Distorted tone - amp or pedals? A little review of pedals I tried on my last store visit

Music Makers
#1

Hey all!
A recent visit to a great guitar store made me rethink things yet again.
So, I usually am an amp distortion guy, or at least a partial amp distortion guy, might push an already overdriven amp into screaming with a boost/ood pedal.

When I am in the studio, it is usually a Rectifier, Mark V or Marshall type of distortion, getting it thru the amp.

In the case of this particular guitar store - I wanted to check out the plethora of effects that they had there, and there were quite a few new pedal brands that I haven’t tried before, so asked the salesman to set me up a guitar chain with pedals that I selected and run that into a Plexi type amp. The guy was great and brought me a Marshall JTM45 combo which I ran super clean.

The end results were impressive! Tried quite a few things and I can’t say there was a bad tone. So I am rethinking my approach. Honestly, with this setup, one can do pretty much anything as long as you have goo pedals up front. The distorted sounds were as great, if not even greater than some of these overdriven tube sounds I am getting thru my other gear. This setup could even be done thru one of these huge vintage Fender amps and will probably kill, plus you’ll have an amazing clean tone to boot.

I know I am not discovering the wheel here, but these tones were not in any way less touch responsive or “analog” sounding as anything pushing a lot more tubes to cooking point.

What’s your take?

Some of the pedals I tried and a quick impression:

Marshall Shredmaster - on the dark side, a bit muffled sounding, with a small OD pushin front could sound better, lots of gain, contour control changes tones from vintage to modern, more scooped, for the price not all that impressive

Walrus Audio Fundamental Series - tried their reverb, delay, chorus, phaser, distortion and drive
All of these are extremely useful pedals, the same layout across the series is great as it’s the same type of control on all the models. All very musical, the distortion was a touch dark and overcooked imo, the Drive pedal took the cake. Extremely musical, and great tone. 2 overdrive layers and one distortion layer, almost wished that they had a footswitch to cycle thru the modes. If it had the footswitch and I didn’t already own 20 overdrives or thereabouts, this would’ve made the trip home with me as well :slight_smile:

Boss RE-2 Space Echo - I guess this one is no surprise. Lots of options, great echo/delay pedal, was a bit hard to dial in but once you learn it, tons of options. The mode switches without the manual in front put you in “trust your ears” scenario as you don’t know what is what as they’re not labelled due to small size of pedal. Takes a while to find what you want but it is very musical and has tons of parameters to tweak.

Earth Quaker Levitation - analog echo/reverb with some delay parameters. Really vibey and deep, great spring type reverb and the box has an actual spring type. You have control for decay and “Atmosphere” and is sounds amazing. This one I took home.

The Marshall JTM45 - what can I say? I’ve forgotten how good those Plexi amps sounded, even in clean mode. Couldn’t honestly crank it proper to see what it can do in jumpered mode, they didn’t have iso room in the store :slight_smile:

#2

I have a Marshall DSL 40 C. It actually sounds pretty good when it is cranked and getting the output tubes going. I’ve been looking for something that would up the crunch factor on the clean channel and would also let me run the dirty channel with less gain, using a pedal to get it to sing at lower volumes. Did you run across anything with that type of flexibility? I haven’t found a pedal that works on both the clean and dirty channels effectively.

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#3

Chirp…I had a 60’s fender twin reverb that i played in our band for 20 years. When you pulled the volume knob out it went to distortion. Plenty good for me. ha ha

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#4

Styles - are you looking for a “always ON” overdrive?
For that I use Voodoolabs Sparkle Drive, with very minimum gain and just a bit of a clean boost.
Depending on my guitars and the gig situation, I either use it as a boost for solos (when playing active pickups) or always on when playing passive pickup guitars.

I guess you can also look at any of the Klon Centaur “Clones”

Probably Tumnus as I’ve heard good things about that one.

#5

I’m looking for something that would allow me to run the gain channel as a rhythm guitar sound, and take it over the top from there. The gain on the amp is more than I need from the preamp stage until you get the output tubes going hot, which is very loud. More of a “step on it for the solo” kind of pedal, but not a tube screamer effect.

#6

Maybe an EQ pedal in the loop? Para eq is probably even better.

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#7

I definitely like having the best of both worlds. I have a PRS Archon and a 2-channel Dual Rectifier. Both have great amp distortion. I like them both a little better with a Klone (Archer Ikon) +/- Screamer type pedal (Full-drive 2). The PRS also has an amazing clean channel and is the perfect pedal platform. I use pedals to get a variety of distortion through the clean channel. I love the Friedman BE-OD and Wampler Catapulp for variety. Then throw in there different mics and mic placement and the possibilities are endless. And when I’m really feeling lazy or it’s late at night, I’ll use my old POD 2.0. Don’t underestimate the POD! Too much fun!

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