Finding the Ultimate Gain Tone by Stacking Overdrive Pedals - Is More Always Better?

[Music] okay [Music] greetings i'm rob choppers hey guys welcome to another episode of anderson's tv with myself the captain and mr c here um rob's idea for this video which i thought would be a a good one um was to talk about pedal stacking um specifically gain pedals uh lots of guitar players i think over the years have found their own sound by using more than one distortion pedal and certainly my eyes were really open to this when we met chris buck on here and chris's pedalboard which is probably about the size of this piece of wood here and has got probably 60 or 70 of the pedals on it are gain pedals and he just uses different combinations yeah he's got such beautiful touch and feel and he's a very musical sounding guitar player so we chose some pedals um that we tried to sort of get an indicative spread of different types of pedals yeah so this isn't really necessarily a video about going oh yeah you should buy the black box or you should buy the smiley or whatever this is about going um i'll quickly with you through them so we've got a simple ep boost here so this is like the echoplex kind of um adds a bit of bass end and a bit of level we've got the centura um copy of a clone um which is very very cool purple uh was made especially for pete but you can get like a silver or a gold version of this if you want we've got the black box from snaus which is the sort of um marshall blues breaker vibe we've got a um ibanez ts808 tube screen might have heard of one of those yeah that's the the original one um or a reissue at least of the original one we've got um the jhs version of a tone bender we've got the way huge russian pickle which is their version of a big muff we've got the rattler jam sorry the jam rattler which is their version of a rat an original rat another jhs pedal here based on the fuzz face the dodd looking glass which is more of a preamp again with not too much gain in it um more of a level thing and then of course uh one ring to rule them all uh the boss metals so you might as well burn all the other pedals and just get me two of those metal zones that original stack was one that again i haven't tried any of these together yet i just you know decided that you know maybe we'd do ep boost into a clone into the black box as a starting point so should we talk about my expectations yes so what i wanted to do was find one pedal that we could use on a clean amp tone to make a rhythm sound like backing off the guitar volume to get like a soft rhythm up to a heavy rhythm and then add a pedal to get us soaring lead yeah and i think we might take it two or three stages further than that in that you will we'll try combinations of three or four different pedals so maybe the rhythm sound that you want isn't just one pedal yeah the rhythm sound is two pedals um so uh here we go lots of cuts and edits in this as we just basically go from one set up to another um but here we go so you've heard the first one now let's try something different yes well and also here's the amp [Applause] [Music] so here we go we've got a russian pickle and a tube screamer the russian pickle is where the bulk of the game is coming from the tube screamers just seems to be doing that classic thing of just adding a little extra hot sauce but here's the the like we did earlier [Music] i think that sounds good it sounds good but it doesn't have that classic british crunchy grind it's a bit skinny let's try something else [Music] [Music] too fizzy and too too trebly we need something with a with a low end kick something that's going to have grind i wonder if you're just describing an amp driven sound but you can get that from a pedal i think the ep booster into into the amp will give you a rhythm sound and then you need something like that tube screamer or the black box or [Music] oh go back to um taking the ep off do you back off the tone could i or did you back it off and then put more volume in yeah yeah do you know what would be really funny is if when you first rigged up the pedals just to get a sound if that was the magic combination um i really want to get this looking glass in here somewhere yeah but it doesn't sound very nice i've heard it sound good i mean i'm not even sure if they even make this pedal anymore but i've heard it sound good [Music] sounds a lot better i must admit [Music] [Music] it's sorry it needs more brightness and more something doesn't it yes a less fizzy more boosty kind of boost [Music] see now when you turn that off i sounded [Music] good back off the volume [Music] oh [Music] all the noise is coming from one pedal yeah what i'm just curious what happens if you take a black box and a metal zone a black box and a metal zone yeah i might just plug in a i might just plug in a couple of fuzzies [Music] um back off the gain on the rat just a little bit and then can i hear it on its own it is that is on its own okay the last game [Music] that's the high end now turn it off and let's make the black box low and midi more low end yeah we're on its own it sounds okay and then i've used the tube screen we're right at the front just as pushing the valves boost uh back off a bit again on the back of the black box just back yeah yeah and then turn all of the gain off on the tube screen yeah and uh can i just hit can i just hear it cheap scream on its own that's what it used to do okay so here we go [Music] if i back off the vault can you can you um leave the tube screamer on but turn off the rat that sounds better what did you do there well i'm just putting the treble back into the black box because [Music] you know what lee the black box and the tube screamer are a really good combination yeah i agree i think the rat sounded good but i think you can sack off the rat and the black box it's funny isn't it what the i mean i've had a similar feeling about the rap before which is that it was an iconic distortion pedal during that sort of 80s period but i don't know if it just i don't try it i think the rat is supposed to go on a slightly crunchy amp already maybe i mean that sounds like pretty good 80s i'm wondering if if we add the metal zone instead of the rat then you've got like a slightly metal rhythm a slightly marshally rhythm what did we have at the beginning did we have that at the beginning basically i think we need i feel like the clone it's such a an iconic pedal i feel like the clown needs to be used into something maybe we'll try the cloning to the rat and let's see what this sounds you can't let the rat go can you i don't know what it is i don't really i shouldn't really care but i think it's just because i sort of get obsessed with i like it's very spongy it doesn't feel like it's got sag uh yeah it doesn't feel like it's got a terribly good definition but i like the sag i think it's an add on top of a thing to make a thing keep playing [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah i mean it sounds sabothy but it's not the kind of thing i would use no fair enough uh okay i will concede now what did you want well i think the black box is the marshall the metal zone is boogie-ish you know i don't know i don't know what we're going to say but it's it's a thicker more modern sound and then the tube screamer is the literally randall smith's just heads exploded rob described the boss metal zone as boogieish but okay listen man the metal zone is an iconic masterpiece uh are we using the i'm going to leave the clone plug i like the cloth and we're going for a four pedal mix up here now just give me a lot less gain i [Music] oh that's think that's great no you changed it okay okay okay okay okay okay there we go oh man that's good i might have moved can low end and that's chuff more low end yeah that's a good game sound tube screamer okay that works really well i might just take a little bit of the this is not a lot of gain to remove from here but what happens if we add a black box well that's after so let's just try the club i really like that do you think i had the tube screamer on as well there but it was good you know the issue with this the 808 in particular the led light is really only bright if you're directly above the direction like when you're here it's quite difficult to tell it's on or off so i apologize about let's do that again so here's metal zone with the tube screamer and metal zone with the clone sounds pretty good different frequencies aren't they it feels like the tube screamer is pushing more top end the clon more i keep i keep calling to clone because this is this is a centura uh version of a clon yes um so i'm curious to hear the metal zone of the black box okay okay too much but so does it keep going i didn't think it would fizzy now mate it's got fizzy i i think it's the perspex anti-fish shield here that uh is filtering out the face it sounded good to me but you know what i'm gonna say i think for me so far the metal zone and that tube screamer and the clone it's great so you you think clown and metal zone let's let's go into metal zone versus tube screamer and i just wonder if i could hear the clown on its own here you go can i have a bit more low end yes obviously i've voiced it to be to be like a now for me that is a [Music] oh [Music] rhythm sounds [Music] oh i think that sounds really nice yeah i think what we've done here as well is it is a is a gross disservice to fuzz pedals but as neither you or i a huge fuzz fans i kind of is what it is mum i think that's just unfortunately what it is but the clone makes a great uh classic overdrive sound the metal zone makes a great yeah there's something here that the the rattler try as we might didn't really feature in our car wait a minute we haven't tried the rattler on top of the metal zone okay well we've got to try that then um i'm just going to just keep adding them in where should we put the rattler are you surprised at how good the metal zone sounds yes yes the surprise surprise is is i mean pleasantly surprised because i kind of i almost feel like i almost feel like the metal zone has had it's had its share of mockery it's become a meme it's almost like i almost want someone to record an album on a line six spider that sounds amazing just to literally go see yeah it wasn't that bad um but it'll never happen because it is um challenge except so let's just see where does this fit in apologies that the board is a bit of a mess now but we've we've wired in a load of pedals to just sort of go what happens here so what was the rat into metal zone well i think metal's over them bit less gain bit less top end do you know what i've got to say please do shout if i'm putting too much top end in because genuinely genuinely i'm oh i'm absolutely convinced that i'm winding too much right now yeah okay that's almost just top end is it yeah can i only hear the wrap please [Music] if you take all of the top end out of the rat but pretty much is yeah okay are you sure you're going the right way with the knob all right let's try it the other way so this is t for tone go on this is just very trebley though yeah and back off the game then on the rat it's virtually all the way off anyway turn it off okay here we have it yeah that sounds good that sounds good it doesn't [Music] i think we've basically found a setting on the rat that just doesn't change anything so like here's without yeah and that's why it sounds good yeah that's okay so i'm afraid just uh i think it needs to sit on top of uh dan steinhardt or you know pedal guru from that pedal show it's one of his favorite pedals and yet i find myself finding that i really like dan's tone and yet i don't get i don't really want to any of the gear that he you know he the amps he likes the pedals he likes just aren't really my bag but that's just different human things so what are we doing now can i try the ep booster with the metal zone yes oh that's really adding it [Music] [Music] [Applause] ep booster in the metal zone is it fair to say that once you've got that much gain putting in something like a clone or whatever is really changing the feel more than the tone well that's nice though what happens if you back off the game on that on that yeah i mean if you try it now [Music] it could use a little bit more gain for lead actually just just that's why i'm singing for rhythm it was it was yeah over compressing it right metal zone versus black box what do we like here hang on let's just i'm just doing a versus now as as your sort of your bass amp tone because i do i think the metals sound sounds good so here's let's try and get a sound out the black box sounds really good but it's lacking body isn't it yeah yeah maybe the ep booster will give us that [Music] that's from where i'm sitting that's not that different so metal black box is a lot darker okay so i'll put some treble in that's and what not not good not as good it's missing a frequency it's kind of i'll tell you what it is the black box sounds a little bit thin can i see this more open on that metal zone because i'm really curious okay so i'm in custom mode rather than standard mode which is only available on the waza version then i've got the level at about two o'clock i've got the uh treble uh just a snad over noon a snag yeah i don't know what snad or low is it about two o'clock as well mid is completely center so the frequency and the and the level is completely center and gain is at about um half past eight tube screamer ep booster and metal zone then let's let's for a lead sound let's see what happens if we do that [Applause] we found it the the metal zone with the ep booster and the tube screamer for added lead i wasn't that's what i was trying to work out was which one do you want for the lead boost metal zone on its own great rhythm sound yeah ep booster gives you like just a snad of a lead boost but when you want that extra saturation for legato you whack on the top or the clock choose creamer giving you that sort of [Music] yeah i can just see myself with a metal zone the holy trinity as wow as discovered by lee s well i'm not sure this video turned out to be quite what i hoped it would be it was just in the end i suppose what it is is is um just stay open-minded about you know pedal choices and actually you know try some and see what you think you might like or what another guitar player has told you that you should like may not actually be what you like at all i'll be surprised that probably the two most famous game paddles of all time are two that work together really well and well that's the only one i'm you know i mean i know it's famous it's infamous though isn't it really the the metal zone really but we're using the special secret sauce was a craft and actually we're using the gain really low i mean i suppose if you if if i put the gain all the way up this is probably you know and in standard mode that's probably what people associate with that sort of meme type metal zone tone but yeah back down [Music] and [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] well look there you go i think we plugged everything in apologies if we in the end didn't um but look comment below what are your um what have you found when you're stacking pedals up together in fact sometimes i think that's where those sort of facebook fan groups are quite good you know if you've got a certain amplifier and that amp has a fan page and people are going and sharing oh this pedal was good or that pedal but mad and and i suppose in fairness if we'd have had a different amp and a different guitar maybe we'd have different results as well but i'm gonna have to photograph your settings because i've got one of those metal zones but it's in my lock up in england yeah and i currently live in malta so i'm gonna i'm gonna have it sent over and then i'll use it more i mean yeah i certainly know when boss did the waza version they were like we know we're gonna get a bucket load of stick for this but honestly it's a great sound so i'm just would you would you put one on your board i would use that sound i would absolutely use that sound but no i wouldn't you heard it here first it's it's uh i don't know maybe if it was in like a really posh looking shell yeah that didn't say metal zone all i need to do is basically just um take the guts out of this and put it into like an od one and it's like it would be acceptable then he'd be okay yeah i see right well i've been rob chandler i'm in the captain bye see you later oh let's try something else i don't know what you never know [Music]

Channel: Andertons Music Co

Views: 75,065

Keywords: Andertons, Andertons Music, Andertons TV, Guitar pedals, guitar effects, electric guitar, guitar player, rob chapman, chappers & captain, chapman andertons, stacking pedals, how to stack pedals, setting up a pedal board, stacking overdrive pedals, stacking effects, guitar tones, pedal tones, best guitar tone, pedal demo, new guitar pedal, pedal order, best electric guitar tone, the captain

Id: lGvGP_ARDTw

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020