Amps with pedals. Out of curiosity.

Astral Traveler said:
If you have to stick a pedal (overdrive, booster or distortion) in front of your amp to make it sound the way you want, do you then have the wrong amp or is it simply a matter of expanding on what the amp already does for you?

Just curious, I'm expecting some diversity in the replies ;)
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If you HAVE to have a pedal in front to make it sound good then yeah, you have the wrong amp.
If you have pedals to color/enhance the sound then to me that would be normal and encouraged.
 
Am a amp circuit for gain player. Don't use loops. But i am set on guitar vol knob 5 cleanish,,then it starts to crunch then break then dime for leads. I choose amp for task at hand based on where gain structure is needed. like a jtm45 or bump up to 2204 or lil more intense low Triple, as examples. my pedals(TS, DS1, EQ, basic set 3 dif ways for emphasis in the mix) are used with Vol on the whole way gain off & tone to suit for basic EQ shifts. I do use a Klon Cl for a treble pop if needed to get over,
 
Amp Mad Scientist said:
I abandoned boost pedals when I was a teenager.
After hearing how great a tube amp sounded, I realized the fizzy muddy transistor pedals sounded like crap.
(like a jet plane with asthma)
This is the amp that changed my playing, and influenced me to toss the the pedals into the trashcan.

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Incidentally, this amp makes a Mesa Boogie sound like a toy.
The REAL original high gain amp ----was built in the 1940's.

Ever since then, (inspired by Operadio and other great ORIGINAL designs)
I have worked to develop tube amp designs that sound great without any boost pedals.
And I will never go back to transistors.

Tubes rule, transistors suck.
I don't need any foot switches to play my guitar.
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Beagle said:
Not around here they don't. It's the difference between playing or not playing for me.
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I use transistor amps as you know. Or rather a transistor amp, singular. I don't differentiate between amps based on technology, only on how they sound and feel, to me. IME there are amps that are well designed, that sound good and there are amps that are not so well designed that don't sound good. There are examples of both in both camps.

Edit: To clarify. I have no preference when it comes to amp technology, SS, tube or modeling. I own at least one of each. 99% of the time it's a SS amp I use and I always use it for band situations. If I found a tube amp or a modeling amp that suited my needs better, I'd switch.
 
I asked because I'm not one to use different amps, I don't play in enough different settings for that. I'm also not someone who wants to do a pedal dance. I have owned more pedals but found that I don't want a lot, I have one in the loop, a reverb pedal that is always on. There's not a lot of it, you don't really notice it's there until it's switched off. Then there's one pedal in front and I haven't quite figured out what that is yet.

In addition to that the amp has three channels, two of which can be combined into a semi-fourth. The clean channel is clean but can break up with the right guitar. The lead channel can give me a lot of overdrive if I want and the crunch channel gives slightly less overdrive and has a preset EQ curve, while lead and clean share the three band EQ section. The overdriven sound is in the ballpark of MESA rather than Fender/Marshall. Sometimes I want a more Fendery/Marshally sound with not so smooth distortion though, with shimmer.

You know, to get all the sounds I could possibly want out of one amp (that isn't a modeling amp) and two pedals.
 
Astral Traveler said:
If you have to stick a pedal (overdrive, booster or distortion) in front of your amp to make it sound the way you want, do you then have the wrong amp or is it simply a matter of expanding on what the amp already does for you?

Just curious, I'm expecting some diversity in the replies ;)
Click to expand...

I have a MXR Distortion II, MXR 78 Distortion, a Friedman BE-OD and a MXR Custom Shop Raijin pedal that I use just in the clean channel for different flavors. Otherwise I just use the gain channel of the Bogner for my distortion tones.
 
Astral Traveler said:
To clarify. I have no preference when it comes to amp technology, SS, tube or modeling. I own at least one of each. 99% of the time it's a SS amp I use and I always use it for band situations. If I found a tube amp or a modeling amp that suited my needs better, I'd switch.
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I've used them all over the last 50 years, my only preference is to have an amp that I can actually use. No valve amp matches the requirements.
 
Playing live: no pedals with electric, chorus and reverb with acoustic. Recording: all sorts of DAW plugin amps, pedals, and effects until I get the sound I'm looking for. Practicing: no pedals, I like to hear my mistakes which can be masked by pedals.
 
I use different amps and cabs on a daily basis.
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The TSL and baby DSL only get pedals if I want delay or chorus. The 2203 and 1987 usually get the HOF reverb. Sometimes I run a RAT into the 1987. Sometimes I run a Soul Food as a clean boost into the 2203.
 
I use pedals to enhance the sound, but I could live without them if I had to. Although, I have a Fender silverface Bassman that has nothing but clean headroom. No overdrive at all, but it sounds amazing. One of the best clean amp sounds I've ever heard.

The thing is, put an overdrive pedal in front of it, and it sounds amazing with overdrive. So it's very versatile in that way. It is the quintessential "clean pedal platform", and the reason I like it is because I can use a good OD pedal to get some pretty superb OD sounds without having to actually crank the amp volume. Though when I do crank it, it sounds even better.
 
As in all things -- variety is the spice of life.

it is POSSIBLE to have all tube....tube hybrid and SS amps --- all living in harmony (or tortured crap playing HELL) --- only 2 pedals used (on a daily basis)
shown justto the right of the blackstar--- there is a cheap reverb pedal and a HUSH noise reducer pedal..........the reverb only for the Lil Sexy, Marshall Master Lead and the Fender bassbreaker 007 as they dont come with reverb-- the rest have it built in
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The VOX VT20x has hundreds of models and pedals and online software with many more..........Pandoras Box of TIME SUCK I call it .....its reserved for those cold (55F) drizzle winter days when I just need to distract myself...................
Rest of the time its the Blackstar, Bassbreaker or a Marshalldepednign on my "mood" --- the PEAVEY gets fired up when no one is home 80 watts SS (TBTH I think they UNDER estimate that) it gets STUPID loud !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I go from my Marshall Origin, set to slight break up, to a T.S. type, then move to the Friedman BE-OD for heavy.

Pretty much covers all tones a person would need, love my amps "base" sound, but sometimes you gotta chug.

When using my JTM45, I just crank it up to about 8, maybe my OCD if I need a "singing" type lead. Once again, love my amps natural tone but sometimes more than one or two tones are called for.

In my case I always buy the amp for it's unadulterated tones, but the recipe may call for more. I'd never buy an amp I didn't care for and try to fix it with a pedal, but I will enhance!
 
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