General Music Chat

I'm looking for a new distortion box. I have an old Boss overdrive, and a Fulldrive II by Fulltone. But IMHO overdrive pedals are best for driving an already cranked amp over the top. Neither of these pedals does it for me when the amp is turned down to 2 or 3 on the volume knob. Not enough gain, and the attack is wrong. I've been looking at the MXR Distortion III, and wondered if anyone out there had experience with one. Judging by the samples I've heard, it sounds like it has a bit more grind than a regular overdrive pedal without going into the mega fuzz area. (I have a Fuzz Face, and a Boss Metal zone for that sort of tone)

Haven't heard that pedal, so I can't offer any thoughts on it. I Use a Ibanez SD9 and recently got a Boss DS1 pedal cheap, either would do what you want. I'm not sure it's DS 12, it's the old orange one that's been around for ages. Sounds good though, and at low gain settings gives up a good distortion sound without being too saturated. Same for the Ibanez, but it's expensive when you can find it.

My Marshall Bluesbreaker also does pretty well if the gain is cranked to 10, only overdrive pedal I've played that will get into distortion land, and adds a lot of cool overtones when it does. I've been seriously tinkering with the idea of modifying the Boss to act as a regular overdrive and just boost the signal and keeping the Marshall dimed for a wider range of possibilities.

The MXR might do you a good job though, some of their pedals do sound pretty good...You might look around on some of the online auction sites and see what's out there, you might just hit on a good deal on an older pedal, or a new one for that matter...but try and hit a music store or two and listen to them if possible.

I might hit the music store today. I'll definitely bring the Fulldrive and chain it together with whatever pedals I try to make sure there's a difference. I love that Fulldrive pedal going into an amp that's running at 8 or better, but at lower volume settings...not so much. I used to have a Boss distortion (DS-1?) but tossed it down the garbage chute by mistake

shoot my rat stomp box was pretty good at low volumes ofcourse it sat around for a while and doesn't work now.......should probably claim that warranty now, aw crap forgot my sign up info, now for my brother to try an fix it