Tried something a little different today...

[misterwhizzy]

I wanted to get a little bigger rhythm guitar tone, slightly less focused in the mids than usual, so I dropped the gain, turned the mids to about four, and the bass to seven. Then boosted it with my SD-1 GT. I didn't realize the dynamics I was missing by having the mids at seven to begin with. And the sound was glorious.

For the record, it was my PRS SE Custom 22 loaded with a Distortion set into the Boss into a JCA20H powering a Governor and Wizard cabinet.

[batmansawesome]

Re: Tried something a little different today...

Sounds glorious, mate!

I'd imagine it sounds something like this:



Am I way off base?

[misterwhizzy]

Re: Tried something a little different today...

Higher gain than that, and maybe not quite as much growl. A little smoother and bigger.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Tried something a little different today...

I wanted to get a little bigger rhythm guitar tone, slightly less focused in the mids than usual, so I dropped the gain, turned the mids to about four, and the bass to seven.

all great

Then boosted it with my SD-1 GT. I didn't realize the dynamics I was missing by having the mids at seven to begin with. And the sound was glorious.

boosting it increases the gain again. Plus the sd-1 cuts bass and adds mids.

im sure it sounds cool, but it doesnt make much sense to me. Why back off the gain if you are going to crank it back up again with a drive pedal?
Why cut the mids and crank the bass, when you are going to use a pedal that cuts bass and cranks mids?

[Lampy H]

Re: Tried something a little different today...

EQing at the pedal sounds different compared to EQing at the amp. Same goes for gain.

[misterwhizzy]

Re: Tried something a little different today...

im sure it sounds cool, but it doesnt make much sense to me. Why back off the gain if you are going to crank it back up again with a drive pedal?
Why cut the mids and crank the bass, when you are going to use a pedal that cuts bass and cranks mids?

I don't have a great scientific explanation for it. The SD-1 GT doesn't seem to cut a lot of bass. It really just boosts the mids, and it makes the highs sound fantastic, which is something I could never really accomplish with the amp alone without it getting all ice-picky. And that high-end response is really why I put the boost on. It's easily controllable with the tone knob, and for some reason, it allows a lot more dynamics from the volume knob.

That's the frequency response part of the question. As for the gain part, that's easy. It's a different type of gain. It's adding enough of the color of the pedal to smooth out the tubes a bit. Again, not all that scientific, but my ears don't always think things through that well. It's just an experiment, and for now, with this guitar, it sounds really good.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Tried something a little different today...

so basically the pedal has a nicer drive sound than the amp. Makes sense. Not all amp pre-amps have a sweet drive tone purely on virtue of being tubes.

RE: the sd-1 gt. I did that mod to an sd-1 years ago and it does allow a lot more low end through than the stock pedal. The value it uses for c3 is the same as the fulltone fulldrive which is more or less double what the boss circuit offers. If you want even more, you can double up again and use s .22uf capacitor. Its pretty nice if you want a bigger sounding, standalone type drive pedal sound.