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Just revisiting an older thread.

I have always tended to stack overdrive pedals in a particular order into a clean amp (i like to have a very clean sound available sometimes). I have always stacked by having a slightly gritty pedal last (pretending to be a slightly driven amp - almost always on) and then a more driven pedal in front for leads etc.

I haven't been happy with the Soul Food as the low drive last in chain. Recently I changed order and it works really well in front (still slightly dirty), and my modded TS9 for leads after the Soul Food.

With all my mucking around with delays etc, not sure why I got stuck in a pedal order rut for overdrives. Way happier with this set up.

I think the EQs of the two pedals just work better this way.

Thanks for reading.

I've never really had enough pedals to experiment with stacking. But recently I started doing some DIY ones. I first made a very simple single transistor distortion that is noisy and gritty and not that useable (think a ripped speaker cone ). Then I made a fuzz which is smooth and nice but wasn't quite fuzzy enough for my liking. I read this thread and wondered whether my issue with the fuzz might be that my amp is very clean (Vox MV50 Clean).
So this morning I went from guitar into fuzz then into the dist pedal then amp. I turned the distortion pedal gain turned way down until it just barely breaks up. OMG! The fuzz now sounds rich and thick and like it is on steroids! So happy!

Maybe I should build a pedal that has both circuits in it...

I'm enjoying stacking fuzzes with this baby! Thanks Conway!

kdawg2a wrote:My band is looking at covering Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine and I need to get the guitar sound huger than normal. Will this stacking thing work?

They stack their pedals on a horizontal plane like nearly all spatially-unaware guitarists.

Look at that photograph Darth Sabbathi posted with its Roger Mayer, Pete Cornish, Malekko with plastic bug, Lovetone, early-DeviEver, Colorsound, etc, pedals. Like a model train diorama.

Terrible use of space, that. Stack OD/Boost/Fuzz/Distortion vertically and if you balance it Jenga-style just right, 10 dirt pedals can be turned on with one stomp.

It's an app world these days not step yoga.

In front of tube amps pre-amp/gain/volume boosting is sublime when used to enhance the amplifiers sound.

A simple db boost pedal before or after any dirt is great.

db lift on pedals like reverb, delay, phaser, flanger and compressor can serve as excellent boosts to drive dirt pedals hard before and after in a chain, no need to engage the effect channel either - Maestro EP-3 preamp & its replicas.

klarkash-ton wrote: Stack OD/Boost/Fuzz/Distortion vertically and if you balance it Jenga-style just right, 10 dirt pedals can be turned on with one stomp.

That is fucking genius.

With another overdrive in the post I'm back wondering about setting my amp clean and using overdrives for dirt. Recorded this wee snip today. It's the Kotzen set with the master high and the gain low, and The Dude for overdrive. Clean isn't exactly - dunno - it's kind of 'twee' but I quite like the drive.



Loads of electrical noise in the shed today.

That sounds great - what guitar is that one Brian ?

AiRdAd wrote:That sounds great - what guitar is that one Brian ?

Cheers Danny. It was the MIM with CS69 pickups.

Molly wrote:

AiRdAd wrote:That sounds great - what guitar is that one Brian ?

Cheers Danny. It was the MIM with CS69 pickups.

The guitar looks great

AiRdAd wrote:

Molly wrote:

AiRdAd wrote:That sounds great - what guitar is that one Brian ?

Cheers Danny. It was the MIM with CS69 pickups.

The guitar looks great

The pickguard is aged. I think that helps. Doesn't have that stark white look. And the maple has some light figuring.

Still want a posh one, mind.

I've done it for as long as I can remember. I have my main drive after my wah and fuzz, then a boost/lower-gain drive after that. Behind those two drives sits my trusty old GE-7, which apart from tidying things up to how I want it to sound also gives a further boost

I stack a lot of different drive pedals but lately I prefer the sound of my amps lead channel and stacking various clean boosts into it, all with different mid profiles for variation. There is just something about incorporating the amp lead channel that feels more alive to me than pedals especially at lower volumes. I also prefer single channel amps over the sound of two or more channels so settled on a well designed cascading gain amp to get the best of both worlds.

Voxshall wrote:I stack a lot of different drive pedals but lately I prefer the sound of my amps lead channel and stacking various clean boosts into it, all with different mid profiles for variation. There is just something about incorporating the amp lead channel that feels more alive to me than pedals especially at lower volumes. I also prefer single channel amps over the sound of two or more channels so settled on a well designed cascading gain amp to get the best of both worlds.

And which amp would this be?