Darkglass AO into X Ultra?

[Spooge]

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience using the AO before an X ultra and how it works together. I'm wanting to establish a meaty clean tone, and a separate distortion tone. Almost everything I've read says the ultras have trouble doing both by themselves. I've had a B7KU in the past and struggled with the same thing, hence wanting to split them up.

My thoughts were to use the AO as a on/off distortion and leave the X ultra as always on just bypass/preamp mode so I get the crossover, low comp and EQ as the base tone, use the AO pushed into the X ultra for distortion. Is this the best way to do that or do I have something backwards? Or should I use an X into an X Ultra? Or AO and X7?

My rig for reference is Dingwall NG3>tuner>hyper luminal comp>?>?>amp

I'm debating on upgrading amps to the Darkglass 900's, not sure which. If I did that, would or should the setup be different? With the newer 900's having cab sim on the DI and headphones, if I got the amp would I even need an ultra?

I've read as many threads as I could find, one of them was like 66 pages and I read it all... think it was a microtubes X thread... anyway, at that time there wasn't much talk of stacking or separating for cleanish, and distortion.

Thanks!

 

[Ferdugan]

Hey man, just stumbled on your post. I've been running exactly what you're asking about for a little over a year now. I really like the low/high pass "separation" that comes from the uTx, but I prefer the drive that comes from the AO. So I stacked em. This was my setup as of recent:

NG3 > Tuner> MXR 10 band EQ> MXR bass compressor> AO > DG Harmonic Booster > uTx Ultra

Here's my experience...
First, let me say, when you get everything dialed in just right, it can sound brutal as all hell. Crunchy, chunky, thick, without the farty stank.

But that's the difficult part when stacking these two. It has to be JUST right. Too little drive/too much clean, you're left with a weird croak. A little too much drive in either circuit and you get some REALLY nasty screeches, most notably in the 1-2 kHz range. It's disgusting- All of my EQ settings were set to hold poopie back, constantly reigning in these very narrow bands of frequencies that got way out of hand. Consequently, some of the "good" freqs were getting caught in the crossfire, and I was limited to a VERY specific tone with no flexibility and less clarity for my liking.

What really blows about the microtubes is that the highpass and lowpass filters are only active while the distortion switch is on. So, by leaving the uTx in bypass mode, you're paying $400.00 for a 6-band eq and compressor.

So, that's my experience. It was awesome at first, but now I'm starting to see through the cracks. I know it's been a little over a month since your post, hopefully it helps. As for me, I had just recently dismantled my pedal board and decided to abandon stacking of the two. I've got a BOSS LS-2 on the way, I'm going run parallel signals and see if anything cool happens. I dunno. Might give in and get a Helix or QuadCortex some day.

 

[Wretched Banana]

That works. Another common pattern is DG -> Tech21.

I settled on X7 into VTDI. VTDI is always on, X7 does the filthy distortion. Imho the VTDI gives far better meaty clean tones than anything Darkglass even if you're going into an actual amp, and it's an all around more practical box. X7's crossover is wonderful of course, and the VTDI does further wonderful things to both the low and high side. In this configuration you need a separate dedicated compressor of course.

 

[Zekt]

Now

That works. Another common pattern is DG -> Tech21.

I settled on X7 into VTDI. VTDI is always on, X7 does the filthy distortion. Imho the VTDI gives far better meaty clean tones than anything Darkglass even if you're going into an actual amp, and it's an all around more practical box. X7's crossover is wonderful of course, and the VTDI does further wonderful things to both the low and high side. In this configuration you need a separate dedicated compressor of course.

What about comping together a DG MTXultra and a Tech21 DP-3X? Anyone done that combo?

 

[Wretched Banana]

Now


What about comping together a DG MTXultra and a Tech21 DP-3X? Anyone done that combo?

Sounds like redundancy with two crossovers back to back, but more importantly I can’t imagine what that would result in given the different freq cuts. Very unpredictable and doesn’t seem to serve a tangible purpose, but I might be missing something. What are you trying to achieve there?

PS. DP-3x is not a good clean pedal.

 

[Zekt]

I own a DG MXU I got as a present and the DP-3X was the other pedal i was looking at before hand. Jus curious