I recently bought a Carl Martin 'Rock drive' (forgiveable given the Danish origin), and am in sensible overdrive heaven. It's clearly a sign that I've crossed into dad-rockdom and should shelve any further music release plans, but this 'Rock Drive' played through my 70s Carlsbro combo is making really superb noises, even with me on the strings.

Would recommend if you're after a TS alternative with added flexibility.

Got a Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive. Sounds beautiful on bass.

Recently I got a Tonefactor Mule in trade. It's similar to a Red Llama; cascaded gain stages from a 4049 CMOS chip. It replaced my Distortion + style pedal.

Ben

I have tried tons of these pedals and I keep coming to the same conclusion. I never hear what they add, only what they take away.

I recently bought both a ts-9 and a zakk wylde overdrive based on raves from folks I trust. I had the same opinion.

I run a high-quality, transformer-balanced a/b/a+b switcher to jump the two channels on my amp and that, to my ears, is the only thing that adds harmonic complexity and drive.

Now if someone is making the Garnet Herzog I'd be all over it.

Anyone else here feel the same?

Edit- typo

pwalshj wrote:Anyone else here feel the same?

Nope. I love just about every imaginable incarnation of fuzzboxes, overdrives, or distortion pedals. I probably have about 20 or 30 of them all told. So nice, the fuzz.

pwalshj wrote:Anyone else here feel the same?

no, but i think gear whoring is a big problem here. it's just gear, folks. get the job done. great music has been and will continue to be made on crap gear.

it's nice that you can afford it. super nice that blowing the time to track down things to own is somehow equal or more important than the time you could be creating with what's already there.

currently i'm using a DS1, before that it was the square wave distortion in the bass microsynth, before that it was a sansamp bassdriver, before that it was a ts-50b, before that it was a DS1 into a ts-50b, before that it was a rat into a ts-50b.

i was satisfied with all of those.

sold the traynor because i hated having an amp in two parts, sold the sansamp to buy the rusty box, lost the rat when i quit playing with the guy that owned it, lost the first ds1 to a car incident (as in, "left on the roof of.") bought the second one on an impulse for $20 at guitar center, bought another rat from vockins, because i like them for my practice amp distortion.

oh, also had a little big muff. that pedal only does one thing: be a mig muff. i don't need a big muff. in fact having one, impeded me.

all that said, i like my 400RB as much as i liked my traynors. i like my peavey musician as much as well. i got both of those for under $300. they get the job done.

quit obsessing, it's unhealthy. they're only amps, only guitars, and only stompboxes. am i wrong in assuming most of you are only musicians and not also recording nerds?

recording nerds: feel free to obsess, it's kind of your job.
musicians: get on with it.

that damned fly wrote:am i wrong in assuming most of you are only musicians and not also recording nerds?

I think you may be wrong.

endofanera wrote:

that damned fly wrote:am i wrong in assuming most of you are only musicians and not also recording nerds?

I think you may be wrong.

me too, as musicians though, seriously, they're just little noise boxes. there are bad ones, but there are a million decent ones. pick one and go.

Everyone should just buy a metal zone. A metal zone will do everything any of these expensive pedals will do and more.

As you all know, I love gear. I'm a guitar nerd and a recording nerd, but when it comes to gear, I'm 10 times the nerd for guitar gear.

That said, the older I get, the more I just want to practice the guitar. Given the option to research dist. pedals or play guitar, I'll pretty much always take playing guitar. 90% of my playing is an unplugged telecaster, or tele into champ w/ no pedals.

But gear is fun... it's recreation... I understand it and I can fix it, and I like knowing how and why it ticks. I like knowing what I like on a circuit level; on a level of how the electrons are handled.

Ben