triple overdrive pedal -- what order?

[MarkL]

Someone asked me to make them a triple overdrive pedal with a Tubescreamer-type circuit, a Red Llama clone, and a Bluesbreaker clone.  I've got the boards and actually excited to tackle the job, but the question remains: which is the best order for these effects to go in series?  Now, I know there's no "best" of anything,  but what's the most flexible, useful combination if this player were to run all three at the same time?  I'm guessing the Llama first (for a fairly clean boost or drive), into the TS (for a bit more honk or mids) into the Bluesbreaker, which should add a bit of shine without too much additional midrange flavoring.  But what would YOU do?

[zombie_rock123]

Personally I'd either breadboard all three or make em up and swap the orders cause whenever I plan anything, the opposite usually works out better.

Having said that, if anything I would have the Llama last as I love the sound of the 4049 being pushed, distorts in such a sweet way.

[midwayfair]

The simplest answer is to use your own ears since you haven't boxed them up yet and aren't locked in. But here's my edited version of my standard advice on this:

--

I love stacking mild distortion. It sounds and feels the most real to me. Here are my thoughts on this:

Gain is not distortion. Gain is an increase in signal size. Distortion is created when the signal is increased beyond the amplifying capacity of the circuit (exceeds headroom) or is clipped by other means, e.g. diodes.

Now that that's out of the way, what does this actually mean for stacking gain stages?

In any given amplification system, you have a limited amount you can amplify a signal before it distorts. The total ratio between the quietest notes and the loudest notes shrinks the more the signal is amplified closer to your total headroom.

Let's look at a somewhat low gain situation: You're using a single coil guitar through a small Fender single-ended amp with its usual two preamp stages and a single power tube. Here, you have three total gain stages. The gain control is after the first tube. Your guitar generates a small signal, which is then amplified quite a bit by the first stage. When you turn up the gain control, you get more and more distortion because you will clip the second tube stage, and then you will clip the power tubes. The power tubes have the highest headroom. The preamp tubes have relatively low headroom. The distortion comes from the 2.25V grid headroom (in a 12AX7) and from simply making a small signal gigantic until it's so big that it can clip a 400V power rail.

Let's transfer this idea to pedals.

If we want to mimic how the amp is working, we'd simply use a couple boosters. You put one boost into the next, and depending on how high you have them turned up, you'll eventually clip whatever the next thing in line is. If you can turn your amp up loud, a booster pedal creates more distortion by giving your already overdriven amp more input signal. Two or three boosts going into a clean amp might be similar to just turning up the amp.

This method creates the widest possible dynamic range in pedals, because there are no artificial limits on the headroom to intentionally create distortion.

But really, that's kind of impractical for actually stacking distortion stages. Who wants to have three boosts on their board? Madness. Plus it's going to mean that your amp is still pretty loud.

So let's look what happens when we introduce a pedal designed to actually distort, an overdrive or fuzz, for instance. We'll use a boost as our second pedal.

If we put that pedal right after the guitar, it will have the smallest possible signal to create distortion. If we put the boost after, the boost will amplify an already distorted signal as much as it can. More volume, a little bit of distortion, and the widest total dynamic range you can get out of those two pedals.

If we put the boost before the distortion pedal, we'll create more gain (the guitar signal is larger) before the distortion pedal, which will do its own thing and create a correspondingly larger amount of distortion. Now you have shrunk the dynamic range of the system considerably. If you play soft, it will be amplified by the boost but won't be any louder after coming out of the distortion pedal, which till clip the still-large signal.

This is dealing solely with VOLUME. There is another consideration: BANDWIDTH.

Let's look at a different amp: The mighty Marshall. Made to make lots of gain. One thing we see if we examine the amp is that the first gain stage is not full range. There is a small amount of bass cut from the signal. Why is this done? Well, it turns out that having a lot of bass in the signal means that you get a lot of distortion very quickly, and the signal can lose all of its clarity and sound a little dull.

Also, treble content plays a roll in the quality of distortion. When two notes are played together, they both have their own harmonics, which might be enhanced -- and even created -- by a distortion pedal. If those harmonics aren't harmonious, you get a phenomenon known as intermodulation. The harmonics sum into a note that's not harmonically related to the other notes you're playing. It can sound absolutely horrible -- but it can also sound absolutely awesome and mean when used properly.

So now you can consider: Do I want a smoother distortion sound? Then the pedal with less treble might be better first in the stack. Do I want a clearer sound? Then the pedal with less bass might be better first in the stack. (If you cut both, you get the "mid hump" that some people claim to hate about tube screamers ...)

So here are some rules we can sum things up with:
-If you want a wide dynamic range, put the pedal with the lowest headroom (most distortion) before the pedals with the most output.
-If you want a small dynamic range, put the pedals with the higher output before the pedals with the lowest output.
-If you want more control over the quality of distortion, tone shaping pedals should go early.
-If you're overdriving your amp (that is, the amp is part of the "stack"), you might want the tone shaping pedal last in line.
-Don't forget that your guitar's volume knob can be used like a gain stage with the right settings on the pedals.

Of course, you need to use your own ears and your own fingers to find what works for you in actual practice.

Personally, this is how I deal with things:
-I use a compressor all the time to control the peak signals and normalize the way my guitar's volume pot behaves.

-I use a fuzz pedal (based on the fuzz face) that has a pregain and bass control to create a sort of low-gain fuzz sound. I think of this as my medium gain sound, but most people would describe it as low-gain, I'm willing to bet. It's identifiably fuzz face-y. The output is just about unity.

-I have a boost with a small bass cut in the same enclosure after the fuzz. This is my lead boost most of the time, set to a pretty small bump.

-After that, I have an overdrive. The settings on the overdrive are pretty important. The output is slightly boosted so I can use my guitar knob; it's set so that it's not very distorted at all, but gets much more distorted when the boost is on. This means that the boost still gives me a decent volume bump even when both are on. If all three gain stages are on, I can still get a bit of a volume boost because the fuzz face will cut a bit of bass as well.

The overall result is that I get a very wide dynamic range between distorted and undistorted with my guitar's volume knob and flipping on one or two pedals. If I'm using a smaller amp that I can turn up, I can back down to using only two pedals for my most distorted sound without really changing any settings.

[MarkL]

Jon, from your detailed discussion, and based on what this player wants (and he's going into a mostly clean amp), it seems like the best way to go would be to put the TS-clone first, the BB-clone second, and the Llama last.  That way the TS shapes the tone early, and also has a high degree of gain (I do the high gain mod on it) going into the BB...which strikes me as a more subtle tone shaper.  The Llama, with the drive down, is a nifty boost, and with a touch of drive can make what goes into it interesting (as Zombie suggests).  Thanks guys, very helpful.

[warriorpoet]

Jon, from your detailed discussion, and based on what this player wants (and he's going into a mostly clean amp), it seems like the best way to go would be to put the TS-clone first, the BB-clone second, and the Llama last.  That way the TS shapes the tone early, and also has a high degree of gain (I do the high gain mod on it) going into the BB...which strikes me as a more subtle tone shaper.  The Llama, with the drive down, is a nifty boost, and with a touch of drive can make what goes into it interesting (as Zombie suggests).  Thanks guys, very helpful.

This is exactly the order I'd go in. 808 -> BB is a great sound.

[jimilee]

Flipper switch, let him choose


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[Willybomb]

With three, but I'd go low to high.  I went klon->gainster->boneyard in one build, and compressor->klon->gainster in another.

[wgc]

Not sure how this would work (never tried), but there's also an opportunity to put some or all in parallel. The amount of blend might allow for "dialing things in" in a way that you can't do in series.

[jimilee]

Not sure how this would work (never tried), but there's also an opportunity to put some or all in parallel. The amount of blend might allow for "dialing things in" in a way that you can't do in series.

This is starting to sound like a cool project, we may need diagrams.


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[Aleph Null]

It's always interesting to see different peoples' approaches. I particularly enjoyed your post, Jon.

For what it's worth, the Camel Toe is a Red Llama into a Green Rhino. The Rhino is essentially a modified Tube Screamer. My personal experience has been that the Red Llama can be quite bright. Placing it before a Tube Screamer would allow you to focus the sound with that circuit's mid bump.

I could see the Blues Breaker at either end of the chain. At the beginning, it could be used to effect the quality of the distortion from the Red Llama. At the end, it could be used for EQ in a more traditional sense. This second option probably makes more since into a clean amp. A Tube Screamer into a clean amp is a pretty uninspiring sound, and putting it and the end of the chain would make its character predominant.

It's best to plan on breadboarding it and see what option sounds best, you might be surprised.

[wgc]

Not sure how this would work (never tried), but there's also an opportunity to put some or all in parallel. The amount of blend might allow for "dialing things in" in a way that you can't do in series.

This is starting to sound like a cool project, we may need diagrams.


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Yeah I was thinking about it off and on this morning.  I think I'm going to make a box that just lets me patch two boxes in parallel.

There's probably a good reason its not a more common approach, but worth a few minutes of playing around.

[jimilee]

Jmk has the paralyzer and diablo Chris has the nasal cavity, check those out.


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[nocentelli]

Flipper switch, let him choose

+1

Two flippers, input to first that selects either red lama or TS/BB first, and another juggler to swap the order of TS and BB.

[MarkL]

It's always interesting to see different peoples' approaches. I particularly enjoyed your post, Jon.

For what it's worth, the Camel Toe is a Red Llama into a Green Rhino. The Rhino is essentially a modified Tube Screamer. My personal experience has been that the Red Llama can be quite bright. Placing it before a Tube Screamer would allow you to focus the sound with that circuit's mid bump.

I could see the Blues Breaker at either end of the chain. At the beginning, it could be used to effect the quality of the distortion from the Red Llama. At the end, it could be used for EQ in a more traditional sense. This second option probably makes more since into a clean amp. A Tube Screamer into a clean amp is a pretty uninspiring sound, and putting it and the end of the chain would make its character predominant.

It's best to plan on breadboarding it and see what option sounds best, you might be surprised.

I listened pretty closely to the Camel Toe.  I can see its benefits, but for this project...I think it might not be what the player is looking for.  One of the tones this guy likes is Trey Anastasio's use of two Tubescreamers, one of which is modified for a no mid-bump tone.  He runs that one after the regular TS, so it boosts, EQ's or adds more grit to whatever is coming out of the regular TS.  Since that's a sound that this player likes, I figured it would be best to put the TS type device first (I do some mods so it has a little less of a mid bump, and a bit more low end), then the Blues Breaker, since that comes pretty close to what Anastasio does with his setup.  And since a BB sounds nice into a clean Fender-y amp, it seems well suited to go into the second position if two are running at the same time. 

As for the Llama...yes, it's really bright!  I added a tone control to tame that, and a few other mods which help with noise.  So now it's fairly transparent/clear, but boosts really well on it's own and thus seems well suited to take a signal already affected by a OD.  I mocked all of this up with individual circuits/stompboxes, and the sequence really works nicely.  The real question was, initially, where to put the TS, but I think that since this will be a progressive stacking of gain, having it in the first position (as Jon suggested above) makes the most sense and actually sounded the best when I did the test.

This was a really fun project and when i finish it up, I'll be sure to post some pics.  I appreciate everybody's thoughts on this, which were very helpful.

[Jabulani Jonny]

So here are some rules we can sum things up with:
-If you want a wide dynamic range, put the pedal with the lowest headroom (most distortion) before the pedals with the most output.
-If you want a small dynamic range, put the pedals with the higher output before the pedals with the lowest output.
-If you want more control over the quality of distortion, tone shaping pedals should go early.
-If you're overdriving your amp (that is, the amp is part of the "stack"), you might want the tone shaping pedal last in line.
-Don't forget that your guitar's volume knob can be used like a gain stage with the right settings on the pedals.

Man, I have been away from this board for a while and have been lurking a bit for the last couple weeks.  Just haven't been building anything since I've been happy with my board. 

It's posts like Jon's that keep me coming back.  Great stuff. 

And for what it's worth, I like having different drives on my board.  I don't have any multi-pedals yet, since I like swapping out my fuzzes.  However, I typically run a fuzz first, then the Bluesbreaker, then the TS.  I like having more tonal content from the BB available before the TS.  I have the BB set at kind of med-low gain, but slightly higher than unity output.  I love stacking the BB into the TS.  I'm currently using a Demo Tape fuzz, which has been fine and actually sounds good going into the TS.  Anyway, I like having the fuzz first, then BB, then TS.  But that's my $.02. 

Not to mention that my TS is the BYOC OD2, so it has a Boost built into the same pedal...so there's that.  Good luck with it!