Blending overdrive and clean with an LS-2

[tedmanzie]

Just bought a Fulltone OCDv4 on this forum, it has a great overdrive sound! Certainly better than my Maxon OD9 pro+

However I was after a just a tiny touch of overdrive to my funky Strat clean sound and the OCD (in fact [i]all[/i] my overdrives/distortions) remove some of the thickness and 'snap' from the sound even when they are barely overdriving.

I figured I'd give a blender a go so I could mix a touch of OD in parallel with my clean signal. Couldn't stretch to the Xotic blender so went for a Boss LS-2. After about 25 minutes trying to work out how to do it I finally figured it out.

Success! A perfect (for me) blend of OD without losing any of the clean snap. In fact it opens up a load of new sounds - you can really ramp up the OD but only mix in a [i]tiny[/i] bit to the clean sound which gives a new kind of clean/thick sound all together. This is the same way that 'parallel compression' is quite a thing in the production world - mixing in a touch of super compressed drums to the clean drums for massive drums.

Just thought I'd report back.

Cheers
Ted

[Kiwi]

I've achieved something similar using two amps - one clean and one dirty to keep things fairly articulate. The sound reminded me of the guitarist from Bryan Adam's band - Keith Scott.

[tedmanzie]

good idea! i've only got one amp but i like the idea.