Boost pedal
- Thread starter Rohai
- Start date
mightyboy88
Member
If you want more saturation, and a little volume boost accompanying it, put it in the front of the chain, i.e. the signal from the guitar hits the boost pedal before it hits the distortion pedal/amp
If you want a straight out volume boost put it after the distortion pedal. You might also experience a little bit of colouration in tone which comes with the volume boost, which can be pretty sweet sounding and more cutting for soloing
If you want the best of both worlds you could probably have 2 boost pedals, one before and one after the distortion pedal
I've usually use overdrive pedals as a boost where i set the gain low and volume high, i find that it alters the tone just slightly enough to get into the sweet spot of saturation.
You could have a pure volume booster, which will most likely retain most of your original tone.
I believe that boost pedals dont have to be expensive or high end as they dont really define the main distortion tone, the distortion units do. However, they should be constructed using good components, so that they are as quiet in operation as possible. This is because hiss from the boosters are greatly amplified when you play them through a distortion unit. In addition, they should be able to pump out ample amounts of volume to actually provide a good boost.
If you like small pedals you can definately go for the ep booster, which is more like a pure volume boost.
If you want more tonal coloration you can go for overdrive pedals, such as the tubescreamer variants. The mooer line of micro-pedals has a couple of small sized overdrive/volume boost pedals which are relatively cheap, $120 at SV guitars. They are very small too.
You could also go for a compressor that has sufficient volume to provide boost, as you could benefit from the more even dynamics a compressor can do to your playing. However, compressors amplify hiss too, and since you are running it at high volume into a distortion pedal, you could run into serious noise issues if you have a noisy unit. One pedal that is really good for this purpose is the strymon ob.1, which has a boutique optical compressor as well as and independant clean boost unit with a couple of eq switches to select from. but its an expensive pedal
If you want a straight out volume boost put it after the distortion pedal. You might also experience a little bit of colouration in tone which comes with the volume boost, which can be pretty sweet sounding and more cutting for soloing
If you want the best of both worlds you could probably have 2 boost pedals, one before and one after the distortion pedal
I've usually use overdrive pedals as a boost where i set the gain low and volume high, i find that it alters the tone just slightly enough to get into the sweet spot of saturation.
You could have a pure volume booster, which will most likely retain most of your original tone.
I believe that boost pedals dont have to be expensive or high end as they dont really define the main distortion tone, the distortion units do. However, they should be constructed using good components, so that they are as quiet in operation as possible. This is because hiss from the boosters are greatly amplified when you play them through a distortion unit. In addition, they should be able to pump out ample amounts of volume to actually provide a good boost.
If you like small pedals you can definately go for the ep booster, which is more like a pure volume boost.
If you want more tonal coloration you can go for overdrive pedals, such as the tubescreamer variants. The mooer line of micro-pedals has a couple of small sized overdrive/volume boost pedals which are relatively cheap, $120 at SV guitars. They are very small too.
You could also go for a compressor that has sufficient volume to provide boost, as you could benefit from the more even dynamics a compressor can do to your playing. However, compressors amplify hiss too, and since you are running it at high volume into a distortion pedal, you could run into serious noise issues if you have a noisy unit. One pedal that is really good for this purpose is the strymon ob.1, which has a boutique optical compressor as well as and independant clean boost unit with a couple of eq switches to select from. but its an expensive pedal
subversion
Moderator
it works at either end, more importantly, you should dictate where it should be.
