Transparent drive

im looking for either a transparent overdrive or boost pedal something to push my tone with out distorting my signal too much for cleaner parts that i need to boost like a solo or build ups in before a big chorus

im looking at the EHX Crayon, Foxpedal Kingdom and JHS Morning Glory and the Keeley Katana but im game to any and all suggestions as well as old and used gear

the katana is a multi mode boost if I recall, it might be ale to add some dirt at extreme settings but its a boost with personality... if you don't have a tube amp don't bother

I am unfamiliar with the other drives though I think the EHX crayon is an overloading mixing channel type thing like the JHS colour box.... full range, shooting for the kinda extreme nasty fuzz from the Beatles revolution where they ganged 2 mixing desk channels together to create that really distorted elad sound that cuts through the dimed deluxe reverbs from the core rhythm tracks... the old Coloursound Overdriver and Power Booster pedals were like this but without a mastervolume (reissues and clones usually have a master making them far more capable and flexible as a drive or a dirty boost -- had one for eyars, only used it a handful of times). They are really interesting but defintiely not msot people's diea of transparent even though theya re fullr ange with the EQ controls dialed in flat.

if were into the transparent drive thing I would check out a Timmy. Everyone I know loves the timmy. They say its like a the abstard child of a tubescreamer and a klon. On paper it looks like a hifi tubescreamer with a fully adjustable frequency response isntead of fixed bass roll off, mid hump and a variable high cut control.

this is a whole genre of tone chasing that consumes guys for eyars on end while they trade similar pedals in and out spending thousand s of bucks, it always seemed like a rabbit hole with diminishing returns. I always wind up abck with pretty normal designs for drive and then i don't use them anyway LOL

Iforget, what are you using for an amp these days Blake?

TC electronic spark mini for the right price is a win. No colour at all 0 on the dial is parity and 20db of boost. I also use an ehx soul food as a boost, and a compressor and an eq in the past. colour it in yourself.

not a drive

im looking for either a transparent overdrive or boost pedal something to push my tone with out distorting my signal too much for cleaner parts that i need to boost like a solo or build ups in before a big chorus

True. Not a drive. It is a boost pedal. The Soul food is a drive.

It's cool ... I read it.

oh yeah, I just assumed he meant like a boost in the 'tubescreamer with teh gain at 1' sense for some reason

you know what's really udnerrated for solo lifts? mid-boosters. That's sort of what epople want from a de-gained tubescreamer with output cranked, but I fid the tubecreamer steals dynamics and adds weird harmonics that maybe aren't so good through every amp. A rangemaster style pedal can do this with various top end roll off points depending on the style but they're all pretty finnicky, even the brian may.... the Fullton mid-booster pedal is a real champ as is the mid boost on my radial ABY... I feel like there are some other pedals that do the clean mid-boost trick well but I forget which ones. The ones I like are harmonically transparent with good dynamics but with a mid hump or high and low roll off centered some place really musical but not with such extreme Q its like cocked wah wah...

not what the guy asked for but just thought...

the klon really does it all if you cna stomach the bass roll off... soul food is what i briefly owned and it was solid but I have to say the archer and the saucy box have that extra 5% the soul food doesn't. Not worth it to me, but maybe to Blake.

again, what kind of amp?

i forgot about the timmy, but rn a princeton ill be gettinf a drri at the end of summer once i see what my first school bill is but i have a 1000 more on my loan so it shouldnt be too bad

i must of looked right over the tc spark, hows it stand up to the Keeley Katana and Luna OD

and i put the luna because i know it does pretty well for a cleaner drive tone

if it was me I wouldn't be shopping for any other shit until iw as 100% satified with my guitar and amp for a few months.... not having the DRRI yet I would hold off. Thats an amp that might ened a speaker swap, rebias (theya re notoriously cold from teh factory) bright cap mod (I like the fixed bright cap, but most don't).... who knows.... or get the silverface one that doesn't soud like a silverface. People love that one because its un-hsitorically gainy... but just wait, i am tell ing you you will thank me when you get used to your amp and guitar and then find the right gadget to stick between them.

im gonna go with my gut and take your advice ill still shop around but i wont get one till ive had the drri for a couple months

good call, I have been using ac30s off and on for 15 or 16 years now (matchless for about 10) and I am still all over the map with dirt/boosts and stuff. I just took my whole rig apart again and have been just using the matchless, a slapback delay and then my always on jfet liendriver I designed tog et some extra comrpession, voltage and upper mid into the EF86 channel and I'm not missing any of the other amplifiers or the nova drive or being able to change my sound which is where I was more or less 2 years ago. I dunno. Maybe all you need is boost or lots of boost and if you wanna play cleaner turn your guitar down or go fuck yourself?

well okay, I took the matchless out of the rig and stuck it in my bedroom with the other 2x2 and stuck a different delay in line with the boost after it to just have some basic, no knobs shit that's not a straight ac30, has a good mount of gain on tap and not deafeningly loud (because I wanna start to actually practice again and do it with a legit guitar t one at volume so i can be all precise like I used to be and do paul gilbert speed-wanking again) and I was like "wow, why is my rig so excessively bloated now? Fuck this is great just to have like NO options! Why did I spend the last year and a half building theamp-switching MIDI-FX behemoth I seldom use???"

but yeah, its hard enough with amps you know well to figure out what will work in-line with all your guitars.... I always wind up with less and less. I mean, with a deuxe reverb you really can't screw p with a strat, a tubescreamer and nothing else. Or maybe a carbon copy, a gibson and just turn the little girl up until it grunts and the audience abcks up a ltitle in a small venue.

with the drri you also cant mess up running 2 delays, 2 reverbs, a boost, a pog and a fuzz, and maybe something like a chorus or flanger

i like shoegazing and its a real problem as i slowly get more pedals my condition worsens

I know it takes pedals well but it sounds like a lot, perhaps you need a synthesizer to play sometimes. Although to be fair I have 3 modelling delays right now I think not including the line 6 m5 that has delays. 2 that tap and sound different and the alter ego just to sue the screwed up echorec model for longish, pitchy slapback which im totally into moreso then the DM2, 3, AD9,carbon copy etc I've owned... but yeah, I don't really find myself using a ton of this stuff. Every time I turn stuff off or ditch the uber rig and just go simple I like my sound way better. You may find yourself feeling the same if you really bond with the deluxe reverb.

Idon't really look down much past the position markers soemtimes, I grew up during shoegaze and the epdal revival but I was not part of it.... I am more like this:

http://imgur.com/a/IR5tB

I need everything streamlined either by having limited options or 1 touch presets so i can stalka round and be improvisational and have fun. Fucking with pedals is not fun and doesn't feel like rock n roll to me. I assure you I am executing something totally weird and difficult in this stage shot and that heather had the shutter speed adjusted to grab my hands without blurring. I'm also pretty sure there was nothing in-line but my Radial ABY, I am probably just all vintage marshall there. Its kidna hard to deny the basic stuff when you are playing on point. Or I find it ahrd to deny! I just want the clarity of next to nothing between me and V1 except maybe a buffer or a hit of boost.

theres three tones i use the most 1) that really chill indie type sound that has reverb and delay and all the goods 2) the classic 60's/70's with a clean crunch and little extra bass and reverb 3) which i dont know how to describe but the guitar tone from the Atlas Genius somg Molecules its kinda got a simplified 80's new wave sound

If you are fairly happy with your sound, I would recommend an eq as a boost. Not any drive in it, but with tweaked eq any levels above flat will increase volume, while the level control will push further. I have seriously leaned on an eq for years simply to do this - for expressive sections or solos, and recently added the spark and the soul food to try and free up the eq's for another purpose. I will be honest, I do not like the Soul Food much so far and have not given it too much attention, i find its tones thin and a bit shrill so far, disappointing straight out of the box to the point i almost put it back in the box, which is why i am using it as a boost... Maybe i will dial in a better tone somewhere. and if the eq doesnt do the job, just use it as a shaper to grab your #2 tones

none of these soudns have any overlap.... you cna fake 'em but the 60 70s crunch sound done right will involve turning your fender way up and maybe hitting it with a mid boost (not a tubescreamer) if you aren't using a gibson guitar. There's refinement from there... I eman, crank up an old british amp or a tweed amp and problem solved though. Catalinbread will apriximate the crunch for you with amp in a ox pedals optimized for a DRRI. its what they specialize in anymore. I've not tried many but the oens I ahve tried soudned decently close through a DRRI in a store surroudned by bad stairway and smoke on teh water renditions. I also really like the Bogner Ecstacy Blue pedal. Great pelxi like tones, higher gain modded amrshall crunch tones of the 80s, can cop some harder 'new wave' liek the cars etc. Has a great built in boost that just lifts the existing settings a preset amount, very cool. also has a front end boost fucntion I think. Did not try it witha fender amp though. But nothing is like making an amp crunch. a DRRI will do it, that's the Ric Nielsen sound though he always drove big marshall cabs back in the day (heads were props) and now he uses Gibson goldtone cabs for some reason.

the first sound you mentioned is basically too many effects, a fender guitar and a new fender 1x12 amp run at sissy levels like a hotrod deluxe or DRRI with 8 billion devices out front, 2 of everything plus a bit crusher and a pog! its a sound i could never hear again and never regret it. Its been everywhere for like 15 years. I could not escape it on the club circuit, at big venues, on college radio and now on TV commercials. When will the hurtng stop? all those 'chill indie' hipsters with their newfound appreciation of abnds I always liked such as the turtles or zombies really get my goat and have me lsitening to Van Halen this week! Soemthing Iw as neve rinto but now it feels all the better because tis so cheesey, chowy and unhip. All swagger and doofus posturing, no pretense nd not a lick of sensitivity.

I am not sure what you mean by that retro 80s tone.... I think post-punk and I think of PiL trading in their marshalls for JC120s and yamaha solid staters. Plenty of chorus. And then some BF2 flanger.

Everything you're talking about is so night and day i would just use 100% different stuff if I eneded to cop all those different tones at different gigs. Borrow stuff if needed. Long ago I realized that building a rig that does every sound ever is nigh impossible and even if you get close none of it is really right and all the shit you add degrades everything, adds noise and just MEH. Pick a core sound that's you and run with that until its perfect. There, that's your stage tone just like Miles ahd 1 horn and one way he played it and thatw as his tone and we all know it. If soemone is paying you or you are overdubbing on your band's record? by all emans experiment, but focus on 1 range f tone that's you is my advice. Maybe have some shades of it, an echo version, some modualtion, but get that core amp/guitar thing rock solid and suiting your playing style to flatter your chops.

I think too many guys playthrough teh kitchen sink these days and its just nutty. The tone is your touch and your sensibility for the msot aprt, the ampneeds to augment it or get out of the way and your effects are like seasoning not the meal. The opposite view was cool when it first emerged with new wave and bands like U2 but its doen tod eath now and its killing rock n roll.

When i jam with guys who have always played all these epals and I just do things the jim way and just do MY sound and make it work across whatever covers we wanna fucka round with by just adding echo or a chorus and messing with my guitar controls theya re always blown away by how good i sound.... and I suck now as a player, i am kinda slow and pedestrian so tis not flash guitar wizardry... but all these friends of friends are like "why does your tone sound good, what's the secret back box there?" And I am like, just a knob, a jfet and a handful of caps dude, you could make one now voiced for your hands to give your amp a little push! And its always on LOL, end of the chain isntead of a flat buffer. Everything else is just TC and line6 shit and usually off. The amp is just a stock amp all the time. Tuned up, sure, but stock. Half the time I don't even sue a a channel with toen controls or I just turn them all the way down (whcich is flat on a top-boost vox type channel versus marshall which is wired opposite where maxed is flat, its a few parts difference changing them around and that includes the mid control, the custom classics had a switch from classic vox to custom which is marshall and tweed wiring of the same basic tonestack).... I think kids have just enver sat down and elt their guitar and ahnds do the talking through an amp set to let that happen. Now hen you fuck it up its really bad, but don't overplay and you'll be safe. For a while I used ZERO effects or just my boost i built. I would get modualtion effects through sheer hand technique vibratoing, headstock diving, behind the nut bends and pinch ahrmonics moving around to simulate phasing and stuff (you cna do thsi clean on arpeggios if you know how, helps to use the 3 finger pick technique isntead of the hybrid technique for this one)

I will be honest, I do not like the Soul Food much so far and have not given it too much attention, i find its tones thin and a bit shrill so far, disappointing straight out of the box to the point i almost put it back in the box, which is why i am using it as a boost... Maybe i will dial in a better tone somewhere. and if the eq doesnt do the job, just use it as a shaper to grab your #2 tones

It had too much bass roll-off for any of my amps, even as a boost, no matter how ahrd I hit the amp it still kicked on and made a drop out and I don't play with much low, but when I engage an effect and the lows roll off a little mroe it soudns weird. Ia lready cut the mix just fine. I am middy and bright. As an always on effect I loved it with my settings dialed in to flatter its existing EQ. But if Iw ant a drive on all the time or a boost on all the time I will actually leave my 1 off boost on into my overdriven amp as I have it set up right now after my slap delay into a matchless turned way up. Boom. that's a jim sound. Kinda Echoplex driving the 1st triad 70s rock tone but glossier because of the boutique amp that's got some magical dust in it. I foudn the clean boost to be kidna lame because it wasn't perfectly flat like tis meant to be but it was too flat and boring to be worth leaving on all the time and the dirt it adds is just okay until its turned up to more of an OD. I like how it adds it in parallel with extra clipping tied to the tone circuit though but it just only works for soem guys and some gear. maybe if I still had a amrshall plexi.

the 60's type tone i use the vox pedal overdrive and some reverb at the edge of break up but it would sound better with a vox

thre first one im running in amp reverb, my reverb set to mid/long spring a longer quiet delay and the neck pick up gives a good tone that i can play rythem with and not have the chords bleed into each other

the third id say is short reverb some chorus( i dont have one so ive got a setting with my delay i use to compensate) and light drive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLSvSPop5U0 45 seconds in when the chorus starts is the third tone

that's like a late period Cure sound.... any fender blackface reverb amp and a chorus (robert smith actually used a flanger whenever he was using an amp other than a jazz chorus) out front, CE2, BF2, CS9, FL9 are your best bets, the FL9 i ahd really covered a wide range of 8s chorus and flange tones you hear on Cure and Bauhaus records... but the amps settings won't jive with your other sounds as the robert smith sound tends to be like bass below 3, midrange around 5 and trbele up or maybe a nomral 5 to 7 settin with the bright cap on (he's more a twin guy in fender if I recall, so tehre's bright switches versus the deluxe reverb)... its really a signature sound to me that just says Cure and I've always beena fraid to do it even though I often have the right tools (a vox will get there with treble and bass gunned for the hollow jangle trick, but you might need some reverb)... one thing is the cure sound I always think of is more solid state amps with digital reverb, but the sound of that new band is very post-disintegration Cure when Smith went all fender. Kinda Johnny Marr too, like modern Marr, very similar sound. Smiths is more distinctive, solid stte mixed in a lot, mulstiple amps you know? and gibson ESes.

anyway, I wouldn't expect a vintage tube amp to do all this stuff in one set. Its asking a lot of an amp designed to do 1 sound at a time. I guess if you used an AB box to change ebtween the 2 channels, they are fully idnependent so you can do that, though they are out of phase which would bother me... but you could dedicate the first channel to crunch and tryan amp in a box and then the other 2 soundscould probably share the vib/verb channel though I imagine they will have very different settings? maybe not... whadaya need the boost for with all this pedalage already? I eman, I think guys miss the point of a boost or a super low gain OD that's pretty flat, they assume your non-master amp is already breaking up and you want a level and distortion/comrpession boost and they kick your fist preamp tube in the ass causing it to squish and maybe dirt up some more but also send a louder signal along so you can step out. guys get obsessed with flatness of this boost but my experience is that an always on boost with maybe 2 levels is the way to go for this application and then it might need some shaping because your preamp isn't expecting to see like 3 volt peak to peak signal, a passive guitar pickup, evne a hot one, is lucky to produce a half a volt peak to peak! you whack V1 with a full range signal real hard and you might get some flub or harmonics, inf act you WILL get it. guys seems to ignore that but that's the perennial popualrity of the tubescreamer as a boost because its all id focused and lweor mdis at that so into a fender with NO low mids to speak of you get that back and its fat like a small tweed that's honkin' midrange and little else... i am not really getting the transprent OD thing usually and I think guys are always chasig because the only way to just get more of the same is to whack the amp up louder, nothing you add out front will be more of the same! the flatter it elaves the signal with all the boost the more it will effect the voicing of the overdrive away from the guitar-cable-amp tone because the first stage is not emant to get that big a signal swing, tis nto voiced for that. in gain bangers there is a lot of shaping on teh second stage and subsequent stage to keep them sounding good as they voerload for this very reason. Its like teh amp is already boosted but with extra tubes. this is called cascading. Wanna know more? Blocking distortion, look that up.