Tube and tranny amp - Sound difference

[kristoffereide]

I've noticed that some pedals have a significantly different sound on a tube amp than on a tranny amp.
Since I only have a tranny amp at home (where I build), it's a surprise for me to hear the difference on my tube-amp.

Many pedals have an wonderfully brutal distortion on my tranny, but just boost on my tubeamp.
I've come up with some pedals myself, throught trial and error and it's the same with these. I'm no wizard, so I
don't understand the parameters involved in this problem.

Can anyone help me get my distorion sound like a distortion?

[slacker]

Sounds like what your pedals are doing is overdriving your transistor amp so the distortion you're hearing is coming from the amp not the pedal. If your tube amp is a Fender or something similar then boosting the input is just going to make it louder not make it distort.
What you need to do is make sure the output of the pedals is low enough that it doesn't distort the amp, then you know any distortion is coming from the pedal.

[brett]

Hi
You'll get many opions on this, and I might suggest that any one will only be a small part of the answer.

A couple of the main factors that I can think of are:
Some valve amps have plenty of headroom and are designed to sound clean, even when pushed.  Others break up very quickly.  Almost any boost will break up a Marshall 18W (even if the volume is only at "5").  So the results depend greatly on which valve amp.
Solid state amps often have simple front ends that rapidly go from no clipping to nasty clipping, with lots of high-end harmonics (and non-harmonics).  The high-order non-harmonic distortion sounds particularly raspy and is detectable at quite low levels.  You just won't get these with 90% of valve amps.  (In fact, that's one of the main reasons why people pay all those $$$ and put up with all the hassles of valves).

But as I said, there'll be lots of theories (right and wrong) and without discussing particular circuits and amps it is a bit difficult to work out what the situation is.
cheers

[kristoffereide]

Ok, thanks guys. So it's not an impedance-thingy?
I have one pedal that even at very very low levels make my tranny sound very Deep Purple on single coil and Rush-ish on humbuckers.
Am I still overdriving the transistors here?
This has no effect what so ever on the tube-amp...except as a bright vol-booster

[slacker]

Am I still overdriving the transistors here?
This has no effect what so ever on the tube-amp...except as a bright vol-booster

Probably yes, if the distortion was coming from the pedal it would sound like a distortion pedal what ever you plugging it into. If it's giving you distortion with one amp but not another one, then at least some of that must be coming from the amp.
Like Brett said though without knowing what the circuits are it's hard to say much more.

[kristoffereide]

Yes ok, the one pedal I've noticed this with it the ROG Mockman http://runoffgroove.com/mm2.html ...

This has almost no effect on my tube-amp but gives a wonderful distortion on my tranny

[Ripthorn]

Have you put the mockman through a cab sim and into headphones or a soundcard to see exactly what the pedal is putting out?  That might be worth doing.

[kristoffereide]

That's a really good idea!!! I will to that