What do I need? A comp stomp or a treble booster?

[liveloveshare]

hmm.. how do I begin this...
well.. I guess I'll start at the fact that I've built a tubescreamer clone.  and it sounds cool.  i like it a lot.  i love it in fact...
but... my tone is still missing something..


i guess i'm looking for something that sounds more.. transparent?
the tones i like are funky, fat, and clean... i like a little crunch every now and again but for the most part i like it pretty regulated.

i'll post some clips when i get home and see if any of you audiophiles know what i'm talking about. :]
and if you have any suggestions in the meantime go ahead and enlighten me.

[newfish]

The 'either, or' debate is immaterial.  You *know* you'll end up building both sooner or later... 

...but my opinion would be a compressor.  You've already got 'gain' sorted, right?

Treble Booster is minimal parts for maximum 'win' though, so why not try that first?

[Ben N]

One of the thoughts that periodically flits in and out of my brain is this: A not-too-squishy comp (Orange Squeezer?) mated with a parametric or 3-band eq in one pedal as a lead boost. Ought to be able to dial just the right tones for clean or ahead of a dirt box.

[petemoore]

  Treble Boost could be called ''bass cut with signal recovery'', and is useful for driving an amp/speaker to distort, or just cleanly get the treble louder without the bass getting ill-defined, useful for other stuff too..the distortion tone of course depends on the amp..or say the TS, driving it [or any dist/OD/Fuzz] harder can increase the distortion.
 Compressor brings low input levels up, or keeps peak signals from peaking so high, or keeps signal output between certain parameters to some degree or other, useful for when...
 Driving say a TS a bit harder but only so much...
 Keeping an amp from getting 'whalloped' by signal dynamics that'd otherwise have large peaks.
 Or just sounding like a hard compressor, rythmically 'ducking' every time a low note is hit hard.

[markcavus]

I have a Texas 2 step. I is the most transparent OD ever. Also if you are looking for a gread compressor, a Boss CS2 might be the ticket. Not too squishy and transparent. Just my 2 cents.