Whats a great pedal for that marshall crunch?

[Dave Locher]

Re: Whats a great pedal for that marshall crunch?

I know there is overhead, etc. And I know what it takes to build a house (I watched mine being built) or a car (I've built one from the ground up) and it's a lot, lot, lot more than what it takes to make a distortion pedal. And I'm not sure R&D costs a whole lot since most pedals seem to be "based on" some other pedal and they just changed out a component or two. That seems more like tinkering than high-tech product development.
I guess I'm just frustrated that there are a lot of pedals that I'd like to try but I'm not willing to buy one just to find out if I like it. I stopped paying attention to music and equipment for several years and now that I'm back in The Life I'm surprised that the price of just about everything (amps, guitars, pickups, cords, etc.) has stayed about the same or actually gone down since the 1990s but the price of pedals has doubled or tripled. We didn't used to need clones and knockoffs because the "real" pedals were cheap as hell.

[PFDarkside]

Re: Whats a great pedal for that marshall crunch?

My point with the cars and houses is that if you add up the raw material price that Ford Motor Company is paying and compare it to the final MSRP, you'll obviously see a large markup.

Regarding pricing, my opinion is that pricing has increased quite a bit across the board for guitars and amplifiers as well. Look how much Fender or Marshall charges now for a turret board based amp. Most of the affordable ones are PCB made in Mexico or overseas. Same for guitars, an American Les Paul or Stratocaster is quite a bit more than it used to be. The difference is that the Mexico and overseas manufacturing quality has increased by leaps and bounds, so a MIM stratocaster is now on par with American guitars from the dark years. DS-1s, RATs, Tube Screamers and Big Muffs are all still available. The boutique guys are the equivalent of the smaller amp and guitar builders.

Finally, you are absolutely correct about many pedals being component swaps and tweaks on previously existing designs. Really there are only so many ways to amplify and clip a signal. Heck, some of what the boutique pedal industry is doing is simply reversing the cost saves that have happened to the standard pedals over 4 decades of manufacturing efficiency. Two takeaways from this... When you get too far in the details you'll forget that most overdrives sound like overdrives, and most distortions sound like distortions. You're really looking for that last 15% of tonal enhancement. On that note, grabbing a DS-1, SD-1 and TS-9 from eBay/Craislist, a soldering iron and some components might get you to where you want to be.

[Dave Locher]

Re: Whats a great pedal for that marshall crunch?

I take back my whole rant. Seriously. I just discovered Electro Harmonix pedals. That's more like it!
Sorry to have been a jerk.

[Scott_F]

Re: Whats a great pedal for that marshall crunch?

You're welcome. http://www.snouse.com/blackbox-overdrive.html

[DinoTrousers]

Re: Whats a great pedal for that marshall crunch?

JHS Charlie Brown is great, and the Tech21 Purple Plexi is also killer.

But these are the kinds of pedals I'm more likely to use with a non-Marshall amp to get that sound. You might be better off going with a good overdrive with a bass control like the Duncan 805 or a used Vox Ice 9.

If you're concerned about the cost of buying so many of these pedals, you might look into services like Pedal Genie to rent them and see how the play with your rig.