boosts, od, distortion, fuzz solutions

[dirtystatic]

right, so i'm slowly assembling a board but i'm in a pickle over the various gain stages im after. i know what sounds im after, but i'm sure there must be a more elegant solution. i'll start by outlining the stages i'm after..

first there's my basic tone, bass > comp > amp.. easy-peasy, no worries there. then im after somthing to just thicken things up with out distorting, for big choruses for instance.

next im after a light driven sound, mild cruch - but with the option to boost it a little for the meatier parts of the song (a little more drive/volume/bass)

i'm also after a crazy, wild distortion (easy enough) and a fuzz (got that covered)

so far i've set things up like this: bass > comp > dha vt1 bass std > double looper > (loop 1) odb-3 & dod eq
> (loop 2) ehx bass muff

at the moment im using the dha just as a boost, engage it to thicken up my clean signal for big choruses. im using the odb-3 and the dod eq for a light drive then engaging the DHA to lift it a little further for more agressive songs. im just wondering whether there's a more suitable set of pedals, or a single pedal solution (the sansamp pbddi maybe) that anyone could suggest.

if i were to buy a sansamp pbddi then couldnt i just set my clean tone channel 1, light od channel 2, then aggressive od channel 3? i'm also thinking that there would be a bit more continuity to my tone across the 3 stages of gain if i used a single pedal.

would appreciate any input, would also love to hear how people achieve their various gain stages...

cheers!

[holio.cornolio]

[quote name='dirtystatic' post='638382' date='Oct 27 2009, 07:43 PM']right, so i'm slowly assembling a board but i'm in a pickle over the various gain stages im after. i know what sounds im after, but i'm sure there must be a more elegant solution. i'll start by outlining the stages i'm after..

first there's my basic tone, bass > comp > amp.. easy-peasy, no worries there. then im after somthing to just thicken things up with out distorting, for big choruses for instance.

next im after a light driven sound, mild cruch - but with the option to boost it a little for the meatier parts of the song (a little more drive/volume/bass)

i'm also after a crazy, wild distortion (easy enough) and a fuzz (got that covered)

so far i've set things up like this: bass > comp > dha vt1 bass std > double looper > (loop 1) odb-3 & dod eq
> (loop 2) ehx bass muff

at the moment im using the dha just as a boost, engage it to thicken up my clean signal for big choruses. im using the odb-3 and the dod eq for a light drive then engaging the DHA to lift it a little further for more agressive songs. im just wondering whether there's a more suitable set of pedals, or a single pedal solution (the sansamp pbddi maybe) that anyone could suggest.

if i were to buy a sansamp pbddi then couldnt i just set my clean tone channel 1, light od channel 2, then aggressive od channel 3? i'm also thinking that there would be a bit more continuity to my tone across the 3 stages of gain if i used a single pedal.

would appreciate any input, would also love to hear how people achieve their various gain stages...

cheers![/quote]

Whatever happens you're going to have 2 or 3 buttons to stomp on. In a live situation, I really don't have any gain stages to contend with as I'd only get confused and tread on the wrong thing, so I tend to use fingers for the most part, and for aggressive parts I switch to a pick, and that covers the variation in tone that I need.

That said, I tool around with pedals a lot at home, and I've found a mosftet clean booster (like the Fulltone Fatboost) does an excellent job of beefing up a clean sound, and adding some balls to it. Along similar lines you could also look at the Fulltone Bass Drive Mosfet which could cover the light and heavy overdrive parts with panache. As for fuzz, I don't know of any pedal on the market (short of a nasty multi fx box) that does mild OD, heavy OD AND fuzz all in the one box, without resorting to getting down on your knees and knob fiddling mid song, so stick with your bass muff I say.

That said, looking at your current setup I reckon that it's pretty well sorted and you've clearly given it a lot of thought and got it sounding how you want to, and assuming your double looper has a decent bypass, you don't have to worry about the godawful dod and boss bypasses. So are you sure this isn't just a bit of unnecessary GAS?

[ase_one23]

[quote name='holio.cornolio' post='639055' date='Oct 28 2009, 01:40 PM']So are you sure this isn't just a bit of unnecessary GAS?[/quote]

Nowt wrong with that !!!!!

Although, i do agree with you!

[M4L666]

I think the PBDDI looks to be about right. And you could sell off the old stuff too