Distortion- from the amp or pedals?

[DrewJD82]

For nearly my entire guitar playing life I’ve gotten distortion from amps. Up until recent years, there weren’t a ton of great sounding high gain dirt pedals that could pull off a 5150 or Dual Rec sound. As I’m starting to plan rigs for future use, mainly in non-metal bands, I’m starting to lean more on the idea of getting a killer clean platform and just using pedals for all the dirt as I’m starting to understand the appeal more.

I started diving into this stuff recreating Gilmour tones and I think I’m catching the bug for it. Particularly in the area where you can retain that initial attack of the note without the compression from the distortion crushing it, when all the body of the clean tones stays intact while the note sustains. One thing that drives me nuts when I’m switching presets is when I’m jamming on a clean or edge of breakup tone and it sounds huge, chords or single notes, then I switch to a high gain tone and it’s the opposite of what I was getting from the previous tones.

I’ll most certainly always stick to high gain amps for the metal stuff I do, but I’m heavily leaning on a pedal platform situation for any rock/hard rock stuff I end up getting into. Anyone else going this route for their dirt tones?

 

[Aelred]

How's the Clean on the Dual Rec? Seriously, I just don't know what it can do.

FWIW, my Engl Fireball 25 takes pedals well on the Clean channel as long as the Clean Gain is low (currently EQD Westwood and BAT Coven) and the Lead Channel is as metal as I'll ever need on its own. I also have a 2 channel Black Cat Bad Cat, and the Lead Channel on that is nowhere near metal. But switching between channels is not quite the shocking difference the Fireball does.

I have 15 Fuzz pedals, 16 OD's, 8 Distortion, 4 Boost and 1 pre-amp pedal to choose from. And a Strymon Deco for "tape" saturation. What the hell an EQD Data Corruptor is is anyone's guess - I have no clue why I bought it.

So many pedals to choose from - some of which work with some amps and guitars but not others. Rabbit-hole warning!

Band/gig requirements may be very different from my use.

 

[dronerstone]

How's the Clean on the Dual Rec? Seriously, I just don't know what it can do.

FWIW, my Engl Fireball 25 takes pedals well on the Clean channel as long as the Clean Gain is low (currently EQD Westwood and BAT Coven) and the Lead Channel is as metal as I'll ever need on its own. I also have a 2 channel Black Cat Bad Cat, and the Lead Channel on that is nowhere near metal. But switching between channels is not quite the shocking difference the Fireball does.

I have 15 Fuzz pedals, 16 OD's, 8 Distortion, 4 Boost and 1 pre-amp pedal to choose from. And a Strymon Deco for "tape" saturation. What the hell an EQD Data Corruptor is is anyone's guess - I have no clue why I bought it.

So many pedals to choose from - some of which work with some amps and guitars but not others. Rabbit-hole warning!

Band/gig requirements may be very different from my use.

Whatever floats your boat, really.

I personally prefer a high-headroom, slightly hairy amp as a base tone, with the main drive sounds coming from a combination of pedals and secret sauce. But the amp's character is definitely adding to that.

EDIT: Should've been clear about this, when I say "amp", I'm meaning PEDAL. Preamp pedal near the end of the chain, that is.

 

[norminal]

I started diving into this stuff recreating Gilmour tones and I think I’m catching the bug for it.

 

[Aelred]

I personally prefer a high-headroom, slightly hairy amp as a base tone, with the main drive sounds coming from a combination of pedals and secret sauce. But the amp's character is definitely adding to that.

For sure. I'm now using the Engl more than my Orange Rocker 15 because the Clean on the Orange might be more accurately described as "sterile" and needed more pedals than the Engl. Hence my collection of all sorts of gain pedals, so that I now wonder about re-sale value.

 

[norminal]

Nine times out of ten…

For cleans and edge of breakup:

I’ll use a boost, overdrive, or distortion pedal to boost a clean amp or an amp that’s already slightly overdriven.

For mid to high-gain:

I’ll use a boost, overdrive, or distortion pedal to tighten the bottom end of an already distorted amp.

I guess my methods go back to the days when amps like the JCM800 was about as much gain you could get out of an amp without a boost.

Nowadays, plenty of modern amps are able to give me the desired results without a boost or distortion pedal and vice versa. I guess I’m just a creature of habit.

 

[the swede]

One base amp and one or two pedals can do a lot of sounds together and one by one.

With my current setup, I use a main clean amp sound combined with a gain changer and carcosa. And a marshal breaking up type of amp model, with the same two pedals. A lot of sounds already there. I can get insane amounts of “distortion” with that, if I want.

But there’s so many amps that does the middle great to. Not just clean or high gain.

In the end an high gain amp is what it is and everything else is an another way to achieve that, at different results.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Anyone else going this route for their dirt tones?

Since ages already. At one point in time I got so annoyed with the 4CM setup that I simply bought some pedals and ditched anything but the clean channel of the MkIV (which was a glorious pedal platform). And I pretty much kept working like this, just that modeling is allowing me to a) have a dedicated amp for dirt pedals and b) that this amp doesn't necessarily have to be completely clean (I'd say in 90% it's kind of a hairy, EOB but still clean-ish tone).

I’ll most certainly always stick to high gain amps for the metal stuff I do,

Yeah, I would recommend that to any high gain player, too. I rarely need real metal tones, but whenever I tried, I found that I could just not get them out of a clean pedal platform amp without majorly compromising its settings - which would render it useless for pretty much anything else. That defined "chug" simply doesn't seem to exist in pedal land, at least it's not available as easily.

Anyhow, some random things:

- I like using pedal platform amps because they kinda glue things together nicely. Also, running delays/verbs in front of an amp (even in front of a completely or almost completely clean amp) is something I really learned to like.

- Not the common pedal platform amp way of working, but with my current setup, I absolutely love that I can gradually blend between the amp dictating the overall sound or the pedals kinda taking over. The more hairy the amp, the more same-ish pedals sound - which sometimes actually can be a great thing (see "glue"). Delicate though, as at one point, certain pedals don't work well anymore (most AITB pedals pretty much ask for a clean amp).

- Pretty much a "relevant for live only" thing, but I even did so back with the Boogie and a Twin: I always made/make sure to have at least dedicated level controls for the completely clean part and all the dirt. Which is one of the reasons why I'm using loopswitchers since decades. With the Boogie, the clean loop at first had a GE-7 as both dedicated tone and level control in it, whereas I used a post-everything RC Boost for the dirt loop, which also allowed me to add the mentioned hairy bits. After a while I swapped the GE-7 in favour of another RC Boost clone, as the original could work pretty much completely clean as well.
If I was going the real amp route ever again, that's possibly exactly the way I'd still do it because it worked incredibly well. Especially live, finding the right balance between clean-ish and dirt stuff is incredibly crucial for me and defenitely something you can mess up with just one channel, as we apparently tend to always dial in a bit more level on our dirt pedals, so in the end the pedalfree clean sound will be extremely weak in comparison.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Doesn't have to be either or.
My preference is a amp set to break-up so it still cleans up.
And then ganging boost into OD, or OD into OD or something that has two ODs in one.

 

[maguchi]

Distortion - from the amp or pedals?

Yes!

 

[the swede]

Distortion - from the amp or pedals?

Yes!

Ok….

You win.

Thread closed and warnings issued.

 

[Cirrus]

I've always preferred pedals because I'm a broken monster of a human and they're easier to make sound weird/bad/ear tweaky.

Amp gain for competent sounding heavy music every day of the week, but pedals for anything from indie to alt weirdness. I really love playing multi-band gigs where everyone else is using big channel switching amps then I set up with an open backed combo and a rat and do something different.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Yeah, variety and the option to have some weird(-ish) sounds available is another thing way in favour of pedals.
Amps are made to sound "great" (hence usually trying to suit whatever typical demands) whereas plenty of pedals are built to sound different from that.
Maybe the most "historically proven" example are fuzz boxes. People just don't build (or would buy) amps sounding like an Arbiter Fuzz Face - but they obviously build (and buy) pedals doing just that.

 

[laxu]

I don't like most distortion pedals. I do like overdrives and fuzzes.

So for me the answer is either, as long as you are not aiming to turn a clean channel into a fire breathing beast with a pedal but just add an extra gear to what you have. For example clean -> edge of breakup -> overdrive -> high gain.

I do generally prefer amp gain over overdrive pedals, unless the drive pedals are doing something that the amp does not (fuzz, console style preamps etc).

 

[Cirrus]

Actually something creative/ workflowy that I've found, now I've thought about it some more:

I've found amp gain sounds pretty good no matter what you're playing, generally - whether it's big riffs, or high screaming notes, or chords or double stops, using hummies or singles, etc etc etc.

With pedals, you get some settings that work for a big riff but sound crap with screaming high notes, or awesome screaming high notes but over compressed/ boxy for big riffs, or spanky with strats but just whompy and characterless with humbuckers, etc etc. Pedals have a narrower window where they sound good, and I quite like how that helps direct my playing when I'm composing.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

All about context really, all different tools for different jobs. Pedals can make interesting sounds which is definitely what you want for certain things.

When they try to replace something else they generally don’t sound so good (some do surprisingly well though!). If you want a Bogner Uberschall, just buy the real thing.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Historically, I've always been more of a pedal for gain type of player. Besides having a few channel switcher amps, my main live amps were mostly something very clean like a Twin or a lower watt Traynor that would get a bit more hair when cranked. I did use a Carvin Legacy for some years which has a nice drive channel akin to a modded 800, but it always sounded better boosted with a TS9 -- and more times than not I only used its big clean channel as a pedal platform. The music I play or have played was never really metal or chug-centric, I flirted with it here and there so a pedal would suffice most of the time. I like more of the hairy bottom drives like a Fuzz Face or BK tube driver.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

For nearly my entire guitar playing life I’ve gotten distortion from amps. Up until recent years, there weren’t a ton of great sounding high gain dirt pedals that could pull off a 5150 or Dual Rec sound. As I’m starting to plan rigs for future use, mainly in non-metal bands, I’m starting to lean more on the idea of getting a killer clean platform and just using pedals for all the dirt as I’m starting to understand the appeal more.

I started diving into this stuff recreating Gilmour tones and I think I’m catching the bug for it. Particularly in the area where you can retain that initial attack of the note without the compression from the distortion crushing it, when all the body of the clean tones stays intact while the note sustains. One thing that drives me nuts when I’m switching presets is when I’m jamming on a clean or edge of breakup tone and it sounds huge, chords or single notes, then I switch to a high gain tone and it’s the opposite of what I was getting from the previous tones.

I’ll most certainly always stick to high gain amps for the metal stuff I do, but I’m heavily leaning on a pedal platform situation for any rock/hard rock stuff I end up getting into. Anyone else going this route for their dirt tones?

The one challenge with this approach is that you either need a pretty big amp so that you are never pushing its headroom limit and thus pedals always work fairly predictably, or you really need to invest the time in learning how to get all the sounds you want out of the rig at all of the different volumes you might play it. Which isn’t much different than just using amps in general, but does feel moderately compounded with addition of pedal gain to me.

 

[DrewJD82]

Historically, I've always been more of a pedal for gain type of player. Besides having a few channel switcher amps, my main live amps were mostly something very clean like a Twin or a lower watt Traynor that would get a bit more hair when cranked. I did use a Carvin Legacy for some years which has a nice drive channel akin to a modded 800, but it always sounded better boosted with a TS9 -- and more times than not I only used its big clean channel as a pedal platform. The music I play or have played was never really metal or chug-centric, I flirted with it here and there so a pedal would suffice most of the time. I like more of the hairy bottom drives like a Fuzz Face or BK tube driver.

The Legacy’s clean channel is really somethin’ else. When I first got my head back in the day I didn’t have a cab for it yet, so I plugged it into a PA speaker, while the dirt sounded like shit the clean channel sounded like a giant piano. I really miss that amp and will absolutely pick one up when I see one cheap. There was one for $350 about 6 months ago but local pickup only and 9 hours away.

Agreed with the boost aspect, I know mine also had to be cranked a bit to get the ‘real’ searing sustain out of it where the poweramp started compressing as it was cranked.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, without even remotely willing to discuss any of the usual sound-related aspects, all this is as well why I love modeling solutions.
No, it's not that you couldn't do it with an analog-centric setup, but I can instantly switch between any kind of setups, using a clean "overall" pedal platform amp, using a dual channel amp with one channel aiming at dirt stuff still coming from pedals or using two really different channels with one amp devoted to some specific kinda overdrive "structure". The greatest thing being that with all these variations, my "usability infrastructure" stays pretty much exactly the same.
In the analog world it's a pretty tough thing finding an amplifier working equally well as a flexible channel-switcher and a great pedal platform at the same time. Fwiw, in case I had to go for such a solution, I'd likely get a Mark V (or Mark VII, but so far I have zero hands on experience). Would still raise the question which cab to use for everything, though.