So in my continuing adventures of trying to get a sound I really like out of the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe I'm borrowing until my Mesa is out of the shop I decided to try to run my two dirt pedals, the Boss DS-1 and Boss SD-1 directly into the clean channel and use them as my primary source of dirt. Now don't get me wrong, the HRDx has a very nice sounding drive channel that I'd bet could hold it's own against a boutique pedal or two for a light to medium gain crunch/overdrive/distortion. But when the gain is turned up to a level more appropriate for the modern hard rock sound of my band, the low end starts to get mushy. So it's back to the pedals I go.
I hooked up my Boss DS-1 and used that as my lower gain light crunch sound, with the SD-1 in front to boost it into a higher gain sound. On the DS-1 I turned the volume almost all the way up, (so maybe it's driving the amp itself a bit, I dunno) with the gain somewhere between noon and 2, for a light to medium crunch. The SD-1 was tried a few different ways, and I eventually settled for drive and volume both a bit past noon, with the tone pulled back to about 1/3 to tame the high end a bit.
Now, my DS-1 is not stock. I've done the phat mod to it, which is two resistors on the transistor gain stage before the opamp to lower the its gain and treble boost - taming a lot of the stock fizz. While I was in there, I also changed out the capacitor input to that stage from .047µF to .033µF to trim the bass just a wee bit, and changed out the clipper diodes for a pair of 1N400Xs and a red LED. Really, one cap, two resistors, and three diodes, that's it. But wow, what what a difference it makes -- the pedal has noticeably less gain than before, and in a good way.
With the gain on the DS-1 between noon and 2 o'clock, I was able to get a light to medium crunchy distortion that wasn't to fizzy. But what surprised me was just how dynamic it could be. With the gain around 12:30 to 1, I could get get a light light crunch with my normal picking strenght. But simply by lightening up with the pick, I could get things to clean up to where there was no breakup that I could tell, and just a bit of compression. I didn't even have to touch the volume knob of my guitar to clean things up, but I could if I wanted to. Doing so cleaned things up more and gave the lightest breakup with my heaviest picking.
I thought this was considered the ideal way to use a boutique overdrive pedal or natural power tube overdrive of a Fender-style amp, not a cheap distortion pedal. I gotta say, playing with such dynamics is fun. I can see how dynamics like that can be more expressive than the balls-to-the-wall, full-out, in-your-face, angry, grindy distortion of modern hard rock and metal. Now this doesn't mean I'm gonna sell off the Boogie and make the DS-1 into a Fender my main sound, but it is going to be fun to try to work that kind of lighter, more dynamic tones into more of the band's songs.
I hooked up my Boss DS-1 and used that as my lower gain light crunch sound, with the SD-1 in front to boost it into a higher gain sound. On the DS-1 I turned the volume almost all the way up, (so maybe it's driving the amp itself a bit, I dunno) with the gain somewhere between noon and 2, for a light to medium crunch. The SD-1 was tried a few different ways, and I eventually settled for drive and volume both a bit past noon, with the tone pulled back to about 1/3 to tame the high end a bit.
Now, my DS-1 is not stock. I've done the phat mod to it, which is two resistors on the transistor gain stage before the opamp to lower the its gain and treble boost - taming a lot of the stock fizz. While I was in there, I also changed out the capacitor input to that stage from .047µF to .033µF to trim the bass just a wee bit, and changed out the clipper diodes for a pair of 1N400Xs and a red LED. Really, one cap, two resistors, and three diodes, that's it. But wow, what what a difference it makes -- the pedal has noticeably less gain than before, and in a good way.
With the gain on the DS-1 between noon and 2 o'clock, I was able to get a light to medium crunchy distortion that wasn't to fizzy. But what surprised me was just how dynamic it could be. With the gain around 12:30 to 1, I could get get a light light crunch with my normal picking strenght. But simply by lightening up with the pick, I could get things to clean up to where there was no breakup that I could tell, and just a bit of compression. I didn't even have to touch the volume knob of my guitar to clean things up, but I could if I wanted to. Doing so cleaned things up more and gave the lightest breakup with my heaviest picking.
I thought this was considered the ideal way to use a boutique overdrive pedal or natural power tube overdrive of a Fender-style amp, not a cheap distortion pedal. I gotta say, playing with such dynamics is fun. I can see how dynamics like that can be more expressive than the balls-to-the-wall, full-out, in-your-face, angry, grindy distortion of modern hard rock and metal. Now this doesn't mean I'm gonna sell off the Boogie and make the DS-1 into a Fender my main sound, but it is going to be fun to try to work that kind of lighter, more dynamic tones into more of the band's songs.
