How To- And How NOT To- Use Overdrives And Distortions, Tone Secrets #2

howdy hey it's be thorne welcome to the second video in my tone secret series this is all about how to use OverDrive's and distortions and town to not use OverDrive's and distortions I always keep my videos super positive and you guys know I only like to do reviews and demos of things that I really like in this particular video I'm gonna show you pedals that I like and that I dig but I'm also gonna show you how to make them sound bad how to not use them is kind of the goal of this video and then how to use them how to dial them in when they should be used and when they shouldn't be used like with what amps maybe not so much with other amps with what settings maybe not so much with other settings you get the idea I want to show you sort of my philosophy on how to use OverDrive's and distortions to get the most out of them now somebody in a recent gear page thread said something about me and I took it as kind of a backhanded compliment they said he makes everything sound good and he kind of makes every Drive pedal sound the same and I appreciated the complement of all my playing saying you know I make things sound good but I don't think I make every Drive pedal sound the same over drives or more distortions and I want to show you distinct differences between families of pedals and certain types of OverDrive's and certain types of distortions in this video and break them down and show you how I really do think that I make them sound different as much as any other guitar player I've only got the hands that I've got in the brain that I've got so things are gonna come out sounding like me but you know all these pedals they do sound different I hold here in my hand you know Ivan is tubescreamer you guys ever seen one of these the ts9 the venerable ts9 it's a classic so we're gonna start with this one today I'm gonna show you how to make this pedal sound like crap and how to make it sound really good in my opinion in kind of a classic application okay which is into a cranked but well sorry not cranked actually turned down at first blackface style amplifier I've got my 50 watt 1966 Fender Bassman amplifier here I'm gonna run this pedal into it and I'm gonna show you how to make it sound crappy first and then we're gonna dial it and make it sound really good and we're gonna kind of get it going in it's sort of a Texas blues application so let's get going on the the first pedal in the video here the Ibanez ts9 here we go okay so now with the ts9 I'm gonna start off by showing you what I don't like to use it for when you set your amp real clean so I've got my basement on about two and a half which should still be pretty loud like the cabinets in the other room but if we were in the same room with it it you know substantial it's 50 watt amp at two-and-a-half it's like it's making some volume I've got the tube screamer set up right here right now with all the controls on five so this is what the guitar sounds like on the bridge pickup with the pedal off okay to kind of clean and thin no drive coming from the amp at all turning on the pedal I'll turn it off again okay I hate it when I hear the pedal used this way it just doesn't work for me at all what's happening is I hear this sort of no first of all the volume drops a little bit because you got to get the output on the ts9 up above halfway I feel like to get anything happening but when I turn it on it's like I can hear a layer of overdrive and distortion and I can hear this layer of clean and it's weird to me it sounds very strange and fake okay so here the the separation between the clean and the overdrive that really bothers me I don't like it at all so now to get it in the zone I'm gonna turn up the output of the pedal well let's bring it up and just kind of go by ear [Music] [Applause] okay at least we're getting about unity gain out of it now which is better it's a better sound but now I want to bring the amp up okay so right now it's on two and a half I'm gonna bring it up until it's on the edge of breakup so let's do that with the pedal off first [Music] [Applause] the F doesn't even sound like it's distorted yet but it's definitely you know it's right on the edge of getting some clipping going okay now if I turn on the panel okay much cooler tone so what's happening is you're getting a little bit of grind out of the amp it's right on the edge of breakup still basically sounds clean and if you were to pick light or roll the volume on the guitar down just a little bit it would be clean but the abs nice and fat now it's got like a good sort of robust tone going and when you got the pedal set at least at unity gain with the output up a little bit so that it's not dropping your guitar output at all what happens now is that layer of overdrive that's coming from the pedal is now blending with a little bit of overdrive coming from the amp and you get this killer tone that's just great so the way that as I understand that stevie ray vaughan sort of did the Texas blue thing with the pedal he had the output cranked on the ts9 so cranked right up kicking the front end of the amp but he'd turned on the drive all the way down to minimize the distortion or overdrive coming from the pedal so he's almost using it like a colored boost because it definitely adds its own tonal character to the sound not sure where he'd set the tone controls I like the tone down below halfway on a ts9 I think it keeps it nice and warm and natural sounding I loved with Stevie Ray Vaughn used a ts9 how it almost didn't sound like there was Distortion it sounded like the sound was big and clean still almost like in especially in a band sort of mix context I never heard his sound as being like distorted really you know it was just powerful with a lot of sustain and the mid-range would cut through and that was the ts9 you know just doing its thing so let's check it out in that kind of a Stevie Ray Vaughn sort of application see what that sounds like [Music] okay here's the basement with no pedal [Music] you're adding the ts9 keeps things relatively warm with the tone control on the pedal rolled way back the drive rolled all the way down on the pedal and the outputs all the way up so it's kicking the front end of the amp pretty hard but because the pedal rolls off base is actually 10 u eighths low-end you can hit the front end of you know even a typically kind of big sounding fender or fender style amplifier and it's not gonna make it bloat it it's actually gonna keep things tight that's one of the things that TS 9s are great for is actually adding gain while keeping things tight okay to sum up my thoughts on the TS nine and actually all the tube screamer style pedals there's a ton of them out there in the market derivatives of this classic circuit they just don't work well to me into a crystal clean amplifier you got to get the amplifier cooking like at least up on the edge of breakup if not out and out over driven on its own then the pedal just sounds fantastic bonding with the overdrive of an amplifier kind of they do their own thing and they come together and they meld and form this really really cool tone the pedal does its characteristic low-end roll-off thing which helps keep a no an over driven amp tight and it's also got the mid hump so it works great into a blackface American style amplifiers for instance that are kind of scooped sounding with lots of treble and bass but not much going on in the mids so yeah that's my feelings on the on the ts9 it's not really an amp light pedal at all you know that's a really overused term these days maybe it's very amp like overdrive this pedal is not very amp like there's a distinctly different thing than amp overdrive it bonds with an over driven amp and does a great tone you

Channel: Pete Thorn

Views: 1,905,924

Rating: 4.8706751 out of 5

Keywords: ibanez, ts9 overdrive, distortion, fuzz, guitar]tone, pete thorn, thorn, recording, pedal, pedalboard, mxr, fulltone, stevie, vaughan, srv, blues, lesson, fender, suhr, bassman, gibson, gretsch, how to

Id: wJ8UMHODKuU

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2017