Overdrive for organ, need suggestions

[bertmar]

Hello!
Im looking for an overdive to use with an organ. The organ is a philicorda with a rather strong outsignal (with a volume pot) and a I use with a cheap transistor amp that has really bad distortion. So, I want an overdrive that gives me clean (almost clean is fine) to some sweet tubey overdrive, so I dont have to use the distortion of the amp. Also I dont want the overdrive to cause any big difference in volume when I turn the drive knob.

Any suggestions?


Martin

[Quackzed]

maybee a blues driver? bd-2 ... i've used mine in a bunch of situations due to the fact that it's pretty transparent at low drive settings... or maybee a tube screamer for more "tube" tone? also you could try a simple one transistor booster that gives a bit of dirt if your not looking for tons of overdrive...
i'd ask some guitar playing friends to let you try some of their dirt boxes and see what you like... also wah pedals are very "keyboard" friendly 

[Bernardduur]

Colorsound Overdriver

Great OD pedal!

[bertmar]

Thanks guys! Ill check them out! Also thinking about the sparkle boost, but since I wont use it as a boost I dont know it it will be too loud.

Martin

[GFR]

I've heard that John Lord sometimes runs his Hammond through a BOSS SD-1 (PS. I don't know if it's true).

[petemoore]

  IIRC I was reading about Jon's 100w Marshall Plexi retrofits into Hammond Leslies. That right there'll get you...in debt I guess.
  I haven't had lotsa luck with the distorting of organ/keyboard outputs in SB"s, or even getting a reasonably great sounding imitation of limited 'Hammond-Leslie-ness'.
  don't let me dissuade you from building Stompboxes for organs. You say hot output, perhaps adding diodes between the output and ground IN the organ, on a switch, then if needed a recovery boost to retain about unity or better when switching in the diodes. Clipping diodes after the boost? Rambling again, maybe there's a gem in a Ramble, we may never know...lol.
 

[tcobretti]

I would think that just about any overdrive pedal would work pretty well.  The Boss Super Overdrive is nice, or you could build something like ROG's Eighteen, which has a nice Plexi-like sound to it.  And of course there's always the Tube Screamer.  I almost think the way to do it is borrow some pedals from friends and try to find the one that works the best, then build/buy it.

[Quackzed]

you could always put a pot wired as a variable resistor at the input of the distortion pedal your gonna build... or even a trimmer... so you could lower your line level boards signal to more 'instrument' level??!
Kind of like an extra volume knob between your keyboard volume and the efects box, that way you would't be slamming the input of the effects box... i'd build a distortion with a reasonably flat eq... and probably a slightly bigger input cap 2.2 uf? for extended bass response...
also i'd try to find a chorus pedal that can do a decent leslie sound, you'll find some speed mods for analog choruses ,you could put a fast/slow switch on it like a real leslie... chorus sounds great on full range instruments... and you can pick 'em up on ebay cheap... arions and rockteks are good candidates... pretty cheap and easy to mod. could search for 'chorus mods' in here... they all use pretty much the same chips and topology so the mods are pretty universal for choruses... think hammond b3!!

[bertmar]

Thats a good idea Quackzed, just separate pot between the organ and overdrive that dont go on or off with the effect? In that way I guess I wouldnt have to worry about the output.

Interesting idea Pete. I was thinking about something like that, using the output of the organ to drive something... Actually Im not really looking for the hammondy-leslieish type of sound, just something to mush the tone a little bit. Guess youre right about just trying a few standardboxes and see in what direction that'll take me. Thanks for the ideas!

Martin