Blackboarcult
Active member
Amen to that. And while we're at it:
I love distortion, that's the only thing I care about, really... But I freakin hate distortion pedals, and I freakin hate AIABs.
In the last years I might have breadboarded 50? 70? distortion pedals, not a single one has passed muster. There is always something wrong with the mids, or it sounds too fizzy or too muffled or too congested or too fake in a way that can't be dialed out with its own controls or the TMB of my Bandit's clean channel. Yes, I can enjoy playing thru them for a bit, yes, some of them are brilliantly designed or cleverly voiced, but none has sounded good enough to qualify as a tone I'd like to record through, much less build, because I'm lazy. I'd rather use my puny Laney TI15, which is not my ideal tone but still sounds nicer, more natural.
It has taken me far longer than I care to admit to understand the importance of voicing and how pedals couple to an amp, and it is only when I simulated my amp on Spice and figured out how to "defeat" its inherent voicing with an external circuit that I started coming up with distortion designs that I ACTUALLY love and play through, and that sound right to me. Only then I can tailor the mids to have the TMB of my amp react more or less like the amp I am trying to ape, or reduce the upper-frequency hump so it doesn't sound like someone is squeezing a horse's testicles with pliers. But here's the catch - those are voiced to MY amp. It is virtually impossible to design a pedal that will sound like a JCM through a Princeton AND thru an AC15 AND thru a Sunn Coliseum, no matter how many idiotic/finicky/counter-intuitive knobs you add to the sucker.
There have been dozens of own designs and mods or riffs on an existing design that I have considered sharing, but I haven't done so because of that. A fella 10.000 km away will build it, run it thru the clean channel of his Traynor or Matchless or whathaveyou, it will not sound as intended, and disappointment will ensue because, through his rig, it won't be what I described it as. I'm far too self-conscious for that.
Yes, of course, you have full-fledged preamp pedals, defeat the amp's own preamp and run it through the effects loop, Bob's your uncle, but then what's the point of having a clean channel that I love, and what's the point of having an amp at all, just get a Pedal Baby or a Mooer or whatever, or just run it through Cubase, IRs and other assorted devilish gear that makes our lives more complicated by giving us exactly what we want.
Biggest lie in the industry? "...ALL THE WAY TO HOT-RODDED MARSHALL TONES". 'kay mate, but through which amp?
There, I said it, now please feel free to roast me for my subjective opinion
