Maxon 808 or Ibanez 808

[CGord]

What surprised me about this topic when I began lurking here was that od pedals are used at all. When you can gain your nuts off with a 5150 head (or any of the other favorites here), it surprised me that so many are running a pedal on top of it.

Do you run the pedal settings real low? Or the amp, maybe? I assume if you cranked everything, you'd just have uncontrollable fuzz.

 

[Razorjack]

What surprised me about this topic when I began lurking here was that od pedals are used at all. When you can gain your nuts off with a 5150 head (or any of the other favorites here), it surprised me that so many are running a pedal on top of it.

Do you run the pedal settings real low? Or the amp, maybe? I assume if you cranked everything, you'd just have uncontrollable fuzz.

They are not used as a source of overdrive, they are used as a slight boost and tone control.

 

[Nebulous]

What surprised me about this topic when I began lurking here was that od pedals are used at all. When you can gain your nuts off with a 5150 head (or any of the other favorites here), it surprised me that so many are running a pedal on top of it.

Do you run the pedal settings real low? Or the amp, maybe? I assume if you cranked everything, you'd just have uncontrollable fuzz.

OD's in the context we often discuss here are used as a "clean boost", where the volume of the pedal is turned all the way up, and tone is set to taste. This requires (at the players choice) that the gain on the amp is turned down slightly to acomidate the "hotter" signal. The use of the OD in such a case helps clean up the guitar's tone, by cutting some fizz and ultra lows from the tone, and creating a 'tighter' sound.
As you may have noticed, it's all quite subjective, where some poeple use them and can hear a difference, and others cant hear, and so dont use them.

 

[CGord]

Ah, ok. Thanks for explaining!

 

[Nebulous]

No problem. It can take a while for things to sink in around here with so much info on offer, and the "older" forumers having heard it so many times, it sometimes doenst get through to the newer guys.

 

[nwright]

To bring this up from the dead...I just bought a Behringer TO800 based off The Storyteller's clips and comments...Seems like it's been given the ol' "good for the money" nod, so I'll see how it sounds with my 6505+ in about an hour...I'll post an update tomorrow...

 

[Glenn Fricker]

Ah, ok. Thanks for explaining!

Just to extrapolate a little further....

I was in the same boat as you last year. "What? Overdrive in front of a 5150? Are they nuts?" Well, turns out they were showing me how to get exactly the sort of sound I've been after.

Here's my observation: When you crank the gain knob of a tube amp up, yes, you increase the distortion. You also increase the fizz, and the bottom end isn't effected very much, so it starts jumping like crazy.

With an overdrive pedal in the chain, you can back off on your amp's gain knob & add the missing crunch with the pedal. It also limits the bandwidth somewhat, so there's less extreme bottom & top to contend with. This gives you a much more manageable sound in a mix.

But don't take my word for it. Go to a guitar store & try one out in front of a 5150 or a Recto. Punch it in & out of the chain & let your ears decide.

-0z-