papadesophie Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 My 100 watt combo has an fx loop between pre and power amp. Frustratingly there is no input gain control though, meaning that it only really does clean sounds. I have a clean boost pedal that I've made, and have though about sticking in the effects loop to drive the power amp a bit harder. It's all solid state though, so is this a bad, or potentially damaging idea? Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOD2 Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 It's not potentially damaging as long as you don't go crazy with the levels. On the other hand, solid state amps are not reknowned for muscial sounding distrortion when driven hard - it could well sound awful if/when it starts to disort. A better plan would be to get a distortion FX pedal of some sort and use that at the front of the amp. The distortion created by that is likely to sound much more musical. Behringer FX pedals are really cheap if you just want to experiment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papadesophie Posted March 16, 2008 Author Share Posted March 16, 2008 [quote name='BOD2' post='158420' date='Mar 16 2008, 02:53 PM']It's not potentially damaging as long as you don't go crazy with the levels. On the other hand, solid state amps are not reknowned for muscial sounding distrortion when driven hard - it could well sound awful if/when it starts to disort. A better plan would be to get a distortion FX pedal of some sort and use that at the front of the amp. The distortion created by that is likely to sound much more musical. Behringer FX pedals are really cheap if you just want to experiment.[/quote] Thanks. I just didn't want to blow the amp up, but I'm pretty sure it will sound crap anyway. It certainly doesn't break up nicely when the clean boost is used in front of the amp. This is one of those annoying situations where I know exactly the sound that I want, but every distortion pedal out there that I've tried is either a: Horrible, b: too flimsy or too complicated to be reliable or c: too expensive. The 'sound in my head' is very simply an overdriven ampeg with a P Bass. I've tried the Boss ODB-3 which is probably as close as I'll get within my budget, but not quite right (a bit to fizzy, not growly enough). The EBS multidrive sounds nice to my ears, but is too much money, as is every sansamp product out there. The Behringer sansamp clone has the sounds and the price, but is flimsy, and the slightest movement of any control throws the sound out (it's just too tweakable). Next step is building a Flipster from OLC [url="http://olcircuits.com/olc_flipster.html"]http://olcircuits.com/olc_flipster.html[/url] this is my last hope, and if that doesn't work out, it's back to the ODB-3. Incidentally, this is an abridged list of pedals I've tried, and I think that the real weak link is my amp, which just doesn't take distortion well........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Foxen Posted March 19, 2008 Share Posted March 19, 2008 Three letters: DHA You can use the other pedals to drive one and get the valve overdriven sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Musky Posted March 29, 2008 Share Posted March 29, 2008 +1 on the DHA. Another pedal you might like to try is the Nobels bass overdrive. I really rate the sound of these things - goes from warm valve type sounds to full on overdriven fuzziness (I had the same criticisms of the ODB-3 as you). The downside is they're really flimsy - I've had one for 10 years without a problem, but only because I treated it with kid gloves from day one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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