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Amp heads and Fuzz / Distortion pedals


fertuiee

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I use an Orange rockerverb, and have tried various fuzz and distortion pedals with it - on all settings on both clean and distorted channels, all to no avail, in fact i would go so far as to say - they sound terrible!! the amp itself seems to alter the sound of them completely, to a tinny mess. I used them on various solid state amps and they sound great! grrrr.

This may bark the question, why are you using a distortion pedal? use the amps distortion and be happy.....fair enough....i do, but.....if you can stop there youre a better man / woman than me :).

Just a bit intrigued as to what other peoples experiences have been with this kind of thing, ive spoken to other folks who own Rockerverbs about this and fair enough they said, use the amps distortion haha! it does sound ace ( to me ) Is it this particular model? cos i read somewhere that Thunderverbs are a bit more accessable. I also read its cos its a dual channel amp and this affects it.

The end.

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I use a Sound City 50 Plus head, which is a super clean sounding valve amp, and a Big Muff. It sounds pretty damn great to be honest. When I've tried a Big Muff or another distortion through a more high gain valve amp, I've had the problem yr describing (unless through the clean channel). I think you are overloading the signal by firing in something which is high gain (the pedal) into something which is already pretty high gain itself (the amp). Just go with yr amp distortion I say!

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I use a Sound City 50 Plus head, which is a super clean sounding valve amp, and a Big Muff. It sounds pretty damn great to be honest. When I've tried a Big Muff or another distortion through a more high gain valve amp, I've had the problem yr describing (unless through the clean channel). I think you are overloading the signal by firing in something which is high gain (the pedal) into something which is already pretty high gain itself (the amp). Just go with yr amp distortion I say!

Yeh that does make a lot of sense actually, love the distortion channel on it to be fair, but you know what it gets like...get a bit greedy!! haha!

Ah niiiiiiice, i heard a Sound city amp with a BYOC ( ? ) fuzz once and it sounded incredible...scarily good actually.

Just bought a beat up old "Sunn" off ebay for this reason!! god knows what that will be / sound like!! :)

Ta man:cheers:

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I'm of the opinion that you're much better off using an overdrive pedal on a low gain to "beef up" the sound of an amps own distortion when using a valve amp. I had the same problem when i bought a DSL100, luckily i had a tubescreamer from before and found that when used with the distortion of the amp created a really thick sounding overdriven distortion. I loves it.

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I agree. Mix medium gain (pedal) with medium gain (amp) to make mega gain. Or add mega gain (fuzz) to a sparkly clean channel, otherwise it will sounds muddy as hell. Or the other way around, max out your amp's distortion, and use a clean boost to get a tiny bit more out of it, if need be.

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I agree with the above posts. Adding distortion to an already high-gain amp just results in an unholy cacophony - I know, I've made ALL those mistakes.

A treble boost (Demeter Fat Controller or Fulltone Fat Boost) might give you the extra "balls" you desire.

A set of high-output pickups would help too.

I tried the Rockerverb and for my type of sound (70's crunch) there are few better on the market. It's really horses for courses with amps.

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Ta lads, all good advice ;)

Alkaline - the tubescreamer kinda thing sounds like a good idea, as it isnt as "heavy duty" as a muff .....hmmm

Soda Jerk - funnily enough thats the kinda thing id settled for doing, it works better, but i'd eventually ended getting greedy in that, i kinda like the "Super Wahhh" - J.Mascis type wah wah sound you get by putting the fuzz AFTER the Wah wah in the chain...if thats makes any sense at all.......of course this made even more mess, WITH the amp distortion added as it has to be, but worked fine on a solid state amp ...bzzzzzzz. So yeh thats where i kinda am :)

Diesel - Ive not actually tried any "boost" pedals....hmmm, i read some of the horror stories on the Orange forums that said the result ended up the same with them....a gooey mess, but ill probably give that a shot!! yeh im a big fan of the rockerverb, very versatile :).

:cheers:

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My view has always been that you should use an amp's headroom to your advantage. In that sense, set the gain so that it responds to your playing - it's clean when you play lightly, but starts to break up when you dig into the strings, then use an overdrive/boost pedal to make your amp sing.

If you're going for over the top fuzz sounds, add it to an existing amp's gain stage. Personally, I've never liked Big Muffs - I think they sound artificial and dumb. Your common or garden Fuzz Face knocks fuck outta 'em.

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What do people think of the Boss FZ-5? Anyone have experience with any Boss fuzzes?

I'm planning on getting some Boss pedals purely because they look nice :p Already have an RC-2 looper and a DS-1.

The only positive experiences i've had with Boss pedals are the TU-2 and the DD-3. All the other ones i've tried haven't been that great (bear in mind i haven't worked my way through their entire collection, but have tried umpteem distortions, loop, overdrive etc)

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My view has always been that you should use an amp's headroom to your advantage. In that sense, set the gain so that it responds to your playing - it's clean when you play lightly, but starts to break up when you dig into the strings, then use an overdrive/boost pedal to make your amp sing.

If you're going for over the top fuzz sounds, add it to an existing amp's gain stage. Personally, I've never liked Big Muffs - I think they sound artificial and dumb. Your common or garden Fuzz Face knocks fuck outta 'em.

Yeh again, makes sense and i s very similar to what ive been trying, the problem and intrigue really started when it still sounded shite with a fuzz through the clean channel.....as it would.

I used to find the muffs the same as youre saying, a bit odd sounding if anything until i bought the p.i version and that was a BIT more versatile, its still pretty all or nothing with them.

To be totally honest it seems to me every man and his dog seems to make expensive fuzz pedals these days and they all sound very similar to me, like almost an octave pedal at best and a tinny mess at worst, maybe thats just me!! haha! the best ones ive heard have been a BYOC - beaver and one of the Blackout effectors ones....the dual channel thingy...god knows....the one your bank card screams "stop being a nob!!!" when you look at it? :)

Think ill stop being greedy and use the amp distortion, or maybe a boost.....the pedal kind not the chocolate bar......hmm actually....:p

:cheers:

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The only positive experiences i've had with Boss pedals are the TU-2 and the DD-3. All the other ones i've tried haven't been that great (bear in mind i haven't worked my way through their entire collection, but have tried umpteem distortions, loop, overdrive etc)

Ah, I see. I'm looking to get some kind of DD, but I'll admit "they look nice" is moot when it comes to music. :p

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My amp is not very high gain but I've been using an MXR EQ pedal on occasion for general boost purposes. It's got 8db of cut and boost across 6 frequencies so it's good if you want a nice, clean volume boost with some added control. I've found it really useful with fuzz pedals and it's handy for recording too.

Oh and for fuzz pedals, I would check this guy out.

http://north-effects.co.uk/greenrussian

I have one of these and it's really good, plenty of volume and a really nice tone that's got plenty of bass but never get's mushy.

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To be totally honest it seems to me every man and his dog seems to make expensive fuzz pedals these days and they all sound very similar to me, like almost an octave pedal at best and a tinny mess at worst, maybe thats just me!! haha!

I think that's the problem with the boutique pedal industry full stop. For example, every company has their own Tubescreamer clone. With the exception of a couple of them, I can't imagine why anyone would pay inflated prices for a circuit that is essentially the same.

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What do people think of the Boss FZ-5? Anyone have experience with any Boss fuzzes?

I'm planning on getting some Boss pedals purely because they look nice :p Already have an RC-2 looper and a DS-1.

If you want functional and typical pedals, BOSS are the way to go. I prefer effects to be a bit more esoteric, but obviously that isn't to everyone's tastes. I've heard a BOSS fuzz through bass before and it was surprisingly good.

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The only positive experiences i've had with Boss pedals are the TU-2 and the DD-3. All the other ones i've tried haven't been that great (bear in mind i haven't worked my way through their entire collection, but have tried umpteem distortions, loop, overdrive etc)

I liked the mini RC Loop station I had. Did what i wanted it to do (play loops of horrible unlistenable noise when I was in Dross). Also the old Harmonist pedal is awesome fun, but they don't make them anymore. They shoved it all together in that PS-5 Super Shifter pedal, which was garbage. Their Noise Supressors and EQ pedals are decent too... It seems to be that the best Boss Pedals are the ones which don't really make any noise, or the ones they don't make anymore.

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I liked the mini RC Loop station I had. Did what i wanted it to do (play loops of horrible unlistenable noise when I was in Dross). Also the old Harmonist pedal is awesome fun, but they don't make them anymore. They shoved it all together in that PS-5 Super Shifter pedal, which was garbage. Their Noise Supressors and EQ pedals are decent too... It seems to be that the best Boss Pedals are the ones which don't really make any noise, or the ones they don't make anymore.

The problem with boss pedals is for a little extra, you can get something much better usually. For example with the NS-2 for £20-£30 extra you get the MXR smartgate or ISP decimator (they are single input unlike the NS-2 which can be used pre and post amp but IMO they retain tone better and the ISP decimator is the bees knees for metal music) and with their EQ pedal for an extra £20-£30 you can get an MXR 10 band EQ. I think they also make a 6 band EQ for cheaper than the GE-7 as well. Never tried it but I've found MXR pedals > boss pedals generally.

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