Questions
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What's a tube based distortion pedal you have or you think might be worth buying?
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What would be a good site / reddit sub / forum / Youtube channel / whatever to check? I'm going to check Reverb tonight when I have time.
Skippable boring details
The thumb is for this COMING SOON: Audiode Overdrive / Distortion Pedal - Curious Audio
Curious Audio is run by a couple of lefties and the pedal intrigued me but there are issues. The pedal is more than I want to spend. The site lists the price as "$379.00 $289.00". I dont know if they are actually still making the damn thing. The apparently sold five. They were supposed to have a Youtube vide up around September. But now they removed any mention of that. Also - I emailed them a follow up question 3 months ago and they never replied.
I shouldn't have wasted my time but this morning I emailed them again. I broke a simple but very useful rule I have. If a business doesn't reply promptly - I should never do business with them. And it's not like there aren't loads of other pedal options.
Waste of money IMO, there's a good reason why the vast majority of dirt pedals (or any other pedals for that matter) don't have tubes. They just don't need them to sound good.
People shit on Behringer but I've wanted to get my hands on one of these for awhile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c63kxPAVvU They're pretty cheap on reverb. I don't know of a cheaper pedal with a tube in it.
A pedal like that is basically just a preamp section in a box. You could look at the Joyo Bantamp series, which are actually full amp heads with a tube preamp, 20W solid state power section, and an effects loop in a tiny form factor. You could stick it in the middle of a pedal chain by only using the effect loop send, bypassing the power section. I have a Meteor and it's pretty rad. They're all cheaper than that Curious Audio pedal.
Also, do you need tubes? This guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBEOcPtlYk demonstrates in a way that's pretty convincing to me that distortion is distortion and most of the difference we perceive between amps/pedals has more to do with EQ and where the EQ stages are positioned between gain stages.
Behringer is the pedal manufacturer of the proletariat. Full stop.
except for the antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behringer#Controversies
:jesus-christ: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxe7qx/a-major-synth-company-created-this-fake-product-to-attack-a-journalist
I don't have a ton of their pedals but my experiences with their synths and interfaces and microphones have all been very solid
For cheap pedals don't sleep on Azor, Dolamo, Mosky, Caline or Nux
Yes! Also Donner, Mooer, and Joyo. Joyo is really coming into their own nowadays as a semi-mainstream guitar gear manufacturer with their mini amp heads and their R-series pedals. Kokko is also worth a mention; their compressor pedal is a badge-engineered Nux for like $20. Oh, and Flamma makes a tiny "all in one" modulation pedal with a trippy bitcrush effect on it.
I have that Flamma, and it is pretty sweet. I'm pretty sure it's a re-badged Mooer Mod Factory at a lower price (I actually suspect that all of the Flammas are re-badged Mooers). The Amazon Basics pedals are Nux/Kokko rebadges. Chinese guitar pedals are actually a pretty small world if you spend too much time on aliexpress and learn what to look for.
I definitely developed a soft spot for those AliExpress logo-swap brands when I was looking around for an even cheaper Mooer E-Lady. I figured fuck it, they're all the same board just with different paint jobs on the case, so I got a purple one. There aren't nearly enough purple pedals, damn it!
most of the difference we perceive between amps/pedals has more to do with EQ and where the EQ stages are positioned between gain stages.
I've already got a very expensive pedal board that I bought to encourage myself to play more and to mess around easily with the effects chain. I can program stuff on my computer and then downloaded it into the board. I haven't played my guitar in a very long time. The more I think about this - the more it's clear the purchase is probably very silly. My board allows me an endless amount of digital tinkering and tweaking.
I have a Blackstar HT-METAL. It's not great -- an HT-DIST or DISTX would have been saner to work with. The HT-METAL is like the HT-DISTX with a permanent boost engaged and just entirely too much gain even at the lowest settings. I've gotten better at dialing these things in, so maybe I should dig it out of storage and give it a try again sometime, but I just remember not being able to dial out the treble fizz or farty bass no matter what I did. I don't think an EQ pedal or a mid-hump boost is really an option, because it just doesn't seem to react as expected. Still, Andy Martin manages to coax some impressive Sepultura Chaos A.D.-era sounds out of the HT-DISTX in a YouTube demo from a while back. (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toagqd0508A) I probably just fucked up by getting the "ALL THE GAIN" version.
But yeah, all of those tube distortion pedals are based on the same "starved plate" type of circuit, and don't quite behave the same way as an amp would. Some are closer than others. I've heard good things about the Radial Tonebone, and that's going for maybe $140-150 used on Reverb if you absolutely have to have a pedal with a tube in it.
Otherwise, honestly? The newer JFET-based stuff is about as good as the real thing. The AMT Electronics Legend Amps series comes to mind; I freaking love my R2 pedal. I guess the real question is what you hope to accomplish with the distortion you're looking for -- what style(s) do you play?
I guess the real question is what you hope to accomplish with the distortion you’re looking for – what style(s) do you play?
Mostly just straight ahead rock. But I'd like to do some experiments with dirtier sounds. Also - maybe I'll use the guitar as a noise device and mess around with the sounds digitally. In another comment I say I have an expensive pedal board and I can use my computer to set up stuff and download it into my board. I'm starting to think what I need to do is a lot of experimentation with what I have.
Sounds like you need an EQD Rainbow Machine and a Way Huge Atreides Weirding Module
...is what I would say if I were a Guitar Center employee
I have a new idea. I'm going to spend - I dunno - at least 3 months playing around with my board and use suggestions like yours as a test. Can I figure out a way to get sounds that are at least very roughly similar? Even if I can't - it's a sane place to start.
I need to use the tools I already have to see if I can get where I want to go. Ninja edit: I missed my calling. All this time I should have been writing self-help books. Ack.
Edit
Way Huge Atreides Analogue Weirding Module Demo
This is an actual fact about the 1984 Dune: David Lynch decided not to put the Weirding Way in the movie cos he didn't want to do a Kung-Fu movie on sand dunes and he felt it would be impossible to film and he came up with the Weirding Module sound gun.
Imagine going back in time to around 1970 and trying to explain in words what that box does. Or think of meeting Hendrix, convincing him to try that out and having it blow his mind. He'd think you were some kind of music shaman wizard.
I assembled a rough facsimile of a Weirding Module out of a chain of cheap Chinese pedals that I already had. A VSN octave into a Mosky phaser into a Behringer fuzz into a Flamma envelope. It's not exactly the same but it's close enough to be a lot of fun.
I wouldn't know where to start with a rainbow machine, though. Those are pretty thoroughly unique.
Nice! Sounds like you're just missing a sub-octave in there. Personally, between finding a used one for fairly cheap and this goddamned video, I ended up snagging one because it's one of those setups that should pair well with a synthesizer and a tape echo for something I can only describe as Blue Cheer/Pink Floyd-adjacent chucklefuckery.
The Rainbow Machine, though... Yeah. Not getting one of those unless a Korg Miku Stomp falls into my lap one day. Then I might not have a choice. https://streamable.com/2nflmq
Yep, definitely take stock of what you have -- it sounds like you have a pretty extensive set of effects already, and all a tube distortion box is going to get you is another preamp/drive pedal. (Are you using a Kemper or HX Stomp or something?) If you're going to tone-chase, it's probably helpful to lay out some concrete goals for what you're trying to do, and then figure out what, if anything, is missing from your setup. In my case, it was that I didn't like either of my amps and I was trying to get a more aggressive metal rhythm sound. I was hoping that could transform my extremely clean-sounding Fender combo into something in the same ballpark as a Krankenstein or a 5150. It didn't, and it turns out that my other amp was capable of those sounds all along with just a Tube Screamer clone, a better speaker cabinet, and replacing a dying preamp tube.
If you get stumped trying to dial in what you have, it can be pretty helpful to go over YouTube demos to see how other people are using the same pieces of gear. That will at least give you a frame of reference. For me, some of Kyle Bull's videos have been pretty enlightening -- the dude is a wizard at dialing in high-gain thrash metal sounds, and he's one of the only gear nerds I've seen who makes sure to always use the same cabinet, speaker, and mic combination for his demos' audio tracks. That's honestly pretty helpful, especially if you have access to a Two Notes Captor or are running through VSTs for your amp sound.
Are you using a Kemper or HX Stomp or something?
Line 6 Helix. I now feel silly for starting this thread. Anyway - I've got a ton to learn/experiment/tweak for my pedal board. Sometime into next year if I've done my "homework" - I can revisit the idea of buying a tube distortion pedal. But if I have done my homework - I'm now nearly certain I'll decide not to buy anything new.
Oh, nice! Yeah, the preamp models on that should be pretty close to the real deal. I understand the struggle of wanting a real tube preamp -- I was in the same boat a while back. I started with a Digitech RP series modeler back in the day, and while I could dial in some classic rock and alternative/grunge sounds that I liked, it was just never quite there for the higher gain stuff, due to the fairly limited amp models on those. I had some hair metal-ish presets that I didn't hate, but yeah, at the end of the day, trying to get a Fender Princeton Reverb to sound like a Mesa Dual Rec or a block letter 5150 is a fool's errand. Amp modelers were definitely on the wrong side of the uncanny valley 15-20 years ago.
The Helix, on the other hand, is a really damned good modeler. You're in for a hell of a ride once you get through some of the initial learning curve.
You’re in for a hell of a ride once you get through some of the initial learning curve.
It's as if I'm trying to think of a good excuse for me not to play around with it after work today. Also I can't remember the last time I even touched my guitar. I think it was March. Well, the damn thing won't play itself.
This sounds like me with my undiagnosed-but-extremely-plausible case of adult ADHD. I think it has been about a week for me, and I still don't practice nearly enough. Work-related burnout is a motherfucker.
