favorite?

You missed pre-amp vs power-amp.

I like a little Marshall Guvnor, and then some pre and power amp distortion using a power soak.

I believe that's the correct combination to create rock.

Champion Rabbit wrote:I like a little Marshall Guvnor, and then some pre and power amp distortion using a power soak.

I believe that's the correct combination to create rock.

POWER SOAK?!?!?

okay, so vote for tube amp + stomp box then!

i guess you're right in that the preamp and power amp distortion could be broken out like that... but that isn't so much what i was interested in... more of whether folks get their distortion from their amp or stompboxes, not precisely how they get their amp to distort.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:
POWER SOAK?!?!?

It soaks the power guy!!

Usually all from the tube amp, but every once in a while from a blue box or recently a fabtone, which just sounds ridiculous. The tube amp without pedals is prettiest, but some distortion pedals can make a neat, synthetic sound.

Be careful with the Power Soak. My friend who works on tube amps says those things will fuck up your amp.

lee wrote:Be careful with the Power Soak. My friend who works on tube amps says those things will fuck up your amp.

I don't see why it would; I use Weber Mass soak which is essentially a cone-less speaker. Maybe if I ran the amp on 10 it might kill the tubes swiftly, but I don't so...

Anyway, it's ROCK and ROLL damnit!!

Shite, hit the wrong button when voting. Mine's a TS-808 into a Fender Twin, so chalk another one up for "Tube amp with stomp box".

Best thing I ever did was ditch the pedals. It took some weaning, but I finally got there. With the right pickup (which I am still honing in on), you get way more control over the sound. You can go from loud and gnarly to a singing clean just by controlling your playing dynamics. It really puts you in control of the sound and connects you to what you hear coming out of the amp in a way distortion boxes don't afford. Another thing is, if you're using any cheap pedals at all (like Boss), you'll find that the sound is much more open without them. They really do muffle your tone when they are off, and a chain of them componds the problem. Some of these pedals can be modified to be true bypass which will fix that, but many (including Boss) can't.

I weaned myself by building a true-bypass booster pedal first which acted as an overdrive for the amp. After a whle I was able to ditch that too, crank the amp, and just play softer when I wanted cleaner tones. I even took the tuner out of my chain--if you've got decent tuners, you shouldn't need it.

So ditch the pedals and crank your amp instead. In a good tube amp, you'll find that all the white noise artifacts aren't there like the sound of a pedal. The distortion is much more musical and I found that I didn't need as much distortion as I thought. So now my virtuosolike playing can really shine through.