Why are some amps good or rubbish with dirt pedals?

Grumpyrocker

Earlier in 2020 I bought a Boss OD-200 dirt pedal. And I struggled with it for months. I could never get it to sound very good. It always sounded harsh no matter what I did. This was into the front of a Blackstar HT-5 MKII head. I'm really happy with the amp with reverb, delay, and mod pedals - but the OD-200 sounds terrible. Not the end of the world - the drive sounds on the Blackstar are fabulous, I got the OD-200 because I like new toys (it was bought with Christmas gift vouchers) and because it would give me more high gain options. 

So I thought maybe I'll sell the OD-200 due to it sounding pish with the Blackstar. It's quite expensive and there's no point keeping it if I can't get it to sound good. On a whim I got my little used (because I bought the Blackstar) Laney Cub 12R combo out of the cupboard to try with the OD-200. And feck me, it sounds absolutely amazing. Suddenly all the sounds I wanted out of the Boss pedal are there. 

And so this got me wondering. Why does the OD-200 sound great with the Laney and not with the Blackstar? Partly I feel this might be an issue with the Blackstar clean channel, it sounds great clean but I wonder if there's too much high-end for dirt pedals. Rolling the clean channel's tone control down helps a bit, but it still doesn't sound anywhere as wonderful as the Laney.

Anyway, my intention with the thread is less about troubleshooting an issue, and more inquiring about what makes some amps better than others for use with various effects. 

PolarityMan

What happens if you spank the overdrive channel of the blackstar set to low gain instead? I always find that if you are going to get a drive sound from pedals alone you ened quite a flat clean suond so anything glassy and nice is going to colour the pedal too much. Plus obvs an overdrive pedal isnt really supposed to be the core sound either yur jsut supposed to push the core sound of the amp. 

Grumpyrocker

PolarityMan said:

What happens if you spank the overdrive channel of the blackstar set to low gain instead? I always find that if you are going to get a drive sound from pedals alone you ened quite a flat clean suond so anything glassy and nice is going to colour the pedal too much. Plus obvs an overdrive pedal isnt really supposed to be the core sound either yur jsut supposed to push the core sound of the amp. 

Still doesn't sound great using the Blackstar's OD channel. 

I'm not using the pedal for overdrive. I'm using high gain sounds - which sound fabulous into one amp, not into the other.

PolarityMan

Grumpyrocker said:

PolarityMan said:

What happens if you spank the overdrive channel of the blackstar set to low gain instead? I always find that if you are going to get a drive sound from pedals alone you ened quite a flat clean suond so anything glassy and nice is going to colour the pedal too much. Plus obvs an overdrive pedal isnt really supposed to be the core sound either yur jsut supposed to push the core sound of the amp. 

Still doesn't sound great using the Blackstar's OD channel. 

I'm not using the pedal for overdrive. I'm using high gain sounds - which sound fabulous into one amp, not into the other.

I've never got properly satisfactory results like that as what you want to make a more pre-amp styled pedal sound good is the opposite of what you want for a good clean sound. Hence why I'm such a fan of multi-channel amps. 

Grumpyrocker

PolarityMan said:

Grumpyrocker said:

PolarityMan said:

What happens if you spank the overdrive channel of the blackstar set to low gain instead? I always find that if you are going to get a drive sound from pedals alone you ened quite a flat clean suond so anything glassy and nice is going to colour the pedal too much. Plus obvs an overdrive pedal isnt really supposed to be the core sound either yur jsut supposed to push the core sound of the amp. 

Still doesn't sound great using the Blackstar's OD channel. 

I'm not using the pedal for overdrive. I'm using high gain sounds - which sound fabulous into one amp, not into the other.

I've never got properly satisfactory results like that as what you want to make a more pre-amp styled pedal sound good is the opposite of what you want for a good clean sound. Hence why I'm such a fan of multi-channel amps. 

Yes but I've already said I have got the pedal to sound really good. On one amp.

Cirrus

Sometimes amps have a voicing early in the chain that's designed to prepare the signal for being overdriven at particular points in the preamp.

Pedals in front of the amp send a signal into those early stages that is far removed from what was intended - maybe some aspects of the sound will be enhanced too much, maybe low end or high end will be lost, in all likelihood the compressed pedal tone will be further compressed by the amp.

monquixote

If you watch the pedal videos Ola does he quite often points out that things like the Metal Zone sound bad into the front of a lot of amps, but work really well into the FX loop as they have almost the character of a pre amp.

ICBM

The Blackstar has a much more complex preamp design than the Laney, which imposes much more of its own sound - it's also largely solid-state, which although not inherently a bad thing (I like solid-state amps and sounds, in fact in some ways I prefer them to valves so this is not snobbery), can often respond much less well to overdrive pedals, especially if you push the level up further to drive the amp harder - the opposite of how most valve amps behave.

Grumpyrocker

ICBM said:

The Blackstar has a much more complex preamp design than the Laney, which imposes much more of its own sound - it's also largely solid-state, which although not inherently a bad thing (I like solid-state amps and sounds, in fact in some ways I prefer them to valves so this is not snobbery), can often respond much less well to overdrive pedals, especially if you push the level up further to drive the amp harder - the opposite of how most valve amps behave.

That's definitely something I considered. Though even if I set the distortion pedal volume low - so it's not really pushing the amp - it still sounds pish. 

Maybe I've got it wrong and the pedal sounds crap generally - but sounds nice through the Laney! 

jellybelly

I always thought it was a question of headroom and a transparent EQ section in the amp. A channel switcher is by necessity, generally speaking, having to mess with the sound a lot more to get clean crunch and lead sounds out of it from the same base signal. Everything is more compressed and more limited but it gets the gain sounds it needs internally, with maybe an outboard boost.

A bassman on the other hand inhales pedals because it's big and open with no massive EQ cuts and loads of headroom. 

Take all this with a pinch of salt though, there are certainly exceptions. 

ICBM

Grumpyrocker said:

Maybe I've got it wrong and the pedal sounds crap generally - but sounds nice through the Laney! 

No, I think it's the other way round. The Blackstar HTs I've tried have sounded poor with pedals as well.

p90fool

I battled for a couple of years trying to get convincing drive sounds using pedals with a Princeton and still have all the pedals I bought to try and get there. I totally failed with most of them, though an OCD clone and a Nobels ODR-1 sounded okay-ish.

Sometimes I dig them all out and every one of them sounds great through a Hot Rod Deluxe or a JTM45, with no finicky, delicate settings. 

Some amp tone stacks are brittle with drive pedals, or their position in the signal chain can make pedals sound artificial.

ICBM

p90fool said:

I battled for a couple of years trying to get convincing drive sounds using pedals with a Princeton and still have all the pedals I bought to try and get there. I totally failed with most of them, though an OCD clone and a Nobels ODR-1 sounded okay-ish.

Sometimes I dig them all out and every one of them sounds great through a Hot Rod Deluxe or a JTM45, with no finicky, delicate settings. 

Some amp tone stacks are brittle with drive pedals, or their position in the signal chain can make pedals sound artificial.

With BF/SF Fenders with reverb, the problem is a cap in the reverb mixer section - the bright cap on the volume control on a Deluxe doesn't help either, although the Princeton doesn't have one.

The Hotrod has a completely different (solid-state driven) reverb so doesn't have the problem.

On the two-channel BF/SFs you can get around it by using the Normal channel and jumpering to the Vibrato for reverb with the treble control turned down, but that doesn't help with a Princeton either...

EricTheWeary

PolarityMan said:

What happens if you spank the overdrive channel of the blackstar set to low gain instead? I always find that if you are going to get a drive sound from pedals alone you need quite a flat clean sound so anything glassy and nice is going to colour the pedal too much. Plus obvs an overdrive pedal isnt really supposed to be the core sound either your just supposed to push the core sound of the amp. 

In what experience I have with hybrid and even some valve or solid state amps is that you are better off getting a clean sound out of the OD channel as your base tone than using a clean channel. In my simplistic way I think it's because 'that's where the engineering went' although I'm going to suggest it's something I don't really know what I'm talking about like pre amp headroom.  

ICBM

EricTheWeary said:

In what experience I have with hybrid and even some valve or solid state amps is that you are better off getting a clean sound out of the OD channel as your base tone than using a clean channel. In my simplistic way I think it's because 'that's where the engineering went' although I'm going to suggest it's something I don't really know what I'm talking about like pre amp headroom.  

If you're not actually using the amp for dirt it's always worth trying the dirty channel as well. I can give a specific example - there are Orange Crush 60s in the rehearsal studio we use, and I've found the overdrive channel is much less fussy with drive pedals than the clean. If you set the channel volume up full and keep the gain down to about 9-10 o'clock, it's completely clean, but a Marshall-type clean. The clean channel is more of a Fender-type clean, and although it sounds nice on its own it can be quite buzzy and thin with pedals - the overdrive channel doesn't do that, and sounds great.

Modulus_Amps

Grumpyrocker said:

Anyway, my intention with the thread is less about troubleshooting an issue, and more inquiring about what makes some pedals better than others for use with various amps. 

FTFY 

If you have an amp with a clean sound you like and a pedal sounds horrible through it, why is it the amps fault?

Why should the amp be the flexible one in the partnership and forced to work with all pedals, If you had an amp capable of doing that then there would be loads of knobs switches etc

 I am offended for all amps and these horrible drive pedals should be publicly shamed.

  

EricTheWeary

 ICBM said:

The Blackstar has a much more complex preamp design than the Laney, which imposes much more of its own sound - it's also largely solid-state, which although not inherently a bad thing (I like solid-state amps and sounds, in fact in some ways I prefer them to valves so this is not snobbery), can often respond much less well to overdrive pedals, especially if you push the level up further to drive the amp harder - the opposite of how most valve amps behave.

Generally in rehearsal rooms there were Valvestates, the odd valve Marshall, Peavey Bandits, solid state Fenders, Orange Rocker something,etc,etc, but the one place had a bunch of Blackstars, the bigger HT ones I think. I always went for a generic, completely non descript electric guitar tone - anything into anything and try to be heard through the mix. Definitely worked least well through the Blackstars as their own sound/ EQ colours everything so much. I played a friend's ID series as well once and that had that dark, lack of clarity thing. From memory it worked better the more gain you added but for clean to crunch it's really hard to work with and as a make louder device for pedal distortion I can see it being problematic.       

HAL9000

This explains quite a bit about amp/pedal compatibility...

https://youtu.be/CdKjhXWpjq8

Grumpyrocker

HAL9000 said:

This explains quite a bit about amp/pedal compatibility...

https://youtu.be/CdKjhXWpjq8

Interesting. The Fender amp - which is by no means crap - sounded awful with the Muff. And while not the same, that harshness is there in the HT5 with my OD200.

Majorscale

I find pristine clean amps can be hard to match with drive pedals. Case in point, the much lauded Carr Rambler, I sold mine because it made every drive pedal I tried, which was many, (bar a booteek Tubescreamer) sound incredibly harsh. Clean tones were beautiful but I need more!

Never had that issue with my tweed amps.

HAL9000

Grumpyrocker said:

HAL9000 said:

This explains quite a bit about amp/pedal compatibility...

https://youtu.be/CdKjhXWpjq8

Interesting. The Fender amp - which is by no means crap - sounded awful with the Muff. And while not the same, that harshness is there in the HT5 with my OD200.

I had a similar issue with a Blackstar Studio 6L6 and a J Rockett Blue Note OD; Using a Boss SD-1, which has significantly more of a mid-hump, sorted things out immediately.