Great amp distortion vs. Pedal distortion?

[Melanhead]

It's fairly straight forward, just a "twisted" DOD250 kind of deal, but Phillip's done a great job with it ... Eq/Drive sounds great
Good luck with the "9" clone ..... which mods BTW..... ?
808-more gain-tone caps ......
Cheers,
Marty.

Just noticed that it's basically a modified Dist+, DOD 250 etc .... I have 3 Dist+ boards at home ( originals, not reissues, I got as surplus outa the enclosure, I'm assuming rather than fixing these service departments use to swap boards .. ... ) I don't even know if they work but it would make for an easy build, and an easy fix as there's not much there for parts.

My TS clone will be an 808 ( which I allready own anyways ... ) with more gain (.22uf and 1.5k in the gain section, ala Keeley Baked Mod and similar to the Fulltone )  and a .047 input cap. I'm using Panasonic MF caps where I can and Metal Film resistors throughout. I may throw Carbons Comp resistors in the signal path for added mojo ... and noise .... Bright Green 5 mm LED. For Clipping I have the diodes socketed so I'm gonna experiment a bit.

[Doug_H]

It's all good AFAIC. Different circumstance/moods call for different approaches.

Doug

[petemoore]

"Everybody needs' at least one good distortion, just like everyone should own at least one great race car.
 I found out that when racing on a track with lots of smooth curves, the 'dirt car' performs poorly, same for a track racer on dirt.
 The ability to start with different frames, tires, engines allows the designer/racer to have a competetive car for many different types of racing.
 I'm pretty certain [from seeing guys play that use guitar>cable>amp] that if I traded my tone pallete in for a couple/few colors it would be a 'step back'...for Me.
 No I wouldn't mind having a DSL or Dual Rect. effect. Playing Pantera or BTO, tha'ts probably all I'd need too !!!
 I have vehicles for racing: 'smooth curves', Dirt, Space Travel, Hill Climbs etc. ...there's the 'air racers' like phases, chorus's...having these in little easy to open boxes, and at less than lethal voltage, with sockets and removable boards....I've got alot of 'keepers'.
 Both/All...why not.
What could possibly be more fun than a Face, a Phase, a cranked tube amp and a guitar with a volume knob? [Octave too?]

[mojotron]

hmmmm ... ... I'm using a Boogie 22+ and I'm not that fond of it's lead channel...

I used to have one of those - what a sweat amp!! But, man that distortion channel was raspy - I never liked it either. But, that clean channel is one of the best I have ever played and perfect for playing small gigs where you need about 40-50W of power. That is a perfect amp for adding a good overdrive to, and for that I always thought it was worth it's weight in gold - I would recomend the Boogie .22+ highly if anyone was looking for a clean amp. Mine had a EV 12" speaker in it.

Also, for an effects aided amp, I like the Yamaha G series amps (mid '80s), mid-sized older Peavys, but I finally settled on a set of TubeWorks amps and I paired my Fender collection down to a single SF Deluxe Reverb with a 12" Cel. G100 speaker (for when I need a huge tone full of mids), but I may go back to a Weber speaker... IMO everyone needs at least one Deluxe Reverb or something like a Vibrolux or an AC30 type of amp along with a good clean effects oriented amp like the smaller ones I mentioned or something like an old MusicMan RD or for getting loud -> a Marshall JCM 900 Dual Reverb to project your will unto another. I used to have a '66 Deluxe Reverb, but I sold it because, while I loved the tone, I was afraid I was going to turn it on one day and fry the original power transformer or something like that. So, even if you love the thing, why have an amp you don't use - or are afraid to use?

I really like the 50-100+W Marshalls as they are like a solid platform you can build on - but you have to play it loud... there's just nothing about those amps that make them compatible with "bedroom/apartment" jamming. That's why I stick with smaller amps that can get loud without changing their tone except where speaker deformation kicks in.

I think the classic fenders/vox type of clean amps are really ment for situations where you might want to even plug right into the amp and just play the amp as an extention of your guitar. Likewise, classic Marshalls are the same way perhaps even more "musical", but typically Marshalls are used with 2-4+ 12" cabs - and are more condusive to being the power platform for driving a big sound that you feed into it while driving the amp cleanly....

While somewhat an "oddball" amp - I settled on some TubeWorks 2100 heads because they are perfect for modifying to get just the right sound, they are dirt cheap, and they let a set of Mullards sound great - clean or dirty.

[Johan]

I am lucky enough to own a few vintage amps that am very happy with..mostly I play through a 1975 Marshall SuperBass and get exactly the classic seventies rock sound that I want, then I use a few different distortions infront of it only to introduce a different set of overtones.
on their own, the pedals could NEVER compete with the superbass, but the superbass on the other hand can only do one thing.
together, mixing and matching gains and pedals, I can get almost any sound from the late sexties up to now....

..so even if you own a great amp, there is still need for a few pedals...

..so how many pedals do you need?...one more...allways one more...

johan

[RedHouse]

petemoore,

What's yours? (race car)

I have an SCCA/NHRA (Sportsman class) 1967 Camaro SS 350, 400hp, 4 sp Muncy, 4.56 gears.

I don't race it anymore as I've turned it out to pasture 3 years ago now, converted to a street rod for Sundays cruz'in.

The gears are going away next year for a set of freeway-friendly 3.00 or 3.25's and I have just got to yank those cylinder heads off (11:1) and replace the Cam, geez, with the price of gas these days I hate filling it up with premium at $2.80/gal ($35) and then adding a bottle of octane boost for another $6 and it gets like 8mi/gal with that race setup. Really makes a cruze a spendy affair.

[Melanhead]

hmmmm ... ... I'm using a Boogie 22+ and I'm not that fond of it's lead channel...

I used to have one of those - what a sweat amp!! But, man that distortion channel was raspy... I never liked it either... But, that clean channel is one of the best I have ever played and perfect for playing small gigs where you need about 40-50W of power. That is a perfect amp for adding a good overdrive to, and for that I always thought it was worth it's weight in gold - I would recomend the Boogie .22+ highly if anyone was looking for a clean amp. Mine had a EV 12" speaker in it...

I hear ya on the distortion channel ... plus the channels share EQ's and levels so it's hard to get 'em to both sound good. I love it for the small pub/club gigs I do ... It's only on about 2 and is plenty loud to compete with a drummer ... I set the clean channel fairly hot so it breaks up a bit... I can clean it up by rolling down the volume on the guitar ...
It's slightly modded, a bit brighter in the clean channel... Mine has the 5 band graphic as well which is great for zoning in the tone in different rooms.

[Mark Hammer]

Why use a pedal when you have a great amp that can "do the same thing"?

Simple.  Why do people like the Big Muff Pi?  It's a double clipper, buddy.  RG and I have been beating the pre-clip/post-clip EQ thing to death for nigh on 14 years now.  The double-clipper thing is very similar.

I'll explain.  The quality of clipping/distortion you get from any part of a circuit that might distort (whether gain stage, power stage, transformer, speakers, etc.) is a function of the characteristics of the signal you feed it.  This is true not only of the pedal-plus-amp thing, but within pedals as well.  There is probably no finer example than the Tube Screamer, whose qualities depend entirely on severely altering the bandwidth of the signal prior to and immediately after clipping.

Any time you distort a signal, however, prior to feeding it to a subsequent stage, you have also altered the tone.  You might not *think* of it like a pre-clip EQ but that is EXACTLY what it is.  Of course, the really interesting part is that both the pedal and amp can be set up to yield different amunts of harmonic content in response to picking dynamics.  Set your overdrive pedal so that it is on less than max drive, set your amp the same way, and what you end up with is a signal path that lets you have multiparametric control over both harmonic content/emphasis and dynamics just from the way you pick.  Note that we are NOT talking about a searing metal fuzz with everything on 10 placed ahead of a Marshall set in a similar manner, but rather something more symbiotic.  If it was easy and possible to have a variety of pre-clip/post-clip EQ settings in an amp and footswitch them, I imagine the owner of such an amp would be less inclined to use distortion pedals in conjunction with the amp.

On the other hand, you also need to think of what a distortion pedal does to *other* effects, and the manner in which players will use that combination to produce other sorts of input signal qualities to get something different from their amp/speakers.  I think a great example is sticking a Univibe or phaser just ahead of a distortion and feeding that into an amp primed for a bit of grit.  As the notches are swept around in the Univibe/phaser, they result in a lowering of output signal going to the distortion.  Having some parts of the spectrum slightly lower in amplitude in turn results in harmonics being added for *some* parts of the spectrum, but not for others - a nicely animated sound and different than sticking fuzz before phase.  That animation in the harmonic content in turn send in a pleasingly varied signal to the amp which adds it own coloration on top, but *conditioned* by the pedals before it.

[Ge_Whiz]

'Fit wuz good enuff fer Hendrix, it's good enuff fer us.

[nightingale]

It's pretty simple for me..
I need more fuzz that a cranked amp can get me.. I need tonebender/bmp sustain too.

I have a  marshall 18watt clone that does a nice filthy tone.. but the sustain is not there for solos etc?

just my 2 cents,