I think I've just had a Eureka moment....

Beexter

I've been struggling a bit with the concept of clean boosters but have just had a thought.............When you set up mic levels at a mixing desk, you set the input trim/ gain to get the maximum signal from the mic into the desk, without clipping. This then gives the fullest possible sound. 

Sooooooo....., by using a clean boost as the last pedal before my guitar amps input, I can effectively achieve the same thing by dialling up the gain on the booster to feed the amp the maximum level of signal it can cope with before clipping. In theory, this should then give me the fullest possible base clean tone. I think it would have to be a clean boost that doesn't add any of its own drive and it would also mean leaving the boost on all the time.

Apologies if this sounds like a quote from the school of the bleedin' obvious but it sounds like a recipe for success.

Does anyone run their booster in this way? Does it work? Any particular pedals you have found work well in this application?

 

monquixote

I think that's what a lot of people with the always on EP Boost or Klon are doing. Keeping a nice hot signal at all times with or without clipping depending on your taste.

PolarityMan

The thing is that amps don't have input metering and each stage distorts the signal further, especially at high volume so ensuring optimal input level is actually pretty hard. I dont run into this using clean boosters but its the same problem as setting input level for a multi-fx, if you're using 4CM then it gets even worse as you typically also have addition send/return gains to balance

Drew_TNBD

Amp inputs don't really "clip". They saturate. Clip is a digital term - it means that the signal has gone over 0dBFS and thus the voltages have been cut off. It doesn't matter if you're feeding it +1dB, +2dB, or +4dB. When they're clipped, they're all clipped down to 0dB.

Guitar amps don't work this way in my experience. They saturate and round off the signal softly at first, and then very sharply the more the gain is applied.

Also it's not necessary to get your signal "as hot as possible without clipping" this is a fallacy and is often touted. The reality is that preamps, converters, and other audio gear is built with a specific input range in mind. In a lot of digital systems this is 0dBVU, which translates to around -12dBFS.

But none of this really relates to guitar amps in my view, because we're not dealing with hard and fast values and limited headroom, and we're not dealing with bit-depths and retaining a high signal to noise ratio. We're dealing with saturation, compression, and shaped distortion. It's very different from a mixing desk or an audio interface.

Clean boosters in front of your amp are *basically* the same as turning the input gain knob up. If the amp is already saturated, you'll get extra saturation. If it's clean, then the perceived loudness will increase. But it's still pushing the input stages, and thus saturating. It's just that you've not yet reached the point where it flips over into distortion.

ICBM

I thought the idea was that you soundcheck with the booster off and let the soundman set your level to his satisfaction, then hit it at the start of the set and leave it on the whole time...

EricTheWeary

I used to use my Seymour Duncan Pick up Booster a bit like this ( I think my signal chain was guitar-tuner-tremolo-booster-amp so nothing very complicated going on there!) with my strat so it was an always on thing. In later years I found I quite liked a non boosted pretty wimpy strat tone for some things so haven't done this. 

I'm not too sure about the need to have the clean booster last in the signal chain as you will be boosting any noise from pedals and pedals can usually cope with some kind of boosted level going into them - although the effect of a clean boost pre or post an OD is subtley different.  

Alnico

ICBM said:

I thought the idea was that you soundcheck with the booster off and let the soundman set your level to his satisfaction, then hit it at the start of the set and leave it on the whole time...

Amen