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What OD pedal to drive a valve amp?

M

mattieb

Guest
Jun 17, 2014
7
2
35
#1
I'm trying to figure out what drive pedal I should get to add to my board. It's going to be replacing an Earthquaker speaker cranker, which sounded great but I really wanted something with a gain control and a bit more tweakability. I'm running a Fender Jazz into an Ashdown LB30 to mainly play worship music and in a wedding covers band on the side, and I've been thinking about the following options:
Fuzzrocious BDPG (heard its awesome but finding clips that sound good is hard...)
Voodoo labs sparkle drive (same as above)
Darkglass b3k (possibly to grindy and metallic?)
Any other options?

Any insight would be awesome :) Thanks!
 
#2
I'd check out the Fairfield Barbershop, it fits the speaker-cranker-with-more-control requirement. It can be cleanish, gained up, or dialed in with the sag control to be more like the speaker cranker.

If you are just wanting to push your tubes into distortion and get your drive that way, I think the Sparkle Drive would be a good place to start on that list. It's going to be a bit more neutral than the BDPG or B3k, both of which have their own tone baked in.

The Wren & Cuff Phat Phuk B is also something to consider. Not a lot of tweaking to be done, it's just a nice boost pedal to smash those tubes, and it has an internal trimpot to dirty up the sound a bit if you like.
 
#5
My vote is for the Catalinbread SFT, Darkglass Vintage or Phat Phuk B if you only want a mild boost.

The BDPG doesn't sound good with a passive bass going directly in btw, so I'd cross that off your list unless you have another buffered pedal you can put before it.
 
#7
I've bookmarked that comparison video to watch later, very interesting! I think I'd like to have the option for the pedal to add some dirt. Down the line to do plan on adding another OD, perhaps a MarkBass Mini Dist, to go from a bit of crunch to proper distortion
 
#11
jumblemind said:
I'd check out the Fairfield Barbershop, it fits the speaker-cranker-with-more-control requirement. It can be cleanish, gained up, or dialed in with the sag control to be more like the speaker cranker.

If you are just wanting to push your tubes into distortion and get your drive that way, I think the Sparkle Drive would be a good place to start on that list. It's going to be a bit more neutral than the BDPG or B3k, both of which have their own tone baked in.

The Wren & Cuff Phat Phuk B is also something to consider. Not a lot of tweaking to be done, it's just a nice boost pedal to smash those tubes, and it has an internal trimpot to dirty up the sound a bit if you like.
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+ a million to the Barbershop


Pedal Breeders BIG Board Club member # 48
 
#18
There are lots of options depending on the way your particular amp behaves when pushed. I find that pushing tubes with too much bass can lead to too much congestion/compression for my taste, so I like tighter OD/boost pedals for that purpose.

Tubescreamers and their variants over the years (including the Sparkle Drive mentioned before) took that into account, and so tend to be fairly tight on the bottom with a nice midrange hump. Combined with a pushed/compressed tube power amp section the response gets evened out nicely and you don't necessarily get the feeling of a drop in bass in my experience. Same goes for Rat distortion variants.

Currently I use a Darkglass VMT Deluxe, but some others I've had success with combined with a pushed tube amp (in order of the era I used them):
Keeley Tubescreamer
Keeley Rat
Everman FuzzDrive
MI Audio Blueboy Deluxe
Barber LTD-SR
Tronographic Rusty Box
Darkglass B3K/B7K
Darkglass Vintage/Vintage Deluxe

One big difference when using a drive pedal on its own merits and using one to push your tube amp is that you want a pretty dynamic pedal to push tubes so that you can get some touch response depending on how you dig in (a pedal that is super compressed to begin with will tend to lose all dynamics through a pushed tube amp!). The punchiest/most dynamic pedals of the ones I've used are the Rusty Box and the Darkglass Vintage (both set at low gain). The Rusty isn't particularly neutral sounding though- for that I've also had good luck with the Tubescreamer-inspired pedals- the Blueboy Deluxe and the LTD-SR (also at low gain). The Fairfield Barbershop sounds promising to me in clips to push a tube amp in a similar fashion.
I find the B3K/B7K heavily voiced at most settings, and while the clean blend allows you to retain dynamics, the drive itself I don't find particularly dynamic. I like the sound a lot, but it wouldn't be my first choice unless I wanted to overwhelm the voice and dynamics of my amp.
 
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