Single channel amp and one drive pedal - do you/could you do it?

TimmyO

I have a terrible habit of letting what time I do make for playing getting taken up arsing about with different drive pedals* to the point where I’ve decided to put them all away except for one at a time. 

Which got me to wondering about how common is it that folk are relying on just one drive (or boost) with their single channel amp?

Lets hear about it.

* on this occasion it was comparing 3 different mid-forward pedals (SD-1, Archer, Guv’nor) to see which paired best with a Lightspeed 

paulnb57

I got rid of ALL my pedals and just play through the blue channel of my 5150 lbx head, so liberating

octatonic

TimmyO said:

I have a terrible habit of letting what time I do make for playing getting taken up arsing about with different drive pedals* to the point where I’ve decided to put them all away except for one at a time. 

Which got me to wondering about how common is it that folk are relying on just one drive (or boost) with their single channel amp?

Lets hear about it.

* on this occasion it was comparing 3 different mid-forward pedals (SD-1, Archer, Guv’nor) to see which paired best with a Lightspeed 

I have a couple of pedalboards but the smallest one is just a KOT (so OD and boost) plus a delay pedal (Free the Tone Flight Time) and a compressor and tuner.

The amp is a Matchless Lightning Reverb.
Getting the amp to the edge of breakup and clean up with the volume pot gives me two sounds, KOT OD is my higher gain sounds and the boost for a solo.
It sounds great.

I have a bigger pedalboard with more options that I use most of the time but I can gig the smaller board no problem at all.

LionAquaLooper

I do exactly this on both my amps. I have a small one channel 1W tube amp and set that to verge of breakup. Then one dirt pedal to push it as a 2nd gain stage. Dirt of the day is a Boss SD1. 

On my 40 watt 2 channel Marshall i don't even use either channel anymore. I go straight to the power amp via a Joyo American Sound  

slacker

My one pedal dirt choices are a fd2 or double rock, former for singles latter for humbuckers. I can use no pedal and ride the guitar volume.

Revolutions

I’m currently using an echoline germanium distortion over the top of a Traynor amp just at break-up. Gives me really cool Rat vibes, perfect for my two-channel needs.

I use a prince of tone as an always-on boost into my JCM800, but that’s just to tighten up the drive, so doesn’t really count.

guitarmangler

I gig with my yamaha dg80 set to slightly dirty with a boost pedal always on so I can turn up and down without loosing highs and a tubescreamer for leads:more gain. My guitars have an out of phase switch, too, so I can get sparkly cleans also.
I’ve been using an hxfx recently, but it’s still set up the same.

Danny1969

I did hundreds of gigs in the eighties with just EMG's and a dirty Marshall. Turn the guitar right down and that's the clean sound. Turn it up and that's the dirty sound. Never had a pedal, not even a tuner. 

soma1975

Marshall SV20 and a Fuzz Face. Easy. 

TTBZ

I prefer a single channel amp and control the gain from the guitar volume. Amp is at the max gain I'd want for rhythm playing, EQ in the FX loop for solos and a tubescreamer in front for higher gain. Used that for many years in a cover band. I find it more intuitive and natural sounding than pissing about trying to match channel volumes etc, and I've always found clean channels a bit uninspiring whereas a cleaned up dirty amp has some nice "edge" and compression to it. 

Keefy

Yes, despite my main gigging board currently including 3 drives and a fuzz:

(1) As Keef in a Stones tribute I used to have just a Hot Cake into a Matchless Lightning.
(2) For shits and giggles I once played an indie covers gig with an always-on Fuzz Face into said Matchless.
(3) My rock’n’roll setup is a drive (low gain solo boost) and delay into 5E3.

I also once played a soul gig with no pedals, just Tele into Matchless.

Supportact

I was going to say yes because I use an AC15 with a single odd pedal (which I tend to swap about according to whim), but I've got a compressor which also boosts (orange squeezer clone), and a Chase Tone Secret preamp. So not quite as simple as that. I normally just have a cleanish tone into the amp, and turn the od on for light crunch.  I've recently been using a Crazy Tube Circuits Ziggy though which actually has two channels. I realistically could just use a single odd pedal into the vox quite happily though for my drive requirements. .  

digitalscream

Is it cheating to use something like a Bogner Ecstasy Red? That's pretty how I do it - albeit I'm only playing at home, and I'm using a Blackstar HT-1 only on the clean channel. Sounds great for high-gain stuff.

I do have a Mosky Silver Horse, but that's only for matching pickup output levels across all my guitars.

monquixote

I've done it before at a gig and it was fine and actually quite refreshing.

Ideally I'd have two drive pedals, but that could also be a compressor, or a boost so technically one OD would be fine.

It also depends on if you need very "clean clean" for playing country or funk. That makes the 2 drives thing quite useful, but if your clean can be quite dirty in the first place then one drive is actually fine.

stickyfiddle

I could, but I’d rather not. 

FWIW I could easily do it with my Origin RD with mid boost switch, and that would be into almost any amp I reckon. 

If that’s not allowed because it’s obviously cheating, then a Jan Ray into Deluxe Reverb would pretty much work for me, provided I’m allowed to change the settings on the JR occasionally

pt22

I use a single drive pedal but two boosts into my Magnatone Super 15 set to a very light crunch. A clean boost and a germanium boost. So I've got 3 flavours of "drive", or I can stack. It never gets into metal-territory, but that's not really my thing. 

Home use only so YMMV if gigging. 

TimmyO

My dabble on this yesterday was :

TMDR Turned up to 7-8 (and with wattage knocked back to a more reasonable volume for home as a result - but not RIGHT down) then a combination of guitar volume down for clean-ish and a drive pedal for more sustain-y boosted sound (the Lightspeed was working well, ditto the Klone)

As someone said above, if I wanted a properly-clean clean sound it was more of a compromise with either the sustain-y lead sound or the low gain in-between bits harder to get on the volume control. 

I remember the days when I used a 18-watter clone (then later a Maz 18NR) and a single drive pedal to play in a blues/funk covers band and didn't think twice about it. I should do that more. 

Jonathangus

TTBZ said:

I prefer a single channel amp and control the gain from the guitar volume. Amp is at the max gain I'd want for rhythm playing, EQ in the FX loop for solos and a tubescreamer in front for higher gain. Used that for many years in a cover band. I find it more intuitive and natural sounding than pissing about trying to match channel volumes etc, and I've always found clean channels a bit uninspiring whereas a cleaned up dirty amp has some nice "edge" and compression to it. 

This, basically.  In my case, a 2104 with the obligatory SD-1.

Grumpyrocker

If the amp has reverb and I can use my EHX 5150 OD then, yes I could. But I'd miss having delay.

Flanging_Fred

I have pedalboards with multiple drives but if the mood takes me, I’m fine with a single channel JCM800 and either a Paul Cochrane Tim or a Boss SD-2. 

DrJazzTap

Although I have a Helix, which is great and has cured my pedal gas. I have started building a small standalone board for when i just want to plug in and noodle on the vyse amp.

The emphasis is to have as few pedals as possible, for the drive pedal I've got a Waza Craft Blues Driver which is great very versatile. At the moment it's a blues driver and a small clone chorus. I'd like a delay or reverb pedal and that would be it. I do have a mosky drive knocking around so that would be good for a boost.