Rock'n'roll... what can I build?

[momiel]

Hi guys!
I need some serious advices for my sound and my next build.
I have a '91 telecaster with seymour duncan antiquity I pickups and a 135 W silverface twin.
I love blues and I used to create my crunch sound with my diy tubescreamer (with a "fulldrive" boost and sometimes with two mylar capsfor the .22 to get a crisper sound than tantalum) and after that an original turbo rat for smooth and full of mids sound.
Now I understand that I like rock'n'roll too, and in my band I need a more r'n'rollish sound.
What stompbox setup can I use to get r'n'r? And what stompboxes can i build?
I also have another doubt. I usually leave the ts on when I fire my turbo rat. That give a lot of sustain, but no grit and a chaos if you try to play rhythm things and more than one note at the time. It's worth to build a line selector to switch between two lines of distortion or is a problem of my pedals?

Sorry for my english and thanks for the patience.

[8mileshigh]

Momiel,

Bonjour !  Rock is a pretty vast topic that  spans many decades and millions of different artists.  Can you be more specific as to what your personal tastes are ? Recommendations can be made for that point on.

Thanks
Chris

[reverberation66]

            yeah, a more specific idea of what kind of sound you're looking for would  be helpful, "rock and roll" can be a broad range of different things.  It seems to me with the fender twin, telecaster, ts and rat you already have you should be able to get all kinds of rock and roll sounds, that's all pretty classic r n' r gear...maybe try a guitar with humbucker pickups, les paul type or whatever. 

[momiel]

Bonne nuit (here in Rome is quite 5 o clock in the night).
I don't have a clear idea of what i need/want/like. It's my r'n'r revolution year. I'm not shure I want a r'n'r sound instead of a "rock" sound, but I'm shure of one thing: I wanna try something else than blues sound.
So I say 5 names, please don't shoot me:

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Motorpsycho
Blur


   

I said please don't shoot me...

[Meanderthal]

 Fuzz face.

[reverberation66]

          ok, I'd find out what the gear is that those bands you like are using and it should become apparent what the common denominators are and what gear is being used to make the sounds you like.  word on the fuzz face, it's all rock and roll. 

[newbie builder]

Maybe the ROG english channel? Blur/beatles I'd associate with vox type tones.

[syndromet]

Yeah! Finaly someone that has heard of motorpsycho!!!! 

You should try a Fuzz face to get a sound close to those bands. I rally think you can get it if you allreaddy have a Rat and a TS. Just push the trwin hard enough. Maybe even a booster will be enough. You should try something like dragonflys snake bite, wich adds a little dirt on it's own.

[brett]

You might try swapping out the 12AX7 in your preamp for a 12AX7WB.  That'll raise the gain a tad.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to get the compression and responsiveness of of a Brit amp without a power stage.
 
If you've got some time to experiment, you could try hooking a Ruby amp (a $5 amp, based on an LM386 chip, do a search) into your amp's input.  You could use a coupling transformer (e.g. 8:1k) and a volume control (e.g. 1kA).  I haven't tried it (someone else might have), but it should work OK.  Depending on the quality of the coupling transformer, the sound quality will vary.
cheers

[darron]

Fuzz face.

that's a cool build. will take more of a vintage rock tone with your guitar. the bsiab2 has gotten heaps of hype. i'm going to build one for myself soon, but maybe search for some soundclips on that one?

[mattpocket]

The yeah yeah yeahs have a very fuzzy sound, so I'd go with a Big Muff Pi or a Fuzz Face... something nasty...

Blue have quite clean/light overdrive sound... which you'd probably get playing round with an EQ and your amps distortion channel...

Matt

[d95err]

Maybe you should be looking at the amp instead of effects. The 135W Twin is too loud for anything and has an ultra-tight response, so it should be difficult to get that dirty compressed pushed tube amp sound from it. This sound is also very difficult to replicate with pedals.

Buy or build a lower powered "vintage style" amp instead. E.g. Vox AC15/AC30, Fender (Tweed)Deluxe or similar. There are amp kits available for very reasonable prices.

[stm]

A delay pedal would be a good complement to your sound.  I'm thinking about doubling and slapback delay, which you could easily achieve with a Rebote Delay 2 (tonepad.com)

Cheers

[momiel]

Thanks guys.
As usual alot of good advices. So:
I already have a delay (a deluxe Memory Man), and I'm already thinking of building a rebote to use for slapback.
My real problem is on distortion. I used to play with the Twin Reverb set clean, because is impossible to get crunch from that thing without killing the audience. At least the first row. And I'd like to get a rock and roll sound with this twin, a more rock and roll sound. Probably is only a matter o high frequencies filtering in distortion. I know that to get the perfect rock and roll sound the best is to have a cranked rock and roll amp. I know that getting Beatles sound is easy with Vox and Rickenbacker. I only want some more acid distortion stompboxes, and I really think I need two switchable lines of distortion.

[mattpocket]

I use an AB box and a GGG mixer for parallel effects (i.e. two lines of distortion)

Matt

[Meanderthal]

I only want some more acid distortion stompboxes, and I really think I need two switchable lines of distortion.

The Fuzz face... and the BMP.

[jonathan perez]

fuzz face and some sort of ac30-ish overdrive

[rockgardenlove]

I'd say lose the Twin for distorted sounds.  That amp makes all the distortions I've ever tried on it sound really harsh and unmusical.  I don't own one, but I took a twin for a long run at a local music store, and know matter what pedal I put in front it didn't sound so great.

You could also try modifying the amp, but it's supposably harder to warm up the later Fenders because of ultralinear output transformers.

[Meanderthal]

 Yeah, the twin's persnikkety about what pedals it likes. That's why I recommended those 2. Both known to work well with a twin, as opposed to, say, a DS-1 or something.

[Mark Hammer]

Quite probably, you can modify the amplifier to have less negative feedback.  That will permit more of the natural distortion to come through.  Of course with 135W it may be very uncommon for the amp to be played loud enough to do that.  Perhaps you can pull one tube from each side of the power amplifier and reduce the power by half.