Change amp - change pedals

Placidcasual79

Probably a stupid question to a lot of you pros - but I am in experienced -

After a year, I am considering going back to solid state from tube. I use clean tones almost exclusively with  an exotic booster for a transparent volume boost and a mini tube screamer for a bit of distortion/mid boost for solo's,

So if I move my blues deluxe and go back to say, a Roland JC40 or blues cube will I need to change my pedals to get a crunchy tone for leads and a volume boost for other key melodic lines?

The other pedals on my board are delay's and modulation pedals..... I am assuming these wouldn't be two 

Mkjackary

If you can find one with a loop then the mods and delays will be fine.

Otherwise do some research, just like any amp, some solid state amps take pedals great, others hate them.
The Roland stuff in my experience hasent been bad at all.

I think the only issue you could have is the TS for your light overdrive, it will work, but different amps make pedals sound different and so it may sound completely different from what you are used to due to the pre amp being completely different.

But yeah, transparent volume boost should be fine as long as you don't boost the level too much, and ts should be fine, but might not work as well, go to a shop and try it out?

You certainly shouldn't need to re structure your whole board or anything.

stratman3142

I'm not a pro but I have gigged for about 40 years.
I've recently gone to a Roland Blues Cube after previously using valve amps including a Hotrod Deluxe III then a Victory V40. 

I just use the clean channel at the moment. My pedalboard still works fine. I didn't even need to change the settings.

professorben

Take a look at That Pedal Show from last week, they did a comparison of solid state amps ( well, two) against a valve amp, in terms of how they take drive pedals.

Grunfeld

Placidcasual79 said:

After a year, I am considering going back to solid state from tube... will I need to change my pedals to get a crunchy tone for leads and a volume boost for other key melodic lines?

The other pedals on my board are delay's and modulation pedals..... I am assuming these wouldn't be two 

Short version:  Use your ears!
Longer version:  you may have to change some pedals.  But what I've learnt after making the switch from valves to SS is DON'T PANIC!

SS responds differently to valves and the interaction between guitars, pedals, and amp feels confusing at first.
I actually did panic a bit and went through a lot of overdrives just trying to find a fix in a pedal which would get me back to "my sound".   That's not the way to do it.  And I really had problems with exactly what you've identified:  couldn't get the crunch, couldn't boost for solos etc.  Now it's all sorted.

This may sound bleedin' obvious -- and it is -- but I eventually listened to my SS amp and played with its controls.  I'd sort of expected to be able to dial in my old Marshall settings into the SS Orange, and the old pedal settings too, and imagined it would sound the same.  It didn't funnily enough.  And once I'd listened to the Orange properly again and again I got used to it and can now get a nice variety of sounds out of it.  Oh, and the FX loop sounded different too so the order of pedals changed and use of loop changed.

PS  I watched the episode of That Pedal Show where they look at SS amps and wasn't that impressed with the sounds they were getting from the SS amps.  To be fair to them they said their ears were "tuned" to valves and that was pretty much my initial experience too.  It takes a while to get used to SS.  But this series, "How many tones can you get out of one amp" is more on the money for me.  As it happens the type of amp he's using there, the Orange CR-120 head, is the one I'm currently using.  I really love it now; it just took a while!

Sassafras

I've got a Tech 21 Trademark combo that plays fine with the same pedals I normally use into valve amps. It even sounds good with one of my treble boosters which is very unusual for a solid-state amp.

ICBM

I've never had a problem with it, but it depends how you use your pedals.

When I was gigging with electric guitar I made sure that I could get the same sound through any provided amp - which were often solid-state - since I didn't always take my own. It generally wasn't too difficult - but I've never used a "pedal pushing an amp" sound. If you do then it does become much harder because the interaction between the two becomes critical, and a lot of solid-state (and digital) amps don't respond in the same way - or well - to being pushed like that.

I do stack pedal distortion into amp distortion, but never with the pedal driving the amp much harder than the guitar itself would.

Placidcasual79

Thanks people - some really helpful stuff @ICBM @Grunfeld @professorben @stratman3142 and @mkjackary . Think i'll take the plunge in the new year.

Wazmeister

Interesting...

I do find that my pedals are 'tuned' to my two (valve) amps - Carr Rambler and Lazy J...

The Blues Cube... Hmmm, Ive found that my drives need adjusting to suit the SS. Natural enough, I guess, but not as natural as Id like...

I tend to just plug straight into the SS...

Placidcasual79

Wazmeister said:

Interesting...

I do find that my pedals are 'tuned' to my two (valve) amps - Carr Rambler and Lazy J...

The Blues Cube... Hmmm, Ive found that my drives need adjusting to suit the SS. Natural enough, I guess, but not as natural as Id like...

I tend to just plug straight into the SS...

Have you gigged a Blues cube? (I am actually leaning toward the JC120)