit of coloration and compression of range  when pushed hard.

Though I have no idea how it compares to a Centuar, either in terms of design principles or sonic quality, that is more or less what I was aiming for with the Crank (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/mhammer/TheCrank.gif).  I was pretty pleased with it, and some of the folks who built it have had some embarrassingly nice things to say about it.  Again, not a clean boost over 100% of all settings and input levels, but a booster that pushes the input stage of the amp and has a litle coloration and soft limiting for hard-picked transients.  That may be enough compression for your style/needs, or it may not.  Pretty inexpensive to find out, though!   Be sure to stick a 1k resistor in series with the diodes in stage 2.

You can also consider making an Orange Squeezer and modding it for a little dirt and extra gain.  The OS has a fairly fast set of time constants so that it exhibits a quick response and essentially gets out of the way.  Unfortunately, the gain of the single op-amp is normally fixed and the compression also reduces the available output from that stage.  Use a dual op-amp to build it, and add on a second gain stage with some soft clipping added to it.  Lets say you give the 2nd stage a gain of 10 (doesn't sound like much but the first stage is x23, right?, so that gets you x230 overall), and stick a pair of diodes in series with a 1k resistor in the feedback loop.  The sharp transients will be attenuated somewhat by the compression half, but also soft clipped a bit by the second half.  That might get the right balance of compression and coloration you need.


EDIT: Paul must have been transmitting his thoughts to me while I was writing this!

[koolimy]

How about a Highway 89?
It sounds creamy ...

[TryingToDo613]

I would try a seymour duncan pickup booster if you already like the sound of the amp. I haven't built the amz boards yet (but they are at least stuffed) but they can't be better than the SD. Not expensive on ebay. DIY stuff is great but there is always something wrong with the ones I build and you end up pulling your hair out. If you aren't building for the sake of building I would buy. Other suggestions that I own would be the V-Twin and if you want nasty and screaming, the boss metal zone, though the latter relies less if at all on the amp having a good sound of it's own.  -ph

[Ben N]

There used to be Shaka Bradah sound samples around somewhere--I think at Ampage?  I never built one, but as I recall, the samples sounded just like what you are describing, really an amazing lead overdrive tone (but maybe that was just Aron's playing, which makes anything sound good).  And no, it is not made by Arion.  The SB series of pedals are strictly DIY, designed by such luminaries as Jack Orman, Aron Nelson (your gracious host here) and Doug Hammond.  Most of them feature a tubescreamer-esque front end driving an AMZ miniboster, so besides having lots of sustain/compression/overdrive on tap, they have plenty of output to saturate your amp.  If you want a hot od lead pedal, definitely look into these.
Ben

[whitewave]

Ben N - thanks a lot, a sort of OD based of the miniboost from Jack Orman is a very interesting project.  I'll look at SB schematic.  I didn't say "Arion", but Aron, Aron Nelson.

Mark Hammer - you understood the main problem with a single ended amp.  As I said I had to sold some pedals in the past months, they sounded wonderful with Marshalls (above all Okko Diablo), but like crap wih my Univalve.  Boosting its signal is probably the best choice, but let me riassume my rig (as for distortions): AMZ miniboost - 7 band EQ pedal - Black Boost from www.fuzzfx.it (this is simply excellent, and again, it sounds completely different with a friend of mine JCM800) and I'm building a clean boost based on BS170 (I'm waiting my order from smallbear to finish it).  I really think you're right, and infact I'll have 4 boosters, all I would like to have now is a quite standard OD.  Even if I consider a compresor an interesting effect to have.  Why did you suggest me Orange Squeezer?  What about Dynacomp?

Seymour Duncan booster - no, I don't want to spend money on a stock booster.  I'm not so good in DIYing to build a univibe, but I think I'm able to get a good sound from a simple dist/od/boost effect, my selfbuild AMZ minibooster and AMZ super buffer sound really good (thank a lot Jack for your projects!!!), as mods on my wha.

Highway 89- mmmhhh... interesting, I'm reaing old posts about it

A last question, Shaka B. or BSIAB2?

Thanks a lot.

[Mark Hammer]

Mark Hammer - you understood the main problem with a single ended amp.  As I said I had to sold some pedals in the past months, they sounded wonderful with Marshalls (above all Okko Diablo), but like crap wih my Univalve.  Boosting its signal is probably the best choice, but let me riassume my rig (as for distortions): AMZ miniboost - 7 band EQ pedal - Black Boost from www.fuzzfx.it (this is simply excellent, and again, it sounds completely different with a friend of mine JCM800) and I'm building a clean boost based on BS170 (I'm waiting my order from smallbear to finish it).  I really think you're right, and infact I'll have 4 boosters, all I would like to have now is a quite standard OD.  Even if I consider a compresor an interesting effect to have.  Why did you suggest me Orange Squeezer?  What about Dynacomp?

I suggest an Orange Squeezer because it is less obvious a compressor.  Although in fairness, that is more a comment about stock OSs vs stock Dynacomps.  Both the Dynacomp and Ross are prized for their smooth compression and long sustain, and the OS for its near invisibility as a effect.  In truth, you can mod either of these to have a different response and feel, and in fact many of the various boutique Ross clones now come with variable recovery or multiple presets (though this seems to have arisen primarily because so many NON-"legendary" compressors, like the Boss CS-2, had already implemented it).  So you can buy or build, and there is no end to mods you might try on any of these to get *your* sound.  All other things being equal, though, a stock OS (that is, stock with respect to its compression characteristics), with a little more "oomph" added to the output, might provide the kind of push you want for the amp.

Please note that feeding a compressor with a boosted signal is not the same as boosting a lightly compressed signal.  If you stick a booster in front of any compressor, it will be difficult to get any sort of nuanced compression.  This is why I suggest simply putting together an OS using a dual op-amp chip and tacking some modest gain on the output of the OS.  The standard is a 4558, but you can probably improve things with a 5532, LM833 or OP-275.  I'm sure some other folks will chime in with their personal fave for the circuit.

[Ben N]

Sorry, I hadn't focused on the single-ended amp aspect before.  It is counter-intuitive, but I have one overdrive that sounds good with, and only with, my Vibrochamp, and that is a basic Ross/DOD250/Distortion+, 2 silicon diodes, nuthin fancy (I don't remember what opamp I have in there, but I guess half a 4558).  I haven't really figured out why, so take it FWIW.  The good thing is it is as simple a build as any, so you might as well try.
Ben

[WorkBench]

Ya know what I do.  I use a MXR dist + with the dist turned all the way down and the level at about 3 o'clock.  I also put in Silicone diodes instead of the germanium, and use a 941M IC instead of the 741M, which may be the same thing I am not sure?  This gives a great boost to my signal , causing just a slight break up in my twin reverb.  It is the perfect amount od grit, to an otherwise beautifully clean tone. 

Chris