Understand Guitar Overdrive Pedals [Gain, Clipping, Headroom, EQ & All That] – That Pedal Show

hi and today we're going to help you understand overdrive pedals which will hopefully help you choose the right one for you [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey guys hope it's that fella so down here Makia hello thick and fruity done oh man that was thick and fruit slam I'm emotionally aroused again today yeah again that was my favorite cheap scream and that just out of interest yeah he's mine too just so you know it is a Kili modded ts808 plus without the true bypass mod that I bought for my birthday bought myself for my birthday in about 2005 Wow all there abouts 2006 something like that and then I hit it with the magic pedal yes which I also bought for my birthday in 2011 or 12 Wow and would you believe I think that with the shipping cost me about the same as that I do believe it I don't believe it right so on so do they show there's a very ambitious title in today's show because we really want you to understand overdrive pedals so we really really do in the way that Dan and I have been privileged enough to come to understand them over the years of doing this show so what do we say done we we want to demystify some terms yes indeed what are those terms so we're going to talk about gain and clipping one we're gonna talk about Headroom yes we always talk about Headroom yep EQ and tone stack tone stacking EQ symmetrical asymmetrical yes all these things that we when we talk about an overdrive we say oh wow there's a really nice mid boosted low headroom hard clipping soft clipping yellow asymmetrically clip so without further ado then and that will that will get more obvious as the show goes on we're going to swap out these pedals that are very very popular and that you we'll know which we're going to listen to for some other pedals that you can tweak some of the things that we're talking about yeah good shot so Dan shall we I think we should start with an mid boosted asymmetrically soft clipped okay low Headroom overdrive sounds good what would you choose in that in that sense that would be the sd1 I believe okay amps reason today we have the the Marshall and we the Vox ac15 so I've given up from hope Marshall 1987 X is a 50 watt plexi but the reason we chose in these amps today is because they're set in a pretty open manner they don't have a strong EQ bias in any significant direction they're just pretty clean and pretty open fairly transparent and we yeah yeah I'm gonna talk about that a bit later on as far as the engine but just so the yeah a spawn themselves [Music] there's a goodly wholesome noise it's glorious okay so what do we say um a symmetrically soft clipped mid humps [Music] [Music] strongly felt the need to do that for some strange reason yeah okay let's move on all of the characteristics we just mentioned mid humped low Headroom soft clipped will retain mm-hmm will now go to symmetrically soft clipped beautiful [Music] let's move along don't be afraid by the terms because we're going to explain them in due course let's move to a high headroom okay symmetrically hard clipped symmetrically hard clips yes slightly mid boosted okay to drive yep [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right now let's stay with the hard clipping yep yeah and let's go for more of a mid pushed but high again so what if we got a higher gain yeah lower Headroom symmetric-key Plitt symmetrically hard clipped symmetrically hard clipped not mid boosted overdrive at if we're talking about the rat you're talking about mid boost and exactly the same frequency as the con really yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so good so let's let's finish this section then with a low ish Headroom non mid humped soft asymmetrically flipped perfect overdrive we're going to come up with some icons it's put on the screen to have helped this through by the way [Music] [Music] [Music] and [Music] fashion perfection alright we checked a lot of turns out you there we're gonna swap these plastic pedals out you've had a good listen to them and we'll bring in some others where we can vary some of these things and get into this bit more deeply right yeah sorry we had a little pause it took us a little while to do that in truth so what you saw on the board before was a bunch of very very common highly popular and many sold pedals what we've got on the board now are less so but they do have tweakable characteristics of some of the things we're going to discuss yes so Dan I think at this point it would be a good opportunity to talk about what is happening hmm inside and we're gonna say a normal overdrive pedal right and a normal overdrive pedal is anything that you've seen today and a normal i overdrive pedal is characterized by what done okay so we've got let's first of all think of the stages of an overdrive pedal okay and we'll start with graphic now so we've got an input stage okay which basically takes your signal and gets it ready for whatever the pedal is going to do then we have the gain stage which is characterized by the way you know we clip which we clipped that signal amplifier and then Clara spies yeah and find clip and also some some tonal shaping going on there yeah then we have our tone stack you know the the EQ section which again gives us further shaping of that signal then the output stage getting the signal ready to leave and enter into the world yep and that's a really basic understanding of what's going on but you can do like within that you can have you know take your EQ stage you can put one in Cuba for the gain stage after the gain stage you can have signals going around the gain stage you're mixing back in the clones a really good example you've got a where we have the the input stage so we've got the buffer on the input then we have our clipping section of the clon which is a hard clipping section we've got their clipping diodes going after the amplification but we have these two other piles around the that circuit that mix in a bit of the original original signal yeah right and the clones really interesting because when you turn the gain you're actually mixing it's a mixin or it's a mixed nerve yes for one part playing signal part into the game so it you know this is there are so many different ways to do that you understand we have our input stage our gain stage you know clipping shaping the tone stage and then the output stage and again you can you know take you can take a tone stage out and just have clipping straight out you know like feel like fuzz pedal does for example so I think the purposes of simplifying it like that is because that's predominantly what's going on certainly on the overdrive pedals we just had on the board before this section and it's fair to say that you can achieve those things in different ways using different styles of components and different approaches to the circuit however what we're discussing today is the classic configuration you'd find in any of those pedals you've just seen so boss Blues driver ibanez tube screamer boss sd-1 clone will all be a bit messed about in the corn the rat rats yeah most overdrive pedals yes it's fair to say it's gonna have an input section yep then a bit of amplification that's done with an operational amplifier yes and I see ya all transistors but yep in increase in amplitude in some manner then something once you've once you've increased that something to clip it and make it distorted yep and any output section oh then EQ they'd say yeah the EQ shaking that from there yep yep and then the output section yep and in terms of the amplification the clipping bit in the EQ as Dan said they don't necessarily have to be in that order yeah most of stuff we've seen today is that is that but it's like for example if you've got a they call a dumbbell esque overdrive and what they might do is take a mid frequency thing put it before the gain and leave the back send all the bass and trouble think after the game so you know it's it's what you'll see is how creative these designers are when they're coming up with the stuff it's mind blowing the more you look into it there's some really really clever people out there and basically how you mix all that stuff together and how you achieve it is what gives you the character of the yes of the overdrive pedal in the end absolutely so it's let's let's take some of these shall we no gain sure start with going this that with game great so after the input stage generally the input stage will be a buffer some description all right giving the a nice low impedance signal so that it's really stable and then you can manipulate that in a number of different ways okay and that will hit a gain stage and what we'll do with that is will amplify okay so let's have a look at the let's have a look at the klom all right so that hits an op-amp it's called a TL o-72 like a really standard basic op-amp op-amp looks like a really bad square spider with tiny metal legs yeah actually right so it's a it's a basically a nicely packaged the best he has two transistors in it yeah okay so what what we're going to do with it that operational amplifiers are going to use that to amplify the signal okay what we're going to do with that signal then is number different things the first thing we're going to do is then that's going to hit our clipping diodes right actually before we get to clipping guys let's turn the gain all the way down yep on that and we'll just hear the increase in volume on the corn on the klom so when you turn the gain down as Dan said earlier we are taking the overdrive circuit out absolutely so this is this is this is gain more exactly yeah yeah [Music] increasing gain gets louder yeah that you you're also hearing the EQ circuit over yeah so didn't though clipping there at all that's just an increase in volume now it's one thing that's really interesting that we might talk a bit more talk about Headroom but the clone is doing something that's amazing yeah just with the use of that extra gain and how it keeps the clarity of that signal very very clever but we'll get into that what talk about Headroom so that's just gain extra more and gain is the in the in the context of guitar sounds normally when you say gain you normally mean overdrive don't you say high gain amplifier or heavy gain sounds yeah yeah gain is usually used to explain the amount of overdrive but actually gain but in a mic preamp or whatever it's just more signal lower increasing the amplitude of that waveform yeah as opposed to my home situation where I'm stress-eating and the gain equals about three kilos but ya gain is more like ever since I came multimedia for our AmpliTube I can't say amplitude anymore it's AmpliTube yeah yeah alright so once you've got that increasing in level then yep increasing gain this is what happens inside every overdrive pedal in the front make it louder yep you then need to create some overdrive from something yes so how are we doing that okay so a really common way to do it and you know that we're seeing all of these circuits is with some record diodes okay now diodes are basically their semiconductor and they will allow current to travel in one direction and they have a thing called a forward voltage now what that means is that if you imagine that we have our waveform okay and the forward voltage will only let the voltage travel up a certain way before it gets clipped off okay so if we have a look at because we've got the clone on yeah what gonna do now is we're going to dial in the game and basically I think we it's the door the gain and all the way until we hear yeah what happens with these yeah play I'll just turn it up okay what what we're doing is we're we're leaving the amplification bit the same yeah and we're adding in those clipping diodes yes so all different sorts of diodes will give you a different sorts of sound we'll get back to that okay so yeah here we will hear the clipping diodes now that come directly after the gain stage in this pedal which gives a focal hard [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so it wasn't we've got a bit more volume but what we heard was the signal now being distorted yeah and I think we should also point out at this point there's a lot of volume coming out of that cron that may well have been pushing the amps ever so slightly into overdrive as well that's a whole but it's not the thing in terms of what's happening to the waveform it's the same thing as yeah yeah absolutely but you're predominantly hearing the clone the answer set pretty clean yep interesting interesting thing with the clone we have our diodes in a clone or what we call germanium diodes right and they have a forward voltage of 0.35 volts which means that they'll actually clip really early on and because the diodes are placed after our op-amp right directly after it's what we call hard clipping okay right that's what that's what hard tipping is those diodes are placed directly after the gain stage yep okay so if we looked at the signal directly after dyers what we would see is our waveform and quite at hard you know those ages would be quite hard but now if we have a look at what happens that's called hard clipping if we now have a look at soft clipping okay right now soft clipping is what happens when those diodes are placed in what we call the feedback loop of our op-amp right so what happens with our op-amp and it's the same if you think about the feedback loop in your amplifier it's basically a portion of the signal from the output is fed back into the input alright and that gives us stability of the signal it helps with keep things clean helps us Distortion so what we're going to do is going to instead of having those diodes directly on the output we actually got to put those diodes in the feedback loop okay so as we feed the signal back in and more that signal back in we're gonna have we're gonna achieve what we call soft you're clipping it's not exactly the same thing but if you think about the difference between having something in series and in parallel so you've got the clipping diodes after the lamp and now we've got them yeah not exactly a parent show not exactly so is it serious and like everything's with that paddle that signal is all going through it but what we're doing now is we just we just hey we're hearing their the feedback loop go through it so probably I would say let's have a look at the the Blues Pro yeah so that's a really good example of soft clipping I'm gonna put it in so these are silicon diodes what's really interesting about this super blues Pro pro and maybe just have a look on the mi audio website and and read about it but what it gives you which not all overdrive pedals do is you've got to you've got to Clippers Clippers yeah to clippers after the after the op amp and those switches give you options for the two Clippers so you can have them both the same or you can have them different yeah I'm going to say more different is so you have both the same you have symmetrical clipping different you have a symmetrical clipping and there are like loads of different sorts of asymmetrical clipping we'll get into that in a second but for now I've just got both silicon diodes on yeah now now silicon diodes are really interesting so they have a forward voltage of 0.7 volts which means they have a bit more Headroom before there's clipping interest right so for that the lighter side of clipping you know those the the lighter gain pellets will generally use those higher forward voltages in their diodes and then we get for things like LEDs which have much higher forward voltages and we've got one of the Odyssey we have listened to oh and also in the the ages as well so what we're doing is we're just we're mixing and matching different sorts of diodes to give us those different forward voltages so we can basically start shaping our different cutoff points in the signal okay so you you also hear we're skirting around the edge of a headroom discussion so yeah things are all we will get to all of them but they're all completely intertwined yep just yeah and to clear anything up I'm touching the pedals this side makes gonna be touching things that size oh you're so your touch I'm touching the I'll touch the Odyssey yeah and the Blues Pro if you're watching this like in a whiles time it is currently June 2020 if you're watching this or what you know in the future Kovach 19 is on at the moment so we're doing our best to social socially distance and yes not cross contaminate with touching things yes so I'm getting you to play and what I'm gonna do I'm gonna start with the drive yeah at minimum yeah now what's gonna happen as I turn the drive up I'm gonna be introducing more of the clipping circuit right in with these diodes in the feedback loop yep then you hear what happens to the drive then [Music] [Music] [Music] so two things there you'll notice that when I had the volume all the way down it sounded quite dark as I turned it up we started to hear what was happening in the feedback loop because in that feedback loop we also have EQ filters okay shaping the sound of the distortion basically but the other thing that happened is as I turned the drive up it was getting louder you know so I had to compensate with the volume on the left hand side however as soon as it starts to clip I've already I've hit the rails right so from then on I turn up it just is it's more distortion come but I'm not getting more volume yeah yeah okay so in this in the context of clipping men at the moment we are symmetrically clipped with what silicon diamonds a silicon diode yeah can we hear symmetrically clipped what's the other option we've got as we yeah we've got we've got a MOSFET in there like a little MOSFET transistor there's acting as a diode Oh interesting so I think we've got the the gate is tied to the source and so it basically did the same job as a diet still look so a zero plus seven forward voltage on it but it's completely different sounds so here's the sound of the silicon diodes [Music] [Music] much louder right so we've we've gone from silicon diode lipping electrical silicon diode clipping to a symmetrical MOSFET MOSFET clipping and it's got way louder Y so the nature of the way that the MOSFETs clipping the signal now yep okay so if could you just match that volume for a sec so every similar volume yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and so what we're hearing there is what we call the knee of the of the clipping so if you think of the silicon where we have quite a hard knee right that edge is really hard and you hear that insolent that more it sounds gay Nia yep right whereas the MOSFETs used to have a softer knee it takes a little bit longer to to clip we're getting a bit bit more volume a bit more dynamic range but it's still you know it's still clipping but does it sounds softer you know I mean yeah I mean doesn't it sounds harder to me cos it's louder it's louder that's how you don't we don't have that fuzzy edge to it yeah you know yeah I mean all in terms of the playing dynamic there whatever the sound difference I felt like I could just be gentler on the guitar with the MOSFETs because there was much more dynamic range sure more Headroom we'll get on to that yeah okay so we've heard let's hear let's hear with no clipping okay yeah so this is an option yes it absolutely so what we're gonna do now we're going to take those diodes out of the single pilot yeah so sorry I just immediately stopped playing with the same force on the guitar because it was five times louder yeah because we're no longer there were no longer limiting that signal yeah so it's basically wide open there's that you'll have a a filter in a sort of the tone shaping filter in that feedback loop but there's no diet so there's nothing to to clip that signal okay so let's hear one MOSFET and one silicon diode right so and if we clip the different sides of the waveform differently we have asymmetric asymmetric clipping so both the same symmetrical clipping one side differently we have asymmetric clipping so there's a lot there's a silicon [Music] unsurprisingly it's an interesting mix of the two yeah here you hear the fuzzy elements of the game yep but you also hear the clarity of the MOSFET yeah and the playing experience is somewhere between what I think is happening though is that I'm discerning I'm discerning the mismatch and going oh I'm not sure whether I'm hearing a gain sound of plane sound if I just had a parallel Rio yeah yeah I mean that's not what's happening that way no but it does it does have that element to it sure I think just hear me out on this I wonder if I was hearing ugliness in some of the harmonics I felt like I was hearing more ugliness in the harmonics out of the guitar okay just could you try giving me full on silicon diode clipping and then change it to one the other matters yeah okay oh mixed that MOSFET must have a higher forward voltage there because that gain is is it's just cuz it's so much so much that you hear so much more yes all that's happening yes okay so there we have a symmetrical clipping but another classic way to do a symmetrical clipping is to have one side of the waveform not clipped at all alright on the other side of the wave phone clip so if we leave the MOSFET on yeah and then I leave ten the other side of the of the the waveform off basically so this is another form of clipping this is gonna be loud this is very loud [Music] that's well cool I really like that the the MOSFET side what I taste what's interesting about that is if you were to buy a tube screamer for example hmm and you plug it into your amp and you mess about with the volume and game controls and you've got that much variance yep into your amp yep that once you add in those clipping options yeah becomes that yeah variants this yeah it's amazing and the relevance of this is in isolation through these amps you know you're hearing the same pedal through these amps if you were then to plug into an amp that was very clean or very gained mm-hmm the whole experience would be different again so this is really about all of the things that we're discussing today are about choosing attributes in your pedal that fit well with your guitar and amp with your guitar and amp in the way that you play I guess we've done shows on that before so we can't spend too long on that but it is really worth making the point yeah that you may not have liked one or any of those sounds in this context with these amps yes but you might find that that is perfect for what will open your guitar yeah in that in that totally ok so that's out that sell our soft clipping you know being come between symmetrical and esta metrical diodes ok so some really good examples like the OD one and the SD one we heard before a symmetrical clipping we've got in that side we've got two diodes on one one side of the waveform and three diodes on the other okay right so that's and basically by putting those two diodes in series we're increasing the the forward voltage before they clip you know so that's that sound the tube streamer is fascinating because again it's soft clipping and it's symmetrically clipped but we have this low pass filter in the in the feedback loop so basically what that means is I think is as you hit like seven hundred and 50 Hertz or something but everything below that I just had to go the frequencies below that become less and less distorted so all the frequencies above that go through the clipping diodes you know the go through and become distorted but the the lower the frequencies go the less is sort of they are so what you end up with is bottom frequencies that are almost not touched to a cleaner that a cleaner which is why choose Freeman works so well into your deluxe reverb which has already got way ton of bottom end so you're saying okay chief screamer don't distort this crazy and yeah I mean that's it's genius okay clever issues at that point in itself is hugely important you know we've talked about gain and we talked about clipping so far yeah all these things are frequency dependent because yes it's increased gain and you can clip at different frequencies yeah and and also aperture dependent so yeah if I'm playing light and I'm not putting the amount of voltage into that circuit it needs to clip it's not going to clip yeah soon as I go air and you're gonna increase that amplitude it's gonna clip yeah we're in danger of you being even more confusing when you started watching this video I you start thinking about these things and you think wow everything's so very alive look I've got to say that I've been the last couple days getting ready for this show and looking at schematics and stuff and I've just been honestly I've been humbled by some of the genius designers that have been around for ages like looking at the original design of ts9 yeah it's incredible absolutely incredible it's actually the switching on it it's probably think particle everything about it you know but yeah it's it's amazing the way they would shape the turn I guess talking about shaping tone we're gonna move on to the tone stacks at EQ yeah and so let's get it said that we are talking let's restate the fact that we're talking about pedals that operate in this way so they use a an op-amp to create the increase in gain and then we are talking about a clipping circuit using diodes or something else for that there are other ways of doing this in different pedal designs yeah this is the most common so we'll say with it okay so we've upped our signal yes and we've we've clipped it and we've either clipped it symmetrically mm-hmm using the same diodes on either side of the waveform yep or we've clipped it asymmetrically by not using at all or using different ones on each side yes and we've done it either in a hard fashion by putting the clipping diodes straight after the I see perfect all we've done it in a soft fashion by having it in the feedback loop of the IC perfect yes now in it that's bezel I didn't know I genuinely didn't know that before today right yeah this is good so we've done that yep we've got louder and more distorted yes you know in any of those ways yes now we need to think about you yeah so in in some guys they just like the tube screamer for example they do think about it cute within the game stage with it with the filter and the feedback loop for example and some guys stages the the EQ there'll be a tone stack afterwards and we're talking about you know there's couple different ways to think about it we can have basically like a passive tone control so the tube screamer if you think about the tube screamer has got basically a passive tone control so that with the tone control all the way up is basically letting all the frequencies that are created in the gain stage and the shaping that happens there letting all those through and you know generally the tone control will do on the two screamer is start to turn those down mmm right interesting or we have a pedal like the Quan which has a like a proper active EQ in it so the clone has got we have a mid hump and the way that the the tone is designed the you know with the the gain stage and everything we have a mid hump in the clone of about 1k tube screamers about seven hundred and forty Hertz right one a thousand thoughts what a thousand Hertz 1k in the clock but with a tone control on the clone we have this thing where you can either it's like is it after 400 Hertz 500 Hertz we can either start adding treble or we can take treble away what burr bearing in mind where the pot is exactly so add exactly remove yes yep so that's like an that's that's a proper EQ circuit yeah adding EQ adding top-end yeah or taking it so you know every pedal has its own way of shaping that sound yeah and that in itself has a massive impact on the way that the that you're perceiving the the distortion that's happening in those diodes alright so EQ is a massive subject because a your overdrive might be happening at different frequencies yes B because the overall EQ shape of the pedal is vast right across the EQ spectrum so why don't we just focus in on appropriately enough why don't we focus in on the mid hump question yes okay what about this can we set the Blues Pro up to sound fairly fairly flat ish yep and then we'll use our EQ pedals to talk about mid humps okay does that work yet perfect so I'll ow in these pedals we have L L tone basically happening after the gain stage you know you obviously have your filters we're talking about within the clipping itself but if we we take the clone for example where we have lovely peak at about 1k which is that that amazing frequency that gives us clarity and detail when we're going to an output file that might already be compressing a bit yeah and we need that that frequency to push it a little bit harder so what I'll do this let's talk about that set the Blues Pro up down yep and let's soon as you've said 1k let's let the good people hear what one case sounds like okay so George's here plane 1k now yeah alright so I think that would be interesting okay yeah so he's out so here's a here I play a chord and then some single notes you you [Music] there we go that is 1k right on the nose I remember it like in the 90s and as soon as I you know get my tone on the first thing I do is find 1k and get rid of it completely yeah it's like no it's okay give me some overdriven okay so let's find a nice sort of flat frequency let's go for I would say let's go for the MOSFETs [Music] what I'm so what I'm gonna do I'm actually gonna clip it a symmetrically because as we're talking about before with decline unless the game is all the way up we are feeding part of that clean circuit back in yeah alright so I'm gonna try and duplicate that okay and so a clip it a symmetrically you have the MOSFETs on one side and and motivic on the other do we know what the trim does in the blues Pro yes the trim we've got there's different it's a different gain stage right okay so [Music] [Music] [Music] so I'm just trying to set it up so eqy isn't that there's no drastic changes yep and that's pretty close I think pretty hard pretty hard kind of sound yeah [Music] we should talk about transparent but maybe we won't get into that too much in this video / drives by their nature usually are all a bit mid pushed a little bit a little bit sure because there's more mid-range in there than there is the clean sound yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the nature of that peddler does have that you can't really doubt but anyway that's that's fairly flat okay now we're going to add some 1k to that and then we'll actually add it and we'll take it away yeah okay [Music] [Music] [Music] let's do that exact thing with a different guitar okay [Music] [Music] so you can hear how much information in a guitar is around that frequency is all of it even pretty much of course it's not all of it no is such an important part of it yeah yeah that's great so you know so with the clone whether you think of that bump about one case if we hear the core now and you'll hear that frequency just as being naturally part of the sound so I put that if i dial out the 1k from the clock I can feel it on the end of my nose yeah it feels nasal yeah is where that frequency is all right so that's a 1k mid mid hump let's talk about the classic tube screamer mid hump yeah it's down from there yeah it's down from there so it's I think 742 Hertz are out the air around there 742 750 around that area okay luckily we've on the two EQ pedals we've got we've got 500 and 800 yes which are either side of 750 so it would be interesting to hear them yeah yeah [Music] so yeah that's a little bit higher than the tubescreamer boost the efficacy boosts it's really interesting because when you you know what it's should be should be said that there's more dance boosting it more than you would get in a champion here to exaggerate the point but okay takes the 500 innate undertake the humbucker to quite honky sounding yep let's see what they do with the single case [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I really want to hear that with the 1k from here [Music] [Music] it's so interesting hearing that with the strat because it's like there's a to me the stretch sounds naturally mid scooped yeah you know so when you hear that coming in it's like it just sounds mega sort of puts it back yeah like what the what the 335 and certainly p90 type guitar would have shown that frequency area the tubescreamer puts it back all those sorry those frequencies 500 up from 500 to 750 to a thousand really put it back yeah the mid scoop but supposed to four here with the tele with a bridge pickup that is like you know what I mean cuz those meds are all start already there and in that context of like I mean it's cool but the Strad it's just magic well I think within four seconds of playing you've just explained why you've never really liked troops crew there you go yeah interesting that's so cool okay so clearly we could talk about EQ all day and we focused on those mid frequencies there because that's the real key yeah shaping voice obviously how they roll off low-end is a big deal certainly as far as tube screamers go and a lot of overdrive pedals you probably find a bit of low-end roll-off because you need it to stay clean the other thing I just wanted to have a quick listen to down before we move on from EQ is what have you got between three and four K on either of those between three and four K yeah one I've got well I got four K on one and I've got three point to one another three point two is a nice place to be okay um could you set me up with a bit more let's put the klom and the Blues power on okay let's not put the lad back in a minute I'm just I just need to I need this to be a bit gain here okay to that okay and then you want had some three points oh yeah boost me a little bit of three point two K [Music] [Music] now hear that with humbuckers okay [Music] so that's what adds hair on the what a net to the natural compression of going on with the humbuckers yes as that sizzle on top it does and uh quite often when we process a process our guitars will add a tiny bit of three point two what else yeah right I mean it's bite yeah it's uh because we use all these terms right so eighty and a hundred is chest and thumb okay and then one what we were talking about earlier 752 to one point to his nose and three point you know sort of two and a half to four is bite and then ten to twelve is air yeah seven point two is my left ankle but once you you can use whatever words you want but once you if you sit there and you you record a bit your guitar pull up a graphic EQ somewhere and just push things up and down you can ascribe whatever words you want yeah but they'll start making sense to you yeah and it becomes really useful obviously so the last thing on on tone controls we talked about or EQ is actually the placement of EQ in in relation to the gain circuit right okay so we've got the Hampstead Odyssey here which is really interesting pedal we've got basically there's two sections to it we've got the gain in tone which is basically our gain stage and then we have the EQ which is the bass treble and our level so if we have it set up like a normal overdrive so I'm going to put the EQ post gain stage yeah I'm going to this these little things down here give us the level going into our gain stage so we can have sort of one time so stuff like a clip much you know two times gonna double our wave shape and what would the amplitude so it will clip easier or we guarantee five times which is much more game going to clipping but let's if we put on times two for the moment then we have our different symmetrical or into a sort of a symmetrical options for diet ripping yeah so let's leave it all symmetrical for the moment and if you can just have swaying and let's get risky target okay it won't stay tuned needs new strings [Music] [Applause] [Music] so now with the EQ after the gain stage I'm gonna manipulate a little bit and you'll hear the the settings basically they're Universal they affect everything okay [Music] [Music] [Applause] now what I'm gonna do I'm gonna shift that EQ before the game okay so what's gonna happen is as I roll up the bottom end those frequencies will actually go into clipping before the top-end frequencies as I change that and put top-end in and the bottom frequencies they will clip the top and frequencies will clip before the bottom end frequencies so if you remember when before we were talking about going through the different we took the diodes out and we just had all this Headroom the one with the diodes in all that Headroom as we turned it up that Hadrian wait yeah so what you'll hear as I turn the treble up with the diodes in it'll get to a point where start clipping and then the top end would just become more fuzzy as opposed to more treble II yeah okay yeah so here we go so now the EQ is now before the game [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] lazy bend up but now with that sound I'm just gonna put the EQ now yeah directly after it this is so cool so you're using the point of that is you're using the EQ to shape the texture of the overdrive yes if it's before yes if it's after you're using it to shape the EQ of the whole sound exactly and that's depending on where your EQ comes in your overdrive pedal is why that's relevant yeah and you can you have multiple EQ sections yeah you know like talking about the tooth screamer has got that that filter in there and then different tone shaping afterwards you know so how you where you put your filters and things in the circuit determines that you know the overall sound you know so interesting that with EQ if you have a look then so when we talked about having look at the waveform directly after the diodes but now without tones circuit in and when then we have a look at the waveform it's very different you know lots of time we've gone back to more of that sort of an elongated triangle shapes opposed to that hard edge thing yeah but you know the EQ is a massive part of shaping the waveform I would I would I've never been a fan of the waveform analysis thing yeah because each way form you look at is at a specific frequency exactly so if you decide to compare to overdrive pedals and you look at the way the clipping waveform at 1k that's going to be very different than what's happening at 80 Hertz yeah or at 10 K yeah it is depending on the design of the pedal so local foods air for the tube screamer as we as we go down in frequency you'll see that clipping stop stop yeah because it doesn't clip below exactly frequencies you might have you know a hard clipping pedal that Clips all the frequencies yeah and so in that you'll see it did stays pretty similar really really the same all the way through yeah that's fascinating it is it's incredible and a potential source of great confusion sure yeah but then again that's that's just that that's the design of filters and you know low-pass filters and things around that those games they're the game yeah and I think the whole point in this video is is so that you can just ask a slightly better question about what's happening in this yeah in this overdrive pedal you know I don't like cheap screamers well why might not you like tube screamers might might you not like the Headroom characteristics might you not like the EQ character sure might you not like the clipping characteristic yeah I think it helps you just to start to look at the pedals that you like in those that you like less and maybe understand a bit more about it yeah because it might be it's like well I've put this pedal on and it cuts through it sounds brilliant but the the actual character of the gain is is harsh and fizzy so you might say okay well I I liked the mid hump but I want a different characteristic in the gain stage or you might say I love the way this pedal feels I love the break up in it but I need you know I need something that that shows off a bit more bottom EQ and so it might be an accused the answer or it might be that you know you need somewhere that sort of designed you know to work that will work better with the way that you play so understanding yeah those those the terminology and how to relates to what you're doing is key yeah and understanding that it's all a bit of a melting pot as well so you can't just go I like hard clipped overdrive yeah absolutely because how they hard clip and we're at what frequency and a gain level yeah you know the quanta greater cell because most people think of the clonus low gain overdrive but yeah hide clipper well you never hit you never hear the gain up where we have it today nobody uses it like that yeah yeah I get why I don't know because there's a hard clipper and it sounds harsh and that's the oh yeah but it could mean some like I know that some Josh Scott Roy that's his main overdrive with it this gang cranked yeah yeah man if it's going into a very gained amplifier absolutely different story yes what that thing is okay if we're gonna talk about Headroom in a second but the way that the way that clips in the way that circuit is which is just genius as you you know you you can dial in the amount of clean signal that you you want you know around that gang tipping circuit in a and the result is which is what a lot of people compare it to the tube screamer mm-hmm we're talking about before how the - screamer has that low-pass filter so that the bottom frequencies aren't you know so we've got a similar thing in the clone where we have this this path around the outside of the gain circuit that keeps the low frequencies intact now they do it in very different ways but the end result is similar you know so yeah I think before we move on to Headroom I just want to take a quick look at the ages because the ages are something really interesting okay we're talking about just the way that we clip and things and we've had to look at silicon diodes we've had a lot of germanium diodes in the clone the MOSFETs that the the ages has LEDs right so LEDs same LEDs as we find here on our pedals the little lights LED stands for light emitting diodes and those LEDs they act as diodes but they have a different forward voltage huh so the different colored LEDs have different forward voltages so for example I think the red LED is I think 1.6 or 1.7 and as we go up through different colors we have different ranges of four voltages so that means that you can actually if you're using LEDs as the clipping stage in your pedal you can have different sounds for having different colored LEDs in there it's awesome so what the a just does is it gives us the option to throw in some of those LEDs as part of the game clipping circuit okay so you haven't I'm touching this one okay and it's got five modes right this first of all you can mix in your dry sound so we'll leave that off for a second yep I'll just check that that is actually what that's doing it's got five modes to low gain modes and three high gain modes so we'll go with the low game modes and your we're going to start down with symmetric silicon soft clipping okay and then we are going to LED soft clipping Heydrich so what so the first thing we know about silicon with that higher forward voltage is that it's going to clip a little bit later on then then say a germanium one so I'm expecting that to be quite a gentle with a low with a low gain into accepting to hit me on there there we go [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] does what it says on the tin yeah I'm silicon soft clipping compressed and smooth yeah LED soft clipping pushed open and sparkly okay right I you know conveniently concur with what it says in the manual sure say yeah so you can hear as the because the LED clipping has got a different ford voltage in the the silicon diodes so we have more Headroom there's more dynamic range before the clipping starts alright now we're going to listen to the silicon diodes in soft clipping mode yep and in a hard clipping so modes three and five symmetric silicon soft clipping symmetric and silicon hard clipping cool yep yep [Music] being [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] so they're saying with the hook with the in this instance with the hard clipping silicon symmetric with thick and chewy and with the soft clipping same business increased saturation and tighter right just finally I'm going to go from the hard clipped silicon yes to soft clipped led in the high game mode okay I'm expecting the LEDs to be a lot louder and a lot more kind of yeah yeah okay cool [Music] [Music] [Music] cool really cool we should we'll come back to the ages in another video because it's super versatile it's great sorry just to finish off I'm gonna mix some of the dry signal back in because we talked about a parallel mix in the context of the klom there okay so I'll put it on so this is really interesting I'll put it on I'll leave it on that high gain thanks a high-gain soft clip mode okay and then I'll mix in the dry [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] so what is really interesting about that there's a lot of people that don't like parallel blend because if you just take your your straight direct signal with nothing done to it and blend that in with your overdrive it can sound really harsh it sounds like too different it does because you get this massive transient yeah in your initial and no sustain but what they've done there is really clever so they're obviously curing it in some way I think there must be some sort of like a low-pass filter on there there's taking out those strategies because that is really really cool sounds great I deliberately turned it up at the end I think we probably clipped the mic preamps because it leads us into our final topic which is Headroom and we're going to do this really quickly because there's been a long video yeah and there's probably some of you out there feeling a little bit beaten by this point okay okay so so Headroom in basically what we're talking about with Headroom is dynamic range and I'll get you to play the Kalon for this because this is a really great example so when we're talking about those blocks right about we've got our input circuit we've got our game our tone shaping and then the output the clone has another circuit in it yeah which is a summing circuit so we were talking about before is that we've got our a gain circuit right without hard clipping diodes and then around the outside of that we've got another sort of direct circuit low-pass filter and part of the gain is we've got that dual gang pot on the on the gang control so underneath the game control on the clone instead of having one pot it's got two points exactly and as we turn that with the gain turned all the way up there's a second look clean blend a filtered clean blend that goes around like to that summing amplifier and as we turn that down then we get less of that clean band more of the clipping all right now what happens you've got those three circuits there's three lines basically hitting the summing amplifier and if we take those three and we add them together you have this massive increased range of amplitude right right so the summing amplifier has it's basically it's a elo 72 RPM but it's it uses is powered by this basically there's 27 volts in there to give this massive Headroom right so salt my mother's you plug a mountain volt in and there's a little power supply chip in there basically the sends a different power requirements of different parts of the circuit yeah now what happens though when you give that much voltage to that particular op-amp is it does this think it increases what we call the slew rate now in an op AB the slew rate is basically how fast when a voltage hits the input of the op amp and voltage I mean AC voltage that we get playing this yeah so get that up and down so you hit your string you hit the string and you're creating an AC voltage you're creating a positive and negative right so when the voltage hits that op amp a fast slew rate means that whatever voltage change we get on the input of that op amp we get the same voltage change on the output right along that takes it yeah so we it's basically the faster that is the it is how quickly that voltage change we see on the input appears on the output yep okay a slow slew rate we it basically we have this its own form of compression so for example the LM 308 chip that we find in the rat has a really slow slew rate and that is part of the cell value okay right however the genius of the clone and why so many people love it for that for its detail is because like that voltage is not just giving us this massive dynamic range but in these creasing the slew rate in that particular op amp so what happens is you can you can hear the printing of the pic that you're using on the string you not I mean it is that far and that direct stuff you turn the chloral for us and and just you know do your thing but you'll hear the detail and that's because of that characteristic of the clone [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] so why is that important if you think about the way that we are creating the distortion with those symmetrical hard clipping diodes right what's important about the Headroom in that stage is that every detail of those germanium diodes is coming through nothing no no part of that is getting lost in a slow through out of that op-amp so you know we changing the voltage is one thing to giving us that large dynamic range but that increase Lou right where things that it's so quick and direct it says for me it's like the dumbbell thing like so where you play an amplifier that is so detailed sometimes it can be hard to play because there's nothing you know there's nothing to give it a little bit of you know sort of compression and you know it's it's so direct that I remember what I first try to climb and it might be when I've had my first two clones because I got one got it done like this then everyone's going on about them bought another one I must be going mad unless they're amazing I got another one it's faint no it did one gig with it no and it might be because it's like now when I hear it it's you know like wow it's absolutely incredible it might be that my plane has developed since I tried it and I'm a bit more comfortable with that level of detail but it also depends what you use well you know it's heli faster quicker guitar than a strat sure and so you take fast quick guitar yeah yeah yeah let's trail and all of a sudden you're like so and also what we're talking about there is transients yeah those there's that initial pick on the string that sound you know what I like the sound of that pick that's coming through because the transistor are so quick so yeah when we talk about headroom we're talking about dynamic range but also has that added thing of the change in the slew rate in their particular op amp yes because I think the more common understanding of Headroom is as a relates to voltage yeah doesn't it end in terms of gain how much gain you can get before compression and nothing else is happening so the way I always think of Headroom yeah but actually all of these things that we're talking about today have a tonal relevance you know EQ can be heard but it can also be felt yeah and certainly went down stalking about slew rate of op amps of stuff I mean I'll tell you that having played the guitar for 30 years and having done that pedal show for five years now for years that's the first time I've ever heard anything about slew rate it's like something I understand it's something I have never thought about it's just I mean you should think about when you're choosing your overdrive pedal because it's like well however it does explain a lot about why I love the clone so really jazz it really does so Headroom then let's let's finish off we always talk about Headroom mmm-hmm we always talk about the fact that we like high Headroom yep what does that mean dynamic range it means that we can you can be dynamic with the with the signal going in but you know by the way that you play before we hit compression yeah we've got pedal on the board that demonstrates this easily and quickly better than any other we've done it before it's a prototype of something that Dan and I were looking at and it has the option of running at 9 18 and 24 volts yeah and many of you will know from certain modulation pedals certainly a lot of gain pedals that they do sound react very differently depending on what voltage you give them yep partly as a result of what he was just talking about the slew rate in the op amp is one element what happened yeah absolutely the other elements are the amount of gain you get the amount of clipping that happen more the amount of gain you get before clipping so if you imagine that we you know talking about our pounds before and they were hitting a you know that are clipping at a certain level now if we if we increase those rails there are sort of about you know 0 9 volts you're going to double that now so we're giving it that much more room to move before we clip you know depending on the circuit you know all that stuff you might have regulators in there so doesn't matter if you put nine or 20 four volts in there can i regulate everything at 5 volts that will make no difference depending it all depends on the circuit it does but this is a really good example so I'm gonna take you from which it worked wherever it's set now is at 24 so it'll be high Headroom massive dynamic range to low Headroom no dynamic range [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] in [Applause] [Music] [Music] that was awesome I deliberately turned the clone on at the end there so what you heard was 24 volts not much gain loads of master volley incredible Headroom and dynamic and when I stuck the coin for that that enabled the clone to do its thing gave even more dynamic in here you could hear the range of the clone before the clone was turned on we went round to 9 volts we reduced the Headroom and pedal we increase the gain which also reduces the Headroom in a pedal turn down the master increase the EQ a bit to get even more saturation and gain going through and the pedal started to gate it started to not be able to handle what it was being given mm-hmm hit it with a clone same story so I people ask us what Headroom is yeah that's it that's it and that that exists in pedals and it exists in amps so wherever you choose to write those rails yeah you know wherever you choose to push the Headroom to its limit is the maximum you'll get and that can happen in the pedal or in your amp too much if it's all just completely wide open and clean hard to play yeah Ikey yes but you know if you play sort of slightly softly and it's nice and then you hit hard and it just punches you in the chest and hurts everyone in the front row if it's all compressed low Headroom loads of gain you're not getting really any volume variants you know having much pick attack variants clearly all of us would probably live somewhere in between those two extremes yeah and finding your ratio of gain to Headroom is where you'll probably find your favorite overdrive pedal perfect low we showed today yeah we've talked about Headroom we talked about mid humps we touched on transparent it's related strongly to mid hump we talked about op amps we talked about clipping and we talked about diodes we talked about symmetrical clipping we talked about asymmetrical clipping we talked about LED clipping we talked about diode clipping we even talked about MOSFET clipping which I didn't know you can do yeah I don't know you more confused you're less confused I'm after doing the research for this so many more things make a lot of more sense to me the clones specifically like getting deep into that circuit looking what they're doing yeah I'm just in awe of the incredibly talented creative designers that are out there doing this stuff it's amazing I think I understand why I love tube screamers and clothes so much yeah yeah yep with strats yes yeah all right now we understand better why don't react to screamers particularly with the bridge pickup in this thing yeah you know yeah how are you you're tube screamer descent magic three guys what I really hope you enjoyed that please let us know in the comments a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the UK and Europe is Anderson's of Guildford in Surrey where you could get most of this on yeah that's not your client obviously yeah most of it I think yep in Australia penile Empire of Brisbane Queensland and we have some links we do if you click the description box down there are some links that go through to Sweetwater and if you use those links and buy stuff it helps us out yeah and also massive thank you to everyone that's gone to that pedal shows all calm and grab t-shirts and DNF dryers and mugs and hoodies we didn't even promote our own pedal tone what kind of marketers are we rubbish yeah journals all sorts of stuff strings oh nice a nice hoodie no really not I'm not a hoodie fan they are really nice I like them yeah cool yes and also message thank you to our patrons on patreon thank you guys we really appreciate it brilliant have a great day have a great week keep safe and we'll see you soon bye bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 261,053

Keywords: guitar overdrive, best overdrive pedal, choose overdrive pedal, how overdrive pedals work, OD pedal, tube screamer, Blues Driver, Klon Centaur, MI Super Blues Pro, Walrus Ages, Boss SD-1, Boss Super Overdrive demo, hard clipping, soft clipping, asymmetrical clipping, symmetrical clipping

Id: UcMtN8y2Hes

Length: 88min 43sec (5323 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020