Good distortion pedal from Amazon

professorben

Interesting, how distorted is the DM?
ive not tried boosting the DM with a pedal only using it as a boost. 
I know the DM was designed to have a lot of headroom, maybe that's the cause? 

bingefeller

professorben said:

Interesting, how distorted is the DM?
ive not tried boosting the DM with a pedal only using it as a boost. 
I know the DM was designed to have a lot of headroom, maybe that's the cause? 

Distortion up full on the DM.  


I have this same problem with some OD pedals too, I can hear the clean signal, even when I have the gain up on the OD.  It's more evident on the clean channel of an amp.  

professorben

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

Interesting, how distorted is the DM?
ive not tried boosting the DM with a pedal only using it as a boost. 
I know the DM was designed to have a lot of headroom, maybe that's the cause? 

Distortion up full on the DM.  


I have this same problem with some OD pedals too, I can hear the clean signal, even when I have the gain up on the OD.  It's more evident on the clean channel of an amp.  

Wow ok, full gain on the DM and boosting it with another?! 
Thats some gain there fella. 
I only run it about 12'oclock, with the Blues Driver the same. 

bingefeller

professorben said:

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

Interesting, how distorted is the DM?
ive not tried boosting the DM with a pedal only using it as a boost. 
I know the DM was designed to have a lot of headroom, maybe that's the cause? 

Distortion up full on the DM.  


I have this same problem with some OD pedals too, I can hear the clean signal, even when I have the gain up on the OD.  It's more evident on the clean channel of an amp.  

Wow ok, full gain on the DM and boosting it with another?! 
Thats some gain there fella. 
I only run it about 12'oclock, with the Blues Driver the same. 

The other pedal boosting it has the gain rolled back, so it's just tightening up the DM.

professorben

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

Interesting, how distorted is the DM?
ive not tried boosting the DM with a pedal only using it as a boost. 
I know the DM was designed to have a lot of headroom, maybe that's the cause? 

Distortion up full on the DM.  


I have this same problem with some OD pedals too, I can hear the clean signal, even when I have the gain up on the OD.  It's more evident on the clean channel of an amp.  

Wow ok, full gain on the DM and boosting it with another?! 
Thats some gain there fella. 
I only run it about 12'oclock, with the Blues Driver the same. 

The other pedal boosting it has the gain rolled back, so it's just tightening up the DM.

Try the other way round? DM into other pedal. 

bingefeller

professorben said:

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

Interesting, how distorted is the DM?
ive not tried boosting the DM with a pedal only using it as a boost. 
I know the DM was designed to have a lot of headroom, maybe that's the cause? 

Distortion up full on the DM.  


I have this same problem with some OD pedals too, I can hear the clean signal, even when I have the gain up on the OD.  It's more evident on the clean channel of an amp.  

Wow ok, full gain on the DM and boosting it with another?! 
Thats some gain there fella. 
I only run it about 12'oclock, with the Blues Driver the same. 

The other pedal boosting it has the gain rolled back, so it's just tightening up the DM.

Try the other way round? DM into other pedal. 

I tried that with the Shiba Drive, but it gets a bit too fuzzy.  I need to get some of my own pedals out.  

Problem with the Shiba Drive is that it too mixes the clean signal, and you can still hear it if you play it through the clean channel.   

Dave_Mc

sw67 said:

I gigged the dark matter into a clean fender amp with good results but it sounds rubbish into my vox and mjw amps. I read somewhere it was designed to work with clean fender type amps

I've noticed that as well. It sounds good to me with a fendery clean but not so good if the amp isn't sparkly and a bit scooped.

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

bingefeller said:

OK I just bought the Dark Matter.  

Nice!
hope you like it man. 

@professorben well, I got the Dark Matter yesterday and it's just OK.  I play it into a clean amp and I definitely think I can hear some of the clean tone instead of 100% distorted tone, which I prefer.

I haven't noticed that myself, but after you asked if it was a clone i went to the freestompboxes forum, and they sort of half-reverse-engineered it (the guy doing it stopped halfway, I guess he had better things to do) and it seemed to be soft clipping in a feedback loop- and I think that style of clipping (like a ts) has a bit of a rep of sort of sounding "on top" of the clean tone.

bingefeller

Dave_Mc said:

sw67 said:

I gigged the dark matter into a clean fender amp with good results but it sounds rubbish into my vox and mjw amps. I read somewhere it was designed to work with clean fender type amps

I've noticed that as well. It sounds good to me with a fendery clean but not so good if the amp isn't sparkly and a bit scooped.

bingefeller said:

professorben said:

bingefeller said:

OK I just bought the Dark Matter.  

Nice!
hope you like it man. 

@professorben well, I got the Dark Matter yesterday and it's just OK.  I play it into a clean amp and I definitely think I can hear some of the clean tone instead of 100% distorted tone, which I prefer.

I haven't noticed that myself, but after you asked if it was a clone i went to the freestompboxes forum, and they sort of half-reverse-engineered it (the guy doing it stopped halfway, I guess he had better things to do) and it seemed to be soft clipping in a feedback loop- and I think that style of clipping (like a ts) has a bit of a rep of sort of sounding "on top" of the clean tone.

Do you know what sort of pedals will replace the clean tone?  I've never had a distortion with the clean bleed thing happening, it's always overdrives.  

There is no clean bleed with the Boss OD 3 or OD 1, but there is with the SD1.  

Just to clarify what I mean about clean bleed-

i play through a clean amp and this happens with both solid state or tube.

if I have the Dark Matter on and I boost it with another pedal, booster or overdrive it doesn't matter, it pushes even more if the clean signal through to the amp and it sounds mushy and gets louder instead of more compressed.  

If if I have the Suhr Riot on and I boost it it doesn't bleed any clean through and instead the sound gets dirtier and more compressed.  

Jonathanthomas83

I'd have bought a Mooer Blues Mood or a Mooer Riot or RAT clone...bit late for that though, sorry!

bingefeller

Also, see this thread on TGP

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/rockett-pedals-clean-bleed-does-the-blue-note-have-it-too.1216781/

Tha ha was back in 2013 and I should have taken my own advice about the Holdsworth pedal because I ended up buying it and don't like it because of clean bleed.  

Dave_Mc

Well, I think (but don't quote me on this) that pedals with hard clipping (the diodes to ground) are supposed to not have that problem so much. However, I think the OD1 has the clippers in a feedback loop too and you didn't notice it, so I'm not sure if it's a hard and fast rule (or maybe I've even got the wrong end of the stick).

The other problem is that hard clippers tend to be distortion pedals rather than OD pedals, but not always. For example, the klon, the OCD and the distortion +/OD250 use clipping to ground and are arguably more overdrive than distortion pedals (or there's the rat which has a very wide gain range), so maybe something in that vein might work.  If you want the marshally thing the crunchbox or guvnor or something like that would likely be worth a try.

As I said, though, I can't guarantee that going for a hard clipper will solve the problem, since you tried a soft-clipper/feedback loop type pedal and didn't notice the problem, it may well be a bit more complicated...

EDIT: ah I've just read your post better and you said it's even worse when boosting. I'm not sure I've noticed that specific problem, but I did think my dark matter didn't take a boost as well as some of my other distortion pedals.

bingefeller

Cheers @Dave_Mc ;

out of interest is the Dod250 a distortion or overdrive, given its based on the Dist +?  I've never played a Dist + , but I think it's a fuzzy kind of distortion from what I've heard.  

Dave_Mc

I haven't tried the 250, I've only tried the distortion + (and the modern bog standard reissue at that, not any of the fancier ones)

yeah the distortion + is kind of weird. I've heard people say it's not that great, and that there are more modern pedals which are better- and that's pretty much true. It doesn't have a load of distortion on tap, it doesn't have much volume boost on tap, and as you said, if you turn the gain up too much (above about 12 o'clock, which is not that heavy) it gets fuzzy. it also has no tone control and can be way too bright depending on the rest of the rig.

and yet i find for a lot of the older-school type of classic to hard rock tones it actually sounds really good, and it also works pretty well for those classic rock "is it vintage-style amp distortion or a fuzz?" type of tones as well. i do stack it with amp distortion, though, it sounds pretty rubbish into a clean amp (way too bright and thin, as i said above). I generally run mine with the volume maxed and the distortion at about 10-11 o'clock.

if you want a standalone distortion (into a clean amp, I mean), then I'd probably look elsewhere.

bingefeller

Dave_Mc said:

if you want a standalone distortion (into a clean amp, I mean), then I'd probably look elsewhere.

What about the Rat or the Mooer Black Secret?  

The Suhr Riot Reloaded is, for me, hard to beat, but I would like something different.

Sassafras

I've got an old Dist+ and a DOD 250. They might be based on a similar circuit but I don't think they sound that similar. The Dist+ is a soft sort of distortion that can sound slightly Big Muffish at max gain and the the 250 is more of an overdrive with less compression than the +.

bingefeller

Sassafras said:

I've got an old Dist+ and a DOD 250. They might be based on a similar circuit but I don't think they sound that similar. The Dist+ is a soft sort of distortion that can sound slightly Big Muffish at max gain and the the 250 is more of an overdrive with less compression than the +.

I had an Yngwie YJM pedal years ago, but can't remember what it sounded like.  I sold it and am sorry that I did.  I seem to remember it was noisy.  Is the DOD250 noisy?

professorben

I borrowed a DOD250 from a buddy once when I was trying to 'solve' an issue with my amp, turned out to be the wrong speakers rather than the amp itself. 
The DOD was pretty nice, from what I recall, but not very 'gainy' but this was before I learnt about gain stacking. 

bingefeller

professorben said:

I borrowed a DOD250 from a buddy once when I was trying to 'solve' an issue with my amp, turned out to be the wrong speakers rather than the amp itself. 
The DOD was pretty nice, from what I recall, but not very 'gainy' but this was before I learnt about gain stacking. 

Yeah I think it's mostly used as a dirty booster kind of pedal.  I think it is quite a noisy pedal, Yngwie turns his up full blast - both volume and gain, and he has a noise gate always on because it's that noisy.  

Sassafras

Don't notice the 250 as being over noisy. It's certainly less noisy than a lot of out and out distortion boxes I've used. I've actually got 2 of them, an original and a reissue and they both sound very similar. The reissue's got maybe a tiny bit more gain.

Dave_Mc

bingefeller said:

Dave_Mc said:

if you want a standalone distortion (into a clean amp, I mean), then I'd probably look elsewhere.

What about the Rat or the Mooer Black Secret?  

The Suhr Riot Reloaded is, for me, hard to beat, but I would like something different.

yeah the black secret is pretty nice. it has a lot of range on the controls so can be dialled in to sound pretty good with virtually any amp. on the other hand, i often feel that it sounds "pretty good" for a wide range of tones and with a wide range of amps, but if there was a specific tone i was after (unless that tone was "rat", of course) and i knew exactly which amp i'd be using the pedal with, there are other pedals I like better.

i haven't tried the riot reloaded.