Pedals vs Amp Distortion Put To The Test

[Yngwiestein]

i just played on the radio last night and had a chance to listen to my stuff totally isolated thru good headphones. the amp sounded best with no pedals, more natural and sweeter. the pedals didnt sound bad but the natural distortion of the amp sounded noticably more complex yet clearer and uncongested.

So you made it? Does this have anything to do with that voting thing? Hope my vote helped Congrats on the radio gig. That's got to be one of the coolest things when you hear your own stuff on the radio!

[jeremy]

ive done it before, last time was in january and the engineer gave a a copy of what we played last time, but yeah its very cool. actually came out pretty good for one take off the cut unmixed stuff.

the voting thing was for xm radio, this was normal fm radio. it is cool to hear yourself on the radio, especially when you are travelling on the way to a gig in some other state.

[bungalowbill]

I use 3 different drives on my board. When you play in a cover band and need several different flavors of gain, it is a viable option that sounds good.

I don't have the desire to haul 3 or 4 amps to a gig to get the tones I need......feeling my age, I guess.

[jeremy]

i hear ya and i have three drives on my pedal board too, i just never use the thing

[Yngwiestein]

i hear ya and i have three drives on my pedal board too, i just never use the thing

Err that is most likely the case with my KK head. No reason to put a pedal on a modded JCM 800! Still a JVM sounds fantastic w pedals.

[MetalMike_II]

you really need a lot less gain than you think, even for really heavy music

it's the addiction "I can quit any time I want"

every time out of many, no matter what the amp is, when I back off that thing and say gee that's better, it eventually and invariably starts creeping back up. Just a little more. Shh. No one will know. A teensy bit more won't hurt. Even Reinhold Bogner once told me to turn it down when I described the hair on the red channel of my early Ecstacy. And if I didn't listen to him...

gain knob is more seductive to me than a bad girl, a bad habit, a plate of homemade fudge brownies. I can't help it.

[Hot _Grits]

it's the addiction "I can quit any time I want"

every time out of many, no matter what the amp is, when I back off that thing and say gee that's better, it eventually and invariably starts creeping back up. Just a little more. Shh. No one will know. A teensy bit more won't hurt. Even Reinhold Bogner once told me to turn it down when I described the hair on the red channel of my early Ecstacy. And if I didn't listen to him...

gain knob is more seductive to me than a bad girl, a bad habit, a plate of homemade fudge brownies. I can't help it.

Sadly the cure for that affliction is brutal: more practice.

[MetalMike_II]

Sadly the cure for that affliction is brutal: more practice.

while that's probably never the wrong answer, you don't understand. Less of it actually makes some things easier to play. I'm not talking about that.

I like the sound of it. Just a chord ringing or a bent note. As much distortion as possible with out fuzz or flub or glitch. Half my tone hunt from pups to speakers and mics has involved having as much as possible with a minimum of sonic drawbacks that you'd ordinally get with too much gain/preamp distortion. It's kinda hard to explain, and it makes it hard for people to give me advice when I ask for it, and not just here, but also in a store. Here on the forum, I suspect people see the username, assume I'm 22 because it's impossible for someone my age not to have outgrown metal (I never liked metal until I was in my 20s, death metal not until my mid-to-late 30s) and that I'm trying to sound like "_________".

sure, go ahead and consider me nuts if you'd like. Everybody likes to tell me all the reasons I'm wrong. I ain't the first to chase a "tone in the head" that was unpopular before it became fully realized, heard, and understood by others. And I will keep practicing cuz I have a long ways yet. Those 34-note sweepeggios aren't gonna play themselves, and they're even more difficult with all that distortion I pour on. Because of the necessary millisecond-long mutes in between the notes. Much easier without all that gain.

wrote way more than I meant to, kind of a convergence of threads there

I know, I know. Whatever floats my boat etc.
</off topic>

[papersoul]

While I hate to dig up such an old topping it seemed very fitting in my currect situation.

I have been using amps for years, no pedals. A god friend of mine has been doing the same for many years and has a lot of nice amps. Recently he said he got tiredof having to use an effects loop and extra cables so he started using old 70s non master volume Marshall JMPs set totally clean at like one or two on the volume.

He then uses OD and distortion pedals for his gain. He said it is the best tone he has had in years and gets more compliments now. He said it is also much easier with less cables, everything going straight into the amp.
He found the gain was actually smoother and creamier using a pedal into an old Marshall rather than a modern high gain amp.

So, of course now I am considering this option as well...thinking this might give me an easy set up with the opportunity to put all of my amp searching behind me and just swap pedals if I want a different sound.

Funny thing is, one of my amps is an EL34 Bogner 20th anniversary Shiva which I think sounds great. However, I have been using a Sonic Edge J&J OD pedal into the clean channel for a change and let me tell you it sounds great, smooth and buig and punchy.

Now another friend of mine wants me to take one of his Cornford amps because he said no pedal will ever give you the guts of a good tube amp so now I am on the fence as to what to do. Obviously the JMP and some pedals would be cheaper and more versatile.

[papersoul]

bump

[Jackson Distortion]

I've been using my amp's distortion for 1,600 years now and I haven't looked back. But, that's partially due to the variances in sounds you can get by simply fidd'ling with the amp's built-in distortion. I figured that since they build distortion into the the amp, why the hell not use it and give it a try at least; if you don't like it, buy an outboard unit. I like how it cuts down on extra cables, too.

[AlexR]

This is the nub of the 'argument' for want of a better word. If you play your own music or you have 1 goal tone, then a simple change of guitars might be enough to give you the flavours you need.

On the other hand if you cycle between Zep, sabbath, the who, AC/DC, Tool, Van Halen, RHCP, Metallica, Aerosmith, Dire Straits, Queen, SRV etc, no 1 amp drive is going to get you close.

My personal solution:

I have got a large board with a variety of drive pedals, running into an Egnator tweaker. Flip a switch and I'm fender clean, next time I could have Vox drive from the Cooltron tube pedal, then some marshall tones with a bluesbreaker pedal.

[JLagoon]

It is all about frequencies, regardless of the source. How to get the frequencies that you want (sounds good to you) with how you play is what matters most.

[marvelous_seven]

I don't have any pedals or tube amp right now,just my Roland cube 15 Watt for practicing in a small room of my boarding house.
I could save for a good distortion pedal or two,but I can't see I could hug those 120W 5150 head even in next 10 years, I love metal but it is not very happening in music industry here.
In my place if you could haul those monster stacks to every gig you play then you must be in a high profile musician category,which I'm not.
Even bringing a Tiny Terror with Marshall 2x12 is considered a pro level musician too,which again I'm not fall into.
I'm just a college student who play gigs in an averagely 1 gig/month,so I think I'm in a good-distortion-pedal-plugged-into-any-amp-available-on-the-stage quest too.
This is a good thread,I wonder what kinda resolution you guys come to at the moment?
Any wise suggestions?

[mwalluk]

To each their own, but for me personally I prefer amp's distortion.

Now I do own a few pedals for either a boost, OD, or a different tone all together, but the majority comes from my amp.

More pedals mean more pedal dancing, more pedal dancing on stage takes away from performance.

Maybe I haven't played the right distortion pedals, my amps distortion always sounded better. Always sounded more tighter, thicker, warmer, rounder, etc. I spend the money on my amp for it's distortion. Otherwise, if I wanted to run thru a clean amp, I would've got a Fender

[TeleLubber]

Yeah.. I keep going back and forth on this one.. I like both for different reasons.

When I do the cover band thing.. I use several pedals into a clean amp out of necessity.. When playing my own music.. less definitely equals more for me..

guitar > booster pedal/volume knob > loud(ish) tube amp > decent speaker(s) = TONE

that being said.. I do like buying & using pedals alot.. "It's Christmas everyday here in Heaven"

[papersoul]

The right pedals into an old Marshall JMP set for clean....is a beautiful thing. Sounds as good or better than any high end amp gain I have heard.

[phil_104]

Man, Mesa Stiletto Ace (with build in solo boost). It's like a marshall with all the gain you could want on tap, and then some. Why would I ever want to play a distortion pedal?

[papersoul]

Man, Mesa Stiletto Ace (with build in solo boost). It's like a marshall with all the gain you could want on tap, and then some. Why would I ever want to play a distortion pedal?

I didn;t like the Stiletto at all. I ended up selling it. I love the new reborn Dual Rec though. I picked that up last week. I also use my 20th Anniversary Bogner Shiva a lot. Both have built in solo boosts.

However, my 1974 JMP and some pedals sounds just as good and is easier to set up, no effects loop needed!

[phil_104]

I didn;t like the Stiletto at all. I ended up selling it. I love the new reborn Dual Rec though. I picked that up last week. I also use my 20th Anniversary Bogner Shiva a lot. Both have built in solo boosts.

However, my 1974 JMP and some pedals sounds just as good and is easier to set up, no effects loop needed!

See, and I can't get a usable tone out of a Rec series amp to save my life. And I don't use the effects loop: Les Paul strait into the front of the amp, with a little wah from time to time.... just for fun.

Question of taste my friend. My point was made to illustrate that once you've found a great amp, one that really speaks to you, IMHO, that sort of distortion will destroy any pedal. I've tried some pedals that come close, but nothing was spot on.

PS. Just a quick note for anybody reading : I dislike the stiletto a lot when I play it through any other cab than the oversized Mesa. I really think it needs the extra low end boom. Also, the amp isn't the best if you are playing alone. My express got better individual tones. But, with a bass and drums, I still think it's the best amp I've played. Just a quick note to anybody exploring the Mesa realm; it's designed to cut in a live setting.