No it does colour the amp a fair bit. When its on theres a definate mid honk, like a tubescreamer. It's saving grace is that it has a bass and treble control to even it out a bit. All pedals colour your amps sound, its what their made to do. If you want a pure clean boost then theres the seymour duncan clean boost pedal. I favour a simple eq pedal set flat for a clean boost. I just use the pedals output level control as the boost. The bonus with that is that you can put in some of the highs that get lost with big amounts of boost.

If amp sag is getting you down the only real solution is to turn down. You need more headroom from the amp. I've always though of sag as being valves over compressing so you lose that initial attack of the note. Its something I dont like at all.
What amp/cab are you using mate?

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Niki:

I did a lot of research and I ended up getting this one:
http://www.vendio.com/stores/HermidaAud ... id=2384441

And he actually has it in stock !

Do you know anything about this pedal ?

Only that it costs far more than I'd ever consider spending on a drive pedal.

I'm a real cheapskate when it comes to effects.

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nikininja wrote:



This is what I love about this forum. Ask an incoherent question and you get the exact answer your looking for. I am not a sound engineer and can’t even play on a forum, but you guys/gals have the answers. The seymour duncan clean boost pedal is what I think I need. Back in the 80’s I had a pre-amp pedal that seemed to do the trick. That was so long ago and I was 14 and just starting to play so my memories versus reality could be very different. The amp/cab is a 57 twin. I’m a purist and love the amp. Just want to kick it in the pants a little bit for earlier breakup. Thank you so much for your help!

Yeah I think you'd definately be better off with a booster of some kind to aid your gain quest. Thats a sophisticated amp your playing through. I dontt quite understand how your getting a problematic amount of sag. The dual rectifier part of the circuit is designed to keep that to a minimum.

You may want to look at a higher gain preamp valve.
This site is well worth a look at for considering what you may need.
12ax7.com

Also consider a graphic eq pedal. They offer a bit more variety than a seymour duncan pickup booster. You can add extra bass, mids or treb as you wish for your lead sounds.

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True... But the problem with me is when I buy something that is not high end I always end up selling it to upgrade... So from now on I skip that step to get the best..

The only pedal that I tried for under $100 that I would cosider was the Ibanez tube screamer... I was really impressed with this pedal... I was not impressed with the boss pedals at all...

Also the Fulltone fulldrive MOSFET was pretty impressive also.... But that was about $180... I did almost buy this one...

Why? they all only cost about £20 to make.

I'm sorry. I just dont buy into the £££= better thing with a lot of guitar products. Theres far too much hype and marketing going on to accurately judge something on price. The whole 'as used by' marketing strategy is a fallacy too. Just because someone is paid to say they use something, doesnt mean they do. I just picked up a germainium fuzzface for £30 and feel like I was taken advantage of. The thing must of cost £10 to make, labour included.

The ts8 is a prime example of marketing hype in my estimation. A terrible drive pedal thats good for one thing only, which it doesnt do all that well. Its nasal and doesnt have much scope for adjustment. Yet everyone raves about it like its sliced bread reinvented. All because of some fabled silicon chip thats used in everything from VCR's to microwave ovens, and several other non drive pedals too. I wonder why it was ever discontinued and why up until ten odd years ago you could find em for sale (originals) everywhere.

Theres my very jaded view. Like I said I dont know what you bought so cant judge it.

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That got me wondering
when talking of diode clipping is that a reference for a diode purposely installed for clipping, or a stabilizer clipping peaks?
What's the 'job' of the diodes mentioned, I can't figure out where they would do any good except in the rectifier/power supply?(whether they do a good job at that is another discussion )
I can't really see any logical way a diode should be clipping in a guitar amp, but again, most amps aren't really understandable at all
can u help me out here?

Not really mate, sounds like you have more understanding of it than me. All I know is that amp manufacturers started using diode clipping in the preamp section of high gain amps around 79-81.

Sound engineers use all kinds of terms that I find confusing. When refering to clipping I just assume they mean signal wave clipping as that all they seem to care about. I suppose looking at a clipped signal on some kind of measuring device is the same or very similar to looking at some other kind of clipped wave.

I dunno.

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I found out, it is simply used to create distortion. Distortion/clipping, to the reader without electronics knowledge, is when a part of the signal is cut away, originally caused by overloading components, but theses days done on purpose).

When diode clipping is used in the preamplifier to clip signal peaks, what happens is that (I have a very limited knowledge of diodes, and will try to explain it as simple as my humble english will allow me), if u put in a zenerdiode parrallel to the signal(any signal) it will maintain a maximum voltage according to the diodes rating, if u increase the voltage across the diode it will create an avalanche effect causing the ampere to skyrocket while more or less maintaining the voltage. Resistors are used to determine the diodes 'working area' and protect it from excessive loads

Other uses for diodes, the same method just different placings, would be to regulate/stabilise voltages, ex. in a powersupply output. Or in a rectifier, to cut off either the positive or negative period of an AC signal, bridgecoupling diodes can be used to add the negative period to the positive, i.e same voltage, double frequency and now you got yourself a pulsating DC signal.

I won't be able to experiment with an oscilloscope for the next couple of days, but I'm almost certain diode clipping will create a more rounded sine-wave compared to transistor-clipping for the same cost and work effort. Which doesn't make it potentially better in any way except for cheapskate companys

I can see why the engineers get it wrong, if I look for graphs of different signal clippings, diode clipping appears to be the least coloring, i.e the most rounded waves while transistors are very square-waved, tube distortion appears to fall somewhere in the middle, but thats definitely not all there is to it, but I have no clue as how to measure overtones and harmonics compared to the input signal/note/tone
really, no guitarist, whatever they claim, want a sound thats not all beefed and sauced up. plug a guitar directly into a high power amp like the PA amp for instance, that's an undistorted and almost uncolored electric guitar. And guys, that is, as you might have guessed, a clean electric guitar. Now who cares for clean anyway?
Luckily, theres no such thing as a neutral or clean guitar amplifier Just for the records
I guess the lesson of the day will be that guitar electronics ain't science
Call it voodoo if you want to

Oh, any gain device is electronically speaking, an amplifier

Ah man we gotsta see pictures. Preferably printed graphs of the wave.




Perhaps the problem is that we spent so long listening to coloured guitar sounds, tainted by the faintest amounts of clipping. We just dont know any different now.
Thankyou very much for a very educated and well thought out contribution.
I've learnt something today, thanks mate.
Cant wait to see what the oscilloscope turns up.

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wait a minute, now I don't understand, as far as I know, diode clipping will just clip of the peaks of the signal, not change the waveform
I'll see what I can come up with

I can't promise anything as I don't own an oscilloscope but i will try to talk my teacher into letting me experiment. But then the next problem occurs, I'm pretty sure all my working gain devices are transistor based, my champion 600 is broken and i won't bring my vox top

theres a slight bit of reading here, but nothing about diodes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_%28music%29

and then i found this http://www.elevenelectrix.com/Curiosity ... ionUk1.htm
(I'm not sure whether the input signal is coming from a guitar or a signal generator set to a frequency within the range of an electric guitar, I ain't got the time for a closer read now)

nikininja wrote:



I have the opposite problem with an overdrive or distortion pedal. There is no sag. Thus no real touch sensitivity or punch when the strings are attacked hard (hope I‘m using the term sag correctly). It doesn’t allow me to get that punch like a horn player would get. That punch or bite is something I use as punctuation in my phrasing (or at least try). When I read Time-Machine’s posting about wave form clipping and looking at them in an oscilloscope, it occurred to me that the clipping may be the issue. I’m not an electrical engineer so I may be totally off here. Just seems like when using either an overdrive or distortion pedal, the signal going to the amp never exceeds a certain maximum regardless of how hard the strings are attacked (ie clipped). This would be a good question for some of my electrical engineering friends. I’ll ask them. Then after they are done laughing at me, they’ll give an explanation I still won’t understand

Try lowering the distortion/drive right down and putting the volume of the pedal on maximum. If your still getting the same problem look at your preamp valve. It could be a Ecc82 or Ecc81 equivalent (12AU7/12AT7) to keep the preamp section sounding clean.

What pickups are you using in the guitar? How do you have them set?

Are you using a compressor pedal at all? It sounds like your getting too much compression.

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