BYOC Silver Pony sounds... rubbish. Any ideas?

[Elysiumfx]

Hi all,

I made a silver pony with the intention of adding it to my board in a J Mayer type way, hitting the TS for a little more bite. Now I've set up the drive section of my board I have found that it is easily the worst sounding pedal. When I kick it in, I lose all top end sparkle and it gets very middle/low sounding.

Now it may be that I just don't like the pedal... Or at least prefer the Bluesbreaker... But isn't supposed to be a Klone? All the videos I've seen don't seem to do this.

I definitely works... I just don't think it sounds right.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[niektb]

hmmm stacking a mid-hump pedal (Klon) with a slightly different mid-hump pedal (TS) sound to me like you could end up with a mid-heavy sound... But maybe it's a build error where you accidentally put a wrong capacitor value somewhere, who knows... Maybe it's an impedance problem. What did you try to debug?

[Elysiumfx]

Hi

Nothing yet as I've only just finished it and it was working... only really noticed the weird mid hump once I'd compared to the rest of the board. I've just watched another video on YouTube and there is definitely a pronounced hump in the mids that most people are saying is "warm and rounded." Perhaps I've just stood in front of a drummer too long... I'm going to play with the settings but the board looks correct on inspection. I'll double check cap values to make sure I'm not missing something.

To my ears the BB stacked into TS has something more sparkly and clear. But who knows how many frequencies my tinnitus has knocked out!

[GGBB]

weird mid hump

Isn't that the Klon sound? I have an EHX Soul Food - weird mid hump is exactly how I would describe it as you turn up the gain. Gain at zero - pretty flat sounding - so that's all I ever use it for - clean boost.

[Elysiumfx]

GGBB... I think that might be what I have discovered.

Maybe I was expecting something that didn't happen. It's a "transparent" overdrive right? I guess in my head it would be something like a Voodoo Sparkle or something.

I thought if Mayer uses it, that must be the sound I'm after. Haha. Apparently not. I guess that sparkle is in his hands. The TS sounds so much better without it to my ears, and I love the understated Bluesbreaker sound.

I'm going to put this down to inexperience (I'm an acoustic player first) and roll everything back to a clean boost setting (which is exactly where it sounds nice to me.)

I guess I hoped for much more from a pedal worth thousands of £/$'s - seems a bit of a waste to use it solely as a clean boost but to me that's exactly where the magic is.

I'm gutted to announce - that I don't think I'm a Klon fan. Sorry to the guys who know how to use one!

Thanks guys.

Dave

[GGBB]

It's a "transparent" overdrive right?

...

I'm gutted to announce - that I don't think I'm a Klon fan.

IME Klon is not transparent at all with gain above zero. And you're not alone - I think the Klon is one of those love it or hate it things - lot's of people on both sides, not many in the middle.

[Mark Hammer]

It does what it is designed and built to do extremely well: push a decent tube amplifier into its own best overdrive.  The pedal and design itself is NOT intended to have an identifiable overdrive sound, in the way that most of us can say "Oh, that sounds like a Tube Screamer", regardless of amp, guitar, or volume.

This probably one of the most widely misunderstood things about it.

[iainpunk]

It does what it is designed and built to do extremely well: push a decent tube amplifier into its own best overdrive.  The pedal and design itself is NOT intended to have an identifiable overdrive sound, in the way that most of us can say "Oh, that sounds like a Tube Screamer", regardless of amp, guitar, or volume.

This probably one of the most widely misunderstood things about it.

it doesn't need to be a tube amp by the way. i boosted my ALPHARD AG35's clean channel (which will get dirty with vol. above with someone else's KTR and it sounded huge, although it only has a 8'' speaker.

i have seen bass players use Centaur-alikes into a clean amp as well. theyll set the gain about noon, with the tone down all the way, and the volume to match the instrument. it really unlocks huge sustain.

cheers

[GGBB]

It does what it is designed and built to do extremely well: push a decent tube amplifier into its own best overdrive.  The pedal and design itself is NOT intended to have an identifiable overdrive sound, in the way that most of us can say "Oh, that sounds like a Tube Screamer", regardless of amp, guitar, or volume.

This probably one of the most widely misunderstood things about it.

I agree that it does what it does quite well, but I've seen this description so many times now, I find it hard to believe anyone misunderstands it anymore. 

In any case, it's not everyone's cup of tea, decent tube amp or not, done extremely well or not. Much like the tube screamer in that regard I suppose.

[Mark Hammer]

Trust me, I'm as tired of repeating it as you are of reading it.  My apologies anyway.

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn during my teaching days was that hardly anyone in the class I was facing in September knew any of the things my previous class knew in April.

[Elysiumfx]

Thanks for all your comments guys. I was pushing the TubeScreamer, but it just doesn't do what I had hoped. It's too mid sounding. I've tried it on its own pushing the drive channel on the amp - and yes it sounds great. But just not how I wanted to use it. I've now replaced it with a clean boost pushing the drive. It's much less coloured.

I watched a few YouTube videos and everyone seems to use it differently based on their own rig.

I also watched John Mayer doing a talk at a gig about how everyone thinks that there is one pedal out there that will make you sound better... point taken. Back to practicing I guess. And I'll let the TS do its thing. If it ain't broke...

[Mark Hammer]

Tube Screamers prefer to have a very modest input signal, in order to deliver the tone people like them for.  I used my first TS build with a guitar that had an onboard preamp with enough gain to easily push my 5W tube amp into overdrive at lower volume settings.  Absolutely HATED the TS.  Could not for the life of me wonder what people saw in it.  Switched to a guitar without a preamp and the lights came on.  The pedal sounded as good as reputed.

It's a pickles-and-ice-cream thing.  Individually, they're both great.  Mix them together, though, and you can end up with something ugly and unusable.

[GGBB]

Today's episode of TPS mentions the Klon mid-hump:

https://youtu.be/MtBb2oCu8dE?t=717

About 11:57 in.