3 Tips For Stacking Overdrive And Distortion Pedals

[Music] three quick and easy tips on stacking gain pedals in case you're not familiar with it basically stacking gain pedals is a term it's like cascading gain pedals or you're running one pedal into another in series and both of them on same time in order to get a different tone so for this example I'm using a Tumnus and I'm also using a Pantheon my clean tone through a deluxe reverb is this [Music] the Tumnus by itself will turn the gain up a little bit trying to get fairly close to unity volume so the same volume when the pedal is on as when it's off just a Tumnus [Music] now the Tumnus is a very mid-range II based pedal it's based on the clown style circuit that you know I'm sure you probably know that which is a mid-range e style circuit a lot of people tend to think it's transparent or neutral it's really not very heavy in the mids but that's a cool thing I'll show you just a minute why that's a cool thing if you don't like mid-range e OverDrive's and you're using just the gain on the pedal to contrast that let's go with the Pantheon I'm in a low gain mode right now sounds like this [Music] now let me put that on a higher game-mode so you can kind of get a feel for what type of gain its going to produce but if you have too much gain it creates problems so you got to control your game for this I'm gonna have it in a lower gain setting I'm going to have the Tumnus gain not all the way up so backing the gain off a bit when I add both of them together it tightens the last pedal [Music] [Music] why does it do that well it's a lot like designing a distortion pedal circuit the first stages kind of influence what the gain is doing what's being clipped and then you're using the second pedal or the other gain stages to not only add gain but also influence the overall EQ so so it kind of gives the character more of this second pedal what I mean by that is if you want your pedal to sound more like the Tumnus or whatever your first pedal is then you need to put that last because that last pedal is really going to kind of dictate the overall tonality of it even though it is going to influence the tightness if it's if it's more of a mid-range e style overdrive if it's more of a transparent style overdrive might get a little Bumi maybe a little fuzzy and then you'll have to back off on the bass on your second pedal to kind of counteract that [Music] point number two if you want more of a volume boost then turn it turning the volume up on this first pedal is really not going to do much of a volume boost if both of them are on if both of them are on that volume boost is actually going to get distorted more in that second pedal so to give you more gain so to speak but it's not really gonna give you a volume boost I'll show you what I mean let me turn the game back off we'll just use some volume kind of give you a feel for it let me turn it back to unity [Music] so that's my Tumnus we're going to turn the volume up a little bit more I can't really give you an example that because it will clip everything involved here so let's turn on the Pantheon [Music] you can hear that gain boost as I'm turning up this volume so yes if you do turn that peddle up it is going to get more noisy because you're literally adding more gain to the signal more gain is going to give you more noise so if you want more volume on the sound of this first pedal then simply swap positions then you can get more gain and then you'll have the sound of this first pedal and then you can just turn it on and off whenever you want more volume tip number three when stacking pedals is if your second pedal in line so the second pedal that you're going through if it has more EQ flexibility you're gonna be able to tweak the tone a lot more so let's turn this gain down a bit so it's fairly clean and we'll just use it kind of as a pseudo EQ pedal but still with a little bit of game in fact I'm gonna turn this overdrive voicing to a soft clipping position it's gonna be more like an overdrive less clipping sort of less gain to the ear here's what it sounds like [Music] the Tumnus as I have it set right now sounds like this little hots turn that down [Music] so if I want the flexibility of a little bit more EQ in this case a bass treble in a presence [Music] or I can change the settings completely on this one I'm going to turn the president's way up the treble way down so I'm really changing with it with the tone stacks doing there it's just a different tone compared to the stock again you may like it you may not but it is a different option you're probably asking what happens when you do swap it the other way let's find out [Music] okay turn around the other way my Tumnus still sounds like the toughness when I add this Pantheon to it little more wooly which you may like you may not like let's turn the bass up a little bit it's gonna get a little even a little bit more wooly [Music] [Applause] [Music] and just for fun here's a little bonus tip when you're running an overdrive pedal into a distortion pedal of an amp or into an amp this just turned up so loud that it's distorting itself your gain stacking then as well so in that situation the Tumnus which again mid-range II is going to tighten things up right now I'm I have my deluxe reverb pretty much on ten so it's pretty dirty it's a little fluffy which is just the way they are whenever you turn it up it sounds like this adding that Tumnus in there you [Music] so really tightens things up quite a bit if we do the same thing with the Pantheon again I don't have a whole lot of gain on it but let's try it [Applause] [Music] [Music] and I've been and that may be a tone that you really love if you like using a pedal that's really a little more neutral in the mids into a dirty amp rent to distortion channel it's going to be a little bit fuzzy but that's fine and if that's the tone you're looking for that will get you there so hope this helped you hope it kind of gave you some ideas it's a really good thing to try like for example let's see if I have the idea right here I have an OCD it's a really good thing to try with an OCD just using a mid-range type of pedal in combination with it into the front of it tightens it right up or maybe that and I say the OCD because the gain in these are really nice I like to gain staging something with a little more EQ flexibility after it running both at the same time and it's a whole nother tone so hope this helped you thanks watch and subscribe you're not subscribed we'll see you next week with a new video

Channel: Wampler Pedals

Views: 188,043

Keywords: wampler, pedals, guitar, effects, pedalboard, wampler pedals, guitar effects, guitar pedal, guitar pedals, guitar pedal order, stacking ocd pedal, multiple overdrive pedals, that pedal show gain stacking, gain stacking, stacking pedals, stacking gain pedals, how to stack overdrive

Id: w7jHBdfHwmM

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020