Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

What distortion / OD / Fuzz etc. pedals do you use and 'how' do you use them?

I remember when I discovered fuzz, I had a '69 Dallas Arbiter, a beauty! But man was it out of control until I realized that with fuzzes you want to roll back your guitar volume to around 7-ish and push the fuzz through an already overdriven tube amp.

Less than 7 the signal cleans up the amp magically, and past 7 it turns into a singing demon!

Another fun discovery I recall is using an Octavia (I have a Fulltone Octave fuzz) . . . all the ring modulating harmonic giblet occurs from the 10th - 15th frets . . . on the neck pup of a strat with all the tone rolled off!

[img][img]http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm74/sanshouheil/Pedalboard.jpg[/img][/img]

Real simple set up.

My Carvin Nomad amp has a two switch, foot switch.
( far left on the board )
Most often I only use this to turn on the spring tank reverb to add a little color to some lead licks.

And the Crybaby also most often used primarily as a boost for really bright leads on a few songs in particular.

The tuner ( Boss TU2 ) first in chain, serves also as a mute especially if I am unable to use my wireless.

Plan soon to add an A/B -Y relay so I can feed two channels on the PA alternately panned 3/4 left / right.
This will allow me to play the lead licks left / right or center, alternately as well as thicken up the overall center sound.

No pictures right now, but I use a vintage Ibanez SD 9 pedal. Also have a Boss DS1 but normally use it for overdrive when my Marshall Bluesbreaker is on the blink. (30 year old pedals do take periodic vacations). Also have another newer one but can't remember what it is. The Ibanez is the one I like best of all pedals I've ever tried. It gets a killer sound with gain from 7 to max and tone about 4. I never turn down the guitar volume, it's always maxed out. I use a volume pedal instead, works just as well and the Ibanez again sounds great when I pull it back to rhythm volume.

Gave up a Pro Co Rat years ago, too much treble and no tone control. I need to take a picture of my pedal board I guess..Ibanez Phaser into Behringer tuner into Marshall Bluesbreaker overdrive into Ibanez SD 9 distortion and finally into a Schaller volume pedal I've used for 30 years. Dying to add my old Arion Analog Delay if I can ever get it to work right again. The volume pot got dirty long ago, no matter how many times I shoot it with contact cleaner it refuses to work again the next day. Man, do I miss that delay...

Also often use a A/B switch, one side in each channel of the Super Reverb set to different tones. Vibrato channel is el rauncho deluxe, fat and full, plain channel cleaner and usually I push the treble a lot more for a really bright sound.

As far as fuzz, I have an old green tubescreamer Ive had since the early eighties.

I use Mesa amps so I really dont need a fuzz pedal, but put that tube screamer on a clean channel and it just rocks. Never had an octavia but love the sound on those old records, I have a Whammy II pedal that I use for just a whammy drop, or a 5th harmony and for something like Killing In The Name by RATM, I use it for two octaves up, I combine that with a Line 6 Delay Modeler and can get some really wierd sounds. I have a demo of a rythym track on my player called These Guns Are Loaded, that has a lot of ambient effects done with these pedals. In fact a lot of stuff on my player has me adding little touches here and there with this combination.

btw^ tubescreamer is an od not a fuzz... I know you prob think I'm a bit crazy about details but to pedal nuts like me they are worlds apart.

hehe, I have one of everything! (literally)

black screw boss ce-2, sey dunc classic tube, blackstar ht-dual,
cs-1 japan made, oc-2, octavia clone, foxx tone machine clone,
bud box pro co rat clone, ross comp clone, mxr carbon copy, boss dd-7,bbe sonic stomp, strobo stomp, dist+ clone, sho clone,
miriads of tubescreamers clones, dif versions of fuzz face clones germanium-silicon-u-name-it!

If I had to pick one I'd prob go w a tubescreamer... just really versatile.

btw^ tubescreamer is an od not a fuzz... I know you prob think I'm a bit crazy about details but to pedal nuts like me they are worlds apart.

hehe, I have one of everything! (literally)

black screw boss ce-2, sey dunc classic tube, blackstar ht-dual,
cs-1 japan made, oc-2, octavia clone, foxx tone machine clone,
bud box pro co rat clone, ross comp clone, mxr carbon copy, boss dd-7,bbe sonic stomp, strobo stomp, dist+ clone, sho clone,
miriads of tubescreamers clones, dif versions of fuzz face clones germanium-silicon-u-name-it!

If I had to pick one I'd prob go w a tubescreamer... just really versatile.

Damn . . . that's a lot of fuzz!
how is the Foxx tone?

Yeah there's quite a difference between OD's and fuzz

Mike, sorry on the pedal, LOL

Ive got a box of old pedals I really should go thru it and see whats in there, but as you say the TS just seems to do it for me. I have 5-6 others in there, but none of them do it for me like the TS.

When I originally started using it, I was using an old Sunn Model T head, and I still have it, but its a cleaner sounding amp, putting that TS in front of it would wake it up and get that old warm Bad Company sounding distortion. I had a Fender Concert amp for a while in college and it would wake it up. Had a Marshall Combo JCM 800 for a while and it would really make the solos shine.

Like I said for the most part I use my Mesa's for my distortion sounds, I have three and all of them have a very nice warm breakup to my ears, but kinda be mistake one night at a gig, I kicked it in on my Triple Recs clean channel and there that sound was again, so for older classic rock stuff its a great combo to have on there, say a song like Simple Man, just play clean for the verses and kick the TS in for the chorus's, then for the solo, my amps have a solo boost switch, hit that and it gives enough db rise to let the solos cut thru the mix, in fact one of my guitar buddies was at a gig and said he thought that may be the best tone I use, LOL

"Mike, sorry on the pedal, LOL" -I know I come off as overbearing... but really, if you knew me, or these words could convey inflection, you'd know I mean no harm and that apologies are never necc.


"Ive got a box of old pedals I really should go thru it and see whats in there, but as you say the TS just seems to do it for me."
no, no, probably nothing good in there... you should just sell them to me for dirt cheap and I'll get rid of them for you (hehe).


"Like I said for the most part I use my Mesa's for my distortion sounds, I have three and all of them have a very nice warm breakup to my ears,"
I like to play my amp w/o fx sometimes too, I never intended to imply that straight in isn't right up there with od->amp. Just depends what u r going for that day I suppose.


"how is the Foxx tone?"
the octavia is much more warm... ftm can be an icepick to the ear on a fender amp so you have to back off the tone quite a bit... it is much more aggressive than the octavia... in short if you've got an octavia don't bother.

"Yeah there's quite a difference between OD's and fuzz" right, sometimes you want fart! esp if u play the blues


"in fact one of my guitar buddies was at a gig and said he thought that may be the best tone I use, LOL"
no worries, me and a friend of mine do blindfold taste tests on my board... ts is a fav 80% of the time.

Wish I had grabbed a tube screamer a while back...the Marshall Bluesbreaker I have does a nice job, I like the way it brings out the overtones.

Last night though, I found out the best lead sound I Have is the Normal channel of my Super Reverb with everything cranked to max. I plugged into the A/B switch, had to max out both normal and vibrato channels to match band volume. (outdoor gig) First few times I tried the Normal channel it was halfway on both tone controls, decent but something was not right. I finally turned both all the way up and bingo...the rest of the night that was my main lead sound, just that channel, no pedals. Even the Bluesbreaker didn't get used the last half hour. First time I've tried that but you can bet it won't be the last...Strat through a screaming Super Reverb, nothing like it...

Oh yeah, also got my Arion Analog Delay working, ata least temporarily. Had to squirt the pots 3 or 4 times with contact cleaner, and for some reason it only works with a battery, I hate that, but it WORKS...YAAAAYYY

Recently I've begun to keep my wah (535Q) on all the time and use it as a notch filter ala J. Beck . . . pretty cool. every so often I touch it in the middle of a phrase and it just vocalizes the phrase . . . I have the wah set very sensitive and a tight sweep.

I guess you could say I'm using a Marshall 2266 head as my OD/Distortion pedal. I like to reamp it to add my time based effects. Most of the time I just use a little delay & reverb from a TC Electronic G-Sharp and control it with a Midi Mouse. I use an attenuator as a load box and add the effects post distortion through the line out of the attenuator and reamp the whole shebang with a rack mounted SS power amp. That seems to give me the cleanest sounding reverbs and delays with real cranked Marshall tube grind at any volume I want. They don't get dirty from the overdrive that way. Delay isn't so bad overdriven a little but reverb sounds horrible if you overdrive it. On rare occation I'll use a '70s Thomas Organ Crybaby in front that I've had forever. I use a MXR M108 EQ for tone shaping quite a bit. I stick that just after the attenuator and before the G-Sharp. If I'm using my little Vibrochamp then I'll ditch the rack stuff and use a few stomps. I have a Line 6 Echo Park delay and a Boss CE5 chorus that I like to use with that. I use the M108 with that as well mostly for tone shaping but sometimes as a boost (which it works great for). Sometimes I'll hit the front end of Champ with a Route 66 to get it to overdrive. The OD side works great on Fenders and the Comp side makes a nice clean boost. I've got an old '80s SD1 that I used to use all the time with a Plexi and a newer MIT version that I sent to Onfloor Audio for a mod. Mike from OFA has a really SICK SD1 mod he has come up with that I think is the best I've heard anywhere. It's got a lot more bottom than the stock version and drives the amp a lot harder. It also has a few switches for alternate drive flavors.....very nice. I like the SD1 more with Marshalls. The Route 66 is more of a tube screamer clone and they seem to work best with Fenders or american voiced tube amps. I've also got a MT2 that was good for little more than a door stop that I put a Monte Allums Sustainia Tri-Drive mod kit in. I make a few additional clipping diode changes when I didn't get quite what I wanted out of Monte's kit. It was my Frankenstortion experiment. It's different and not nasal sounding anymore but at the end of the day it's still a distortion and nothing exciting to me so I don't really use it. Sometimes I'll use the germanium diode setting in it for a little dirt if I'm goofing around with a small practice amp but that's about it. The doide lift setting makes it sound a lot like an OD pedal with the gain set really low. That alone is a vast improvement over the stock MT2 in my book. I also have a few pedals I never use like a DE7 delay and a Digitech Jamman. Sometimes I'll use the Jamman to do a quick recording of a lick I came up with so I don't forget it. It seems there is always another pedal I'm looking at though. Let's face it, they are addicting. Lately it's been the BYOC Large Beaver. It's an early big muff clone DIY kit and sounds amazing for Gilmour type leads with a little delay and chorus. That's my next pedal.

Thinking more on this I sometimes just kick in my Delay Modeler Pedal and it overdrives the amp slightly, its digital but it gives it that old warm Deep Purple Smoke on the Water tone to my ears, Ive got it set on Tape Echoplex and I have the repeats set very tigh together so it also kinda gives it a doubling effect, then while Im soloing I can tap in a tempo to lengthen the repeats.

I guess Im weird cause when I play in my cover band one night I may just use amp distortion then the next for the same song use the TS in the clean channel for the same song. Then sometimes I hardly hit a pedal, I guess my band mates dont ever know what to expect, but if I go for that delay pedal and start strecthing the repeats and hit the whammy pedal on 2 octaves up! Look out theres no telling where im goin, cause a lot of times i just go with the flow!

Wish I had grabbed a tube screamer a while back...the Marshall Bluesbreaker I have does a nice job, I like the way it brings out the overtones.

Last night though, I found out the best lead sound I Have is the Normal channel of my Super Reverb with everything cranked to max. I plugged into the A/B switch, had to max out both normal and vibrato channels to match band volume. (outdoor gig) First few times I tried the Normal channel it was halfway on both tone controls, decent but something was not right. I finally turned both all the way up and bingo...the rest of the night that was my main lead sound, just that channel, no pedals. Even the Bluesbreaker didn't get used the last half hour. First time I've tried that but you can bet it won't be the last...Strat through a screaming Super Reverb, nothing like it...Stevie Ray's set up

Oh yeah, also got my Arion Analog Delay working, ata least temporarily. Had to squirt the pots 3 or 4 times with contact cleaner, and for some reason it only works with a battery, I hate that, but it WORKS...YAAAAYYY

This is my current bass board, although I've swapped out the Bespeco expression pedal for an Ernie Ball:




For fuzz I use the Octavius Squeezer, either its fuzz or a square wave osc. For lighter destruction I use the Bugbrand Bugcrusher which gnarls things up nicely.

I don't really use overdrive but there's a couple of useful sounds in the M9 if I ever need it.

That seems to be a lot of pedals for a bass player.
What kind of music are you doing?
Post some samples when you can.