Do Boutique Pedals also sound good with SS Amps

[TheMajor]

Hi, I have build Rod Elliots P27, the 100 W guitar amp. It has an awesome clean sound, nice, sparkly, jangly clean. But I dont like the drive section to much. The preamps works with TL072 and clipping diodes. I want to build some of those expensive Wampler or Catalinbread pedals like the Black 65, the Tweed 57 and the Galileo. They sound awesome in the demos but they always use great sounding tube amps. Would the pedals also work with my SS amp ? The clean is really great, so I guess if the tone is made in the pedal is should work fine, right ?

[alex.s]

Although I haven't built/tried any of the specific pedals you mention, they are all supposed to have a tone of their own, being pretty much whole pre amps in a box, so you might get good results indeed.

In fact, it might even be interesting adopting one of them as the preamp section for your od channel in place of the TL072/clipping diodes section you mentioned. Don't have the schematics in front of me so I can't tell if they mught need some slight adjustment/extra gain stage etc though, but hould be pretty much good to go.

[TheMajor]

Ok thank you. The amp doesnt have an OD Channel. Its just got one channel with a gain control. It never goes to high gain or something like that, and I keep the gain always down because it sounds way better clean. Here is a schematic
http://sound.westhost.com/project27.htm

[Madferret]

Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead uses a Solid State Fender and pedals for all his distorted tones and gets great results so I'm sure you won't have any problems.

[Olav]

His amp is a 7ender 85. I have the same amp on which the clean channel is very good (matter of taste) and the drive channel is rubbish (not a matter of taste, this is just absolute, inexcusable sh!te).

[Dave]

In my opinion you buy a tube amp if you like the way it sounds on its own. Buy a solid state if you want a nice clean on which to layer your pedals.
Thanks
Dave

[TheMajor]

So you think it would sound nice. Thank you :)

BTW. Since I have to order from the US to the EU since J201s are very expensive over here I want to order as much possibly needed stuff as I can afford. I noticed the the most pedals either use J201s or 2N5457. I also read that the J201s are very hard to bias. Are the 2N5457 easier to bias ? I am asking cause I want to build a Vox in a Box. The English Channel uses J201s and the CB Galileo uses 2N5457. Which one is easier to build ?

[alex.s]

I would use 2N5457 transistors regardless, they seem easier to source in UK/Europe and can be used in the same circuits. Just make sure you leave yourself room to play with the trimpots to bias it right. :)

I know the English Channel is a straight JFET adaptation of the Vox AC30 pre amp (not sure about the Galileo), so it would lend itself very nicely indeed for experimentation straight before the power amp section as I mentioned in my previous post.

I've actually been thinking about building a good SS power amp to experiment with pres etc, will have a good look into that Rod Ellis design!