Classic Rock Overdrive recommendations

[motterpaul]

In my gigging days I had a two-channel amp and used the high gain channel for leads. I put a volume boost (with a little hair) in the loop, and I looped that to a delay and an EQ pedal. The amp had reverb. So going to lead meant one switch and I got more volume, gain, delay & EQ for my lead tone.

So - IOW, I already know how to get a great stage tone.

But when I started using pedals from this site I committed to putting all the pedals up front - no high gain amp tone, it's a different approach. I have to find the pedals that work for my rig - and sometimes I find something that is close but needs modification.

Like you say - there are things some people do that I tend to avoid. I don't play with my guitar volume or tone (much) because I don't like the changes in tone. Also - I also turn down my guitar and forget I did it. It's one of those dumb things (standby switch, etc).

I don't need to stack pedals when we have pedals like Crunchbox that are already over the top in gain.

Basically - I just wanted more recommendations on good-sounding high gain pedals - for a clean amp.

I have found I tend to like LED overdrive - it has the smoothest tone and keeps the volume fairly loud (as opposed to germ diodes which cause big volume drops and to me sound kind of dead). I also like FET overdrives for their "tube-like" tone.

Some of the best drives I have found include Wampler Plexi (FET with trimmers), Talon (Red LEDs and TMB tone controls+) and the Crunchbox (Red LEDS and tons of gain).

When you build the options here you find pedals that have unique and cool tones, but I don't want to get into having six different overdrives for slightly different flavors. I want to find the one "go-to" pedal for my lead tone, and put it in a loop with delay, and now I am thinking of just adding an EQ to that loop.

As I have said, the ROG tonemender is a great EQ build. Highly recommended.

[Pavlos]

No worries Paul, ultimately only you know what is going to be right for yourself, all the rest of us can do is come up with some (Hopefully) intelligent suggestions that may or may not help you get closer to where you want to be.

Menatone King Of The Britains has good tone shaping options and lots of gain avilable, I've got it in the queue to be boxed and I lost over an hour to just having fun with how good it sounded when I tested the board. Rockett Animal is another one I like a lot and is in also line for boxing, less tone shaping than the KOTB but plenty of gain and I don't think I found a bad sound from it. Wampler Ecstasy is another one I like, along with the BJFE Model G  slightly less gain than the others but stays clear and articulate even when maxed out. Paisly Drive has plenty of tone shaping options and sounds pretty good. All of these are of course my own opinions and based on my own gear, which incidentally was a clean amp so will hopefully be of a t leat some use to you

It might be a daft idea but if one pedal isn't quite delivering everything you want, maybe two complimetary pedals in parallel or an overdrive/distortion with a split signal path? I know it's usually clean and dirt signal paths being blended but the basic idea might be worth a bit of investigation, after all a lot of people use two or more different amps to get the sound they want?

I get where you are coming from with regards to so called 'clean' sounds, they usually have at least a five o'clock shadow, if not a couple of days growth so I agree that you can't really call that clean, even if it isn't quite overdriven either, it might not be properly dirty but it's definitely a bit grubby and you certainly wouldn't let it make you a sandwich! Though for me, much as I like a crystal clean sound in the right places (Sometimes it is the only thing that works) I spend most of my playing time in that blurred zone of low gain/edge of break up where playing dynamics and the guitar volume are my friend (Including how it affects tone) and I add overdrive/distortion/fuzz to the soup to get the desired level of raunch and scream when needed, yes I stack drive/dirt, but that's because it works for me the way I do it. It's hard to beat a single  good drive pedal on it's own and just rocking out though

[motterpaul]

Yeah - I printed out the Menatone King of the Britains a few days ago - it looked like a nice build and I heard good things. I currently have the Menatone None so Black, which is probably pretty close for my lead.  

Problem is that King of Britain doesn't have trimmers and the Jfets need to be biased. I built a None so Black with fixed resistors and it sounded pretty decent, but the one with trimmers was a lot better. I know I could experiment with pots to find the right voltages - lots of work though.

I have the Wampler Ecstasy built - it is really close and was on my pedal board for awhile but it just doesn't cut through the way I like.  BJFE pedals are great, too, so I will look up the Model G.

Most of my playing is pretty gritty as well, but my crunchy rhythm (right now the Talon is doing a good job) is different from my lead pedal.

But the thing for lead is having that singing midrange. That harmonic overtone that emerges from a sustained note that takes it to a new dimension. That's what I'm looking for. Crunchbox does that (but too bassy), so does None so Black (but it is a little too noisy).

Sounds like we have the same taste.

[Pavlos]

I wouldn't worry too much about the lack of trimmers on the KOTB, I used smd jfets and the first ones I put in there were all between 4 and 6v on the drains, which sounded really good straight away with all the controls at 12 o'clock, so I didn't spend too much time swapping any others. It also has an immense output level if you want it even with the gain dialed right down so if you want to scare the neighbours this will probably do the trick

I've tried both the crunch box and the plexi drive and it might just be my builds/setup but I wasn't impressed with either of them, plexi drive was the best of the two but for what are billed as Marshall like pedals, to me they came across as a bit two dimensional and more like fairly average distortions, not bad as such but disappointing considering how well regarded they both are. The KOTB and Animal were both instant Marshall though, different flavours of Marshall granted, as is the Marvel Drive, but instantly in the ball park in terms of both sound and fee,l and all three are good all the way from the polite end of the spectrum right up to full on hooligan!

I've got the Talons on my build list (Along with god knows how many others) so hopefully it'll be good for something, seems to be pretty vesatile from the demo's though and EQD stuff hasn't let me down yet so I'm hopeful. I agree about the BJFE pedals too, not quite happy with the model H yet, and the Dyna Red is missing something at the moment too, but I think that is as much down to finding the right jfets/mosfets for those particular circuits, they're close though. Model G is one of my favourties though and the Honey Bee really does live up to the hype, everyone should have one lol

I'd say our tastes have some similarities, but I think I probably use less gain than yourself. My playing is far from what I wanted or intended when I started out, for some reason it veered towards the more melodic, bluesy and sublte than the hooligan rock and metal that I wanted to play. And a whole big wide world of other tones and nuances insinuated themselves into my (bad) attempts to rock out, along with an array of varied and interesting artists who showed me that there are so many other ways to skin a cat Not that I mind too much, I like the way I play, even though I've never been able to get much in the way of speed or technicality, I'm still partial to a good old testosterone fuelled rock out though, and I love a good 'singing' solo 

[MAO]

motterpaul, you may want to give this modded Velvet Fuzz a try. It's essentially a Plexi Drive with a choice of fuzz circuits pushing the front end.  

The bottom switch, gain switch, mode switch, expanded tone control and 9v/18v switch give many options to match your gear and dial in the cranked Marshall tones.

And if too dark on the lower gain settings (unlikely with bottom switch and expanded tone control) you may want to consider increasing the gain control's bypass cap from 100p to 250p or 330p.

I asked a buddy to record a couple of leads on the modded Velvet Fuzz I just sent him, I'll post them if I get some examples.  Here's a quick riff he recorded using the boosted Plexi mode (neither fuzz engaged)

https://soundcloud.com/maopedals/velvetfuzz-112816-713-pm 

[motterpaul]

Okay - I will try the KOTB - nothing to lose. You mentioned noise; I noticed on the none so black (based on German high-gain amps) that Q1 really needs to be biased right or else you get noise AND a volume pot that goes almost direct to full when you just turn it on. You might think about that if you ever want to tame yours. Mine wanted to be biased just below 18v, biased down from the top to where you start to get sound (and noise).

If you don't like the CrunchBox I am thinking try a bigger LED (forward voltage). Mine has too much gain, to where you hear it going overboard if you turn it up too much. I also thought the DynaRed was missing something, but it is so simple I couldn't see what - mine was almost unity gain even on full volume - wasn't sure if I did anything wrong. I could see how some people who like to push already hot tubes might like it - but not for me.

The talons is good because it has so many controls. I changed the mids cap for a different frequency, though, but it is very versatile. I have to try Marvel Drive, have heard about it.

For the record, I am not into metal or heavy gain. I just like having tons of sustain on single-note leads, so if I am holding a bend it doesn't fade away. But I don't need big bottom, not a metal fan. To me, the magic overdrive is the one that grabs a note and holds it into feedback and even lets out the 8va harmonic.

[Pavlos]

yep, noise can be quite obtrusive with a poorly biased JFET, never had that kind of problem with the volume though, my KOTB build doesn't jump to full, the sweep of the pots are ok it just has a huge amount of output! I'm sure I've seen somewhere that one of the JFETs should be biased quite low though so that might tame the output a little bit. Otherwise I'd be perfectly happy just to put the output volme on an internal trimmer, there is a subtle difference between how the master and output volumes are set but it's something I could live with as a set and forget if needs be.

Main thing with the Crunch Box was that it just didn't tick any boxes for me, I did play around with different LEDs but it's maybe just a circuit that doesn't suit me as the other MI Audio stuff I've tried so far has all been good (GI Fuzz, Blues Pro)

Dyna Red is for me a lot better, not what I would describe as especially Marshall in character but very much a rock overdrive/distortion and just as effective into clean and dirty channels. Mine has a normal healthy output but it's one of those builds where you can't quite put your finger on what is missing but you feel like the potential is there if only you can unlock it. Easiest way to describe it is a bit like when you are on the cusp of getting JFET biased perfectly, so I might need to spend a bit of time auditioning JFETs.

Marvel drive has very much an old school Marshall feel to it, the two gains are like balancing the channels on and old 4 input head/combo. If you zero either of the gains there is no sound but it's easy to balance the gain/tone characteristics against each other and then set the volume to suit.

Nowt wrong with metal and crushing gain there is a time and a place for every guitar tone invented or yet to be invented (Though I do shudder at the thought of some of them lol) it's just one of the many shades and colours we have at our disposal to paint sonic pictures with, sometimes we want to evoke something fragile and beautiful, and sometimes something truly brutal and disturbing! I know what you mean about sustain on single notes though, it's got to be one of the holy grails we're all trying to find, to be able to play a note and it take on a life of it's own  I think your mention of slipping into feedback does go part way to pointing to a solution though, volume and feedback sweet spots (Which you probably already know anyway) and the perfect pedal to push the right frequencies for your rig to achieve that(Which we're trying to figure out) almost sounds like the ideal would be tube screamer type pedal into a crunchy amp lol

[kirshman]

How bout the rog umble.  It's a pretty awesome fet build, with great tone shaping.  I tried twice to build from here and for whatever reason couldn't ever get it to work right, even though others say they have.  I loved what I've heard of it though so I bought a pcb and it really is a great pedal for all kids of tones.

[motterpaul]

I did try to build the Umble too when I first came here but it didn't work out. I don't know why now. I would be interested in hearing what other people think. Could be a really good idea.

It's is interesting that I have gravitated to a LOT of the ROG builds.

[Silver Blues]

motterpaul wrote

It's is interesting that I have gravitated to a LOT of the ROG builds.

I'm really not surprised, ROG's builds are extremely well engineered and generally sound very good. I've still got a Ginger in my never-ending build queue, and it promises to be awesome.

[MAO]

Ginger is great!!! As is too, no mods necessary...

[Beaker]

Agreed, Ginger is awesome. Made for bass but equally good on guitar. The EQ is so versatile.

[motterpaul]

I just wanted to report that I just built one of my most favorite overdrive lead pedals yet.

LovePedal Superlead

This thing has 4148 clipping standard from 1/2 of an 4558 doo-opamp, but you can switch to dual LED clipping with a toggle switch, and gets louder and ballsier.

This is one of the first pedals I have found that sounds great on two different gain settings (others come close, but this one nails it), where you can have a rhythm tone, and also switch on the perfect instant lead tone with a spdt.

The tone is voiced just right, same with the gain. This is the best design overall that I have personally found yet and it has all reliable and stable parts (no JFets, Germaniums, LDRs or other unpredictable parts). It came right up on the first try. Tons of volume with no noise or oscillation. I am really kind of floored.

I know it is basically a crunch box - which I really like anyway, but the EQ seems tighter and it has tons of gain but is not overloaded with gain like the crunch box.