Booster pedals

[Sly_D]

I'm looking for a good one to push the dirty channel of my Traynor into insane territory for lead. I tried many. Some were great, some were not so great.

And I'd like to know your experiences and preferences. Here's what I tried, mostly with a Traynor YCV40 amp.

Boss Overdrive (OD-3): Was OK with the gain at zero. Started to sound muffled and funny as soon as the gain got past 9 o'clock. Quite transparent. Not too much bottom-end loss. Great pedal on the clean channel though.

Boss SuperOverdrive (SD-1): Great pedal for a booster, really helps for solos but sucks the bottom end quite a lot. Thins the sound a little too much (maybe not with a 4X12 cab, which I don't use).

Boss Distortion (SD-1): I thought I had found what I was looking for at first with this one, but I finally got a little tired of the lack of transparency. It colors the tone a lot. Too much for my taste. And when the amp has good gain like the Traynor, it can become annoying.

Ibanez TS-7: Another good one which is quite transparent but sucks bottom-end big time. Maybe a modded version or a more expensive version (TS-9, 808) would be good.

DOD 250: I REALLY miss this one. I think I'll buy another one. I hated the facted that it made the bigger strings sound like Fender distortion, but it really thickened the smaller strings like none of it's competitors. Maybe the Yngwie model is better (I'm not a fan, but if the pedal fits).

Does anyone have experience with the DOD Yngwie model, the Zakk model or anything else worth mentioning? How about the SD pickup booster?

Thanks for sharing!

 

[GandLMan]

Re: Booster pedals

Boss DS-1 then fire it off to seymour duncan forums own Stratdeluxer to get it modd'd, or even check the trading post for these pedals. I dont have a ton of first hand experience as I dont use the one i have alot, but ive heard great things from other forumites who have it, also check harmony central for a Spina Modd'd DS1

Ty

 

[STRATDELUXER97]

Re: Booster pedals

The SD Pickup Booster is great also or one of my modded TS9 or TS7s would get you alot more lows and more gain?

 

[slash857]

Re: Booster pedals

for my marshall combo i could not find one pedal that would boost the od channel. everything increased the gain but didnt increase the volume. i have the sd p'up booster its great for boosting a clean tube amp into distortion and i kept it just for that, but i dont know of any pedal that boosted my volume on my od channel of my amp.

 

[tonejam]

Re: Booster pedals

My favorite booster of all time is any EQ pedal. The up side being you can boost the frequencies you want to hear while cutting the ones you don't.

 

[joelap]

Re: Booster pedals

How about building a rangemaster clone? http://www.buildyourownclone.com/ranger.html used by clapton, brian may, etc. Read about it, it may be what you want?

 

[Sly_D]

Re: Booster pedals

Yeah, you're the second person who mention this... someone told me to get an EQ, boost the volume and then the lows to thicken the sound to taste. I should diffinitely check that out.

Thanks to all you guys, the SD booster is tempting also.

 

[Hellion]

Re: Booster pedals

I had a DOD acoustic preamp pedal that I used for awhile. It worked really well as far as just bumping up the amount of signal that was hitting the amp. You might look for something like that.

 

[Ironjose]

Re: Booster pedals

try the ZW OD... is quite good..
JJ

 

[ultimatum79]

Re: Booster pedals

My favorite booster of all time is any EQ pedal. The up side being you can boost the frequencies you want to hear while cutting the ones you don't.

i have the boss-GE-7 eq and i dont know how i could even stand my amp without it...it works wonders for tone power and volume

 

[deftgala]

Re: Booster pedals

The SD Pickup Booster is great also or one of my modded TS9 or TS7s would get you alot more lows and more gain?

I heard this SD Booster works great with single coil pups ala Tele bridge or strat bridge for achieving solid OD

 

[Dankerella]

Re: Booster pedals

Most of what you gave examples of are overdrives and distortions, not boosters. You should poke around at runoffgroove.com and diystompboxes.com and sniff out the most highly praised boosters. I made a simple one before called the Sparkle Boost, which works great. It doesn't impart a tone of distortion, just a nice boost to drive the old tubes: http://www.diystompboxes.com/sboxforum/viewtopic.php?t=30083

If you don't want to build one and generalguitargadgets.com sells a pre-made booster, I'd buy one from him - he's the master.

 

[kevlar3000]

Re: Booster pedals

I love the Duncan booster!! I have three Traynors and it gives them each equal wow when boosted. Very natural and a huge range to mess with. I do not like extra distorion added to the natural amps tone I just like more of what is already there. I use it live with great success. A friend has the Rust Boost and it adds way more color to the amp. Hell of a value. I tried the Malmsteen and the original Dod. Milk Box compressor, Micro Amp and compressor, Maxon and kept on moving through em. One try with the SD and I have not looked at anything else since.

 

[fusion101]

Re: Booster pedals

I have only tried the dod yngwie on a clean amp and it sucked, low end loss was extreme and it just sounded like trash

 

[Brow]

Re: Booster pedals

I'll probably get some flack for saying this, but oh well

The BEST pedal I've found for Boosting my amps is the ZVex Super Duper.

I use channel 1 purely as a clean boost for solo's etc (it also adds a small amount of gain, not too much though).

I use channel 2 with a higher gain level, but control the amount of boost that hits my amp with the pedals master volume control to push the amp more into OD than as a straight clean boost.

Fulltone's Fat Boost pedal is also very good for boosting gain on an amps OD channel, as is the seymour Duncan Pickup Booster

Craig

 

[Sly_D]

Re: Booster pedals

Well, when I said "booster" I didn't mean it in an absolute way. Know what I mean.

Thanks a lot for all you answers and links, I'll definitely check them all out.

 

[Dankerella]

Re: Booster pedals

Well, when I said "booster" I didn't mean it in an absolute way. Know what I mean.

Thanks a lot for all you answers and links, I'll definitely check them all out.

Maybe one of analogman.com's modded Boss super overdrives or blues driver...http://www.analogman.com/boss.htm