I was jamming with my sons band this weekend and as I weren�t able to take my car I just grabbed a tele and a DS-1 and played on a transistor Peavey. I supposed a really bad sound as I�m used to tube-amps but to my surprise it sounded quite good. I also tried an Ibanez TS-7 with the Peavey but it didn�t sound good at all. My question; what Boss overdrive/distortion do you think is the best way to get a decent sound out of a transistor amp? I�m talking about a crunchy sound not total distorsion.
I may be wrong (and I'm sure there'll be people in the know here that can correct me), but I was under the impression that all Boss pedals are designed and tested on tranny amps - the JC-120 no less. General rule when using a pedal on a tranny amp is to reverse how you use them on tube amps - i.e keep the volume low and the gain high. I assume an SD-1 will sound every bit as bad as a TS7 with a transistor amp. A BD-2 or OD-3 would be a better choice - the OD-3 is a bit smoother and more compressed than a BD-2.
With my JC-120 I've found that the overdrives genrally sound better than the distortion pedals. They got more of the growl sound normally connected with valve amps. My favorite is so far the OD-1 but there's a lot of contenders.
Oh and I don't like using the expression "tranny" for transistor amps. It is commonly used to denote transformers too so I just get confused
I run a OD-1 through my Hughes&Kettner solid state amp. I can get a really good sound from the OD-1 if Im using an eq pedal in the chain aswell. Im really interested in trying out an OD-3 on my amp aswell, to see how it compares to the OD-1. The DS-1 can sound a little harsh compared to the OD-1, on my H&K amp.
Best OD/Dist in a tranny amp?
Posted - 01/23/2006 : 09:48:33
