Why Use A Valve Overdrive Pedal? [Tube-y Or Not Tube-y, That Is The Question]

mick what does my overdrive pedal really need more valves done more valves [Music] boom [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] get in that was awesome hey everyone welcome to that pebble show danny mick here hola man that was great you must have a bit of gain yeah right then um valve overdrives what do valve overdrives do for you uh but before that housekeeping indeed first of all thank you so much for watching please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed also a massive thank you to anyone that's going to thatpedalshowstore.com and grab t-shirts and merchandise and strings and pedals and stuff that helps keep us going and enables us to do what we do please do that please also go to thatpedalshop.com in the us if you are in the us and you want to buy pedals and stuff please buy it from there wonderful yeah if the voices sound a bit funny today it's because i have to put some noise reduction on them because we've got a bit of hiss going on we do we've got some volume we've got some lovely first of all we need to introduce that spectacular old thing yeah so two amps today because we want to be hearing our various valve overdrives into a clean amp behold 1964 fender vibe reverb with the prescribed jbl whatever it is 130d f efg cfd speaker the the 15 watt jbl um 15-inch jbl should i say and our marshall 50-watt plexi which is just attenuated a bit so we can crank it so it's a little bit crunchy idea being we're going to be hearing these pedals into a clean platform and also a crunchy one um they also have a couple of transistor pedals we do just side by side until we can go through a few things and differences and whatnot yeah because that's the core of the question really thanks to ainsley lister for uh lending us the vibrover and also for selling this guitar indeed okay questions today then be funny when he comes to pick that thing back up just oh sorry mate so i don't know where it is it's uh fans borrowed it for a bit yeah it's it was there one minute it was gone the next anyway so what the questions today probably then are well then they're they're many fold one of the things that often cross crops up in the tps comments is oh you guys you know you know you're playing all these tube amps and you like all these flashy old guitars and then you just ruin it all with a solid-state overdrive with a transistor overdrive man if you cared about tubes you'd only use tubes and blah blah blah so that's that's one of the sort of issues that pushes us down the valve route secondly actually valve pedal overdrives aren't that common yeah if you think about the great pedal overdrive tones in history they tend to be tube screamers and fender black panel amp stevie ray vaughan they tend to be fuzz faces and jimi hendrix they tend to be all the people down the years who've used normal overdrive and fuzz pedals into a valve app but then we have this opportunity to use a valve overdrive or preamp into the front of the amps what's your been your experience of valve overdrives to date daniel uh the big thing for me is differentiating between a valve overdrive pedal and a valve preamp yep they're very different things a valve overdrive pedal is made to sound awesome plugged into the front of an amplifier whereas a valve preamp is meant to lift the volume lift the gain enough to to hit the phase inverter hit the power stage and then voila um it's very rare that i find a valve preamp that i like plugged into the front but there are exceptions some manufacturers do make them so that you can switch yeah but these are dedicated valve overdrive pedals yeah i think you could make the case that some of them could be used in the preamp function but it's not what they're primarily for sure they are designed to be used in the front of the amp similarly uh regular viewers of the show will know that we are massive fans of simon jarrett kingsley products um we tend to like his preamps we also like his overdrive pedals we've not got any kingsley stuff on the board today because we use loads of simon stuff everyone knows we love his preamps they'd be our first choices valve preamps and he makes some really nice valve overdrive pedals as well we thought we'd give some other brands a shot given that there's a few new things there are a few new things it's very interesting so the question is you know what does this what does a valve overdrive give you that a normal regular overdrive give you and to whip too we've been given the opportunity each to choose one normal overdrive pedal that we would you know would be a sort of go-to choice dan you've chosen i've chosen d m drive because it takes all my boxes uh me too i would also choose the dnm drive but given that he's chosen it i've gone for the duelist by um kingtone um which puts a tube screener type thing in one side and a blues breakery type thing in the other side and i find it does most of what i need so all the time we'll just be calling back home so to speak sure to see what their what the valve is going to offer us so of course i suppose the sort of expectation the cliche the the thing that would seem logical is the valve overdrive is going to give you more warmth feel all the things that we associate with the valve sound and that's what comes through in the comments that say you idiots how dare you put a solid state overdrive into a lovely valve amp what you need is valves sure so that's our assumption isn't it yeah the problem with that statement is that the valve is a component in the circuit you know what i mean and and attributing a specific sound to any component is folly yeah you know um you know there's a thing that you know there's the soft clipping of the tubes actually they're hard clipping you know they clip asymmetrically you know but in the right circuit and the right filtering they're wonderful yeah you know they're just it's all about the design it's all about the some of the parts and these devices that we use in front of guitar amps are there to enhance the guitar amp not to change it not to completely get rid of what the guitar amp is doing it's to enhance it and to push it and to push all those things that we really like to a new height yeah clearly not everything with valves in it is great mig jets for example quite good for buzzing around not so good for playing your guitar through very good very good where do you want to start there mate uh i reckon was just out of the tube driver so do i yeah so we bought this recently um offer a lovely chap who also sold us the um custom shop base breaker and he said i've got a few pedals for sale as well uh and i said what you got so you've got this i'll have it so bk butler um tube overdrive famous wydan well wow uh david gilmour i think eric johnson's probably one of the most famous users of them yeah um wonderful wonderful thing yeah early early tube overdrive pedal mains powered sold under a bunch of brands over the years bk butler built them originally i think they ended up as dean markley for a while and i do believe bk butler is still making them oh right yeah so they signed this one he signs them all apparently does he yeah you can find an unsigned one as well an absolute fortune yeah like jim marshall posters um so this is kind of interesting here let's have a listen to it it's the only time i met jim was uh early one nam and he was there getting all the posters ready signing a poster yeah um okay let we'll give you a listen to both the amps dan if you play uh well i'll tell you what they after i press the button okay [Music] that was the fender uh actually if you hear it with the strat it's a bit cleaner than that [Music] fighting with tuning a bit today um is the marshall then [Music] deliberately hairy overdriving a little bit raucous around the edges because what we want to hear is the difference that the pedals make okay start with the fender then here's i'll switch the tube driver on while he's playing and you can hear what happens [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] it's quite hard work youtube driver yeah rich creamy goodness sounds it's very uh so the pots have got uh sort of indents so that yeah and and one indent is a big movement most most people who use them tend to run the eq's pretty low right i've got a feeling eric johnson runs them off right or at least pretty low so do you like that dan it's it's rich creamy goodness okay shall we see let's just have a listen to the dnm drive and just okay how how a million miles away or not we are okay so both sides of the drive because i think that's kind of where we are right tube driver [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] uh dna feels more direct yeah and has got that lovely mid not squashy not as squishy yeah not a yeah um yeah they're different but they're i think the best tank right they do one thing i like about the tube driver is it does give you some of that kind of crapping out especially in the bottom end let's try it with the stratosphere we go to the marshall [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Applause] [Music] [Music] definitely feels different yeah it's lovely i'm going to switch over to the marshall um and i'll just turn the guitar down a little bit so you can hear what happens when you when you get off of the volume on the guitar [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] sorry i struggle a bit with the with that in the marshall sure you've got to commit to that you really do and on a good day i can commit to it and on some days i'm a little bit like [Music] um yeah man it definitely conveniently enough sounds and feels chewy doesn't it it sure does it has a there's a chew to it do you like it yeah i do very much um how much gain has it got go on i think yeah loads and there's also a bias control on the back yeah yeah [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] things [Music] it's really cool it's really cool it's a very different experience than uh than the d m drive certainly the dual list i mean the dual list is gonna sound in this setting um tube screaming [Music] [Music] [Music] tell you what's interesting about that is with the with the eq set that way it does have a real low mid push right i wonder if that's one of the reasons eric johnson likes it so much yeah right liked it likes it don't know if it's still a current thing for him yeah interesting interesting the because that eq is so powerful um i expect there's a lot of different sounds in there yeah um yeah but fundamentally it sounds superb i think i love the chewiness to it i think valve overdrive one normal pedal is nil so far for me okay how do you feel about it yeah a grade a grade just you know for a ridiculous generalization yeah yeah where are we going next then let's let's go to the columnar so uh we've been using the valbrook uh delay pedals for a while on the show space time space time and it's such a they're fantastic this is his the clooner his high voltage tube driver and uh i was told about this by our dear friend owen barry hmm he says man you got to try out that thing he's uh using that pedal on his board at the moment playing with the chicks nice yeah formerly different kind of chicks indeed and indeed now just the chicks just the ticks um all right so this is i mean what we should have said is all of these pedals are running high voltage valves inside them indeed mostly 12x7 cc 83s with the exception of the love bomb which is not that it's a different kind of small preamp tube right kaluna there kaluna um [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] oh [Music] [Music] hey absolutely loads more high end in that yeah i don't know whether that's just a an eq thing [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] two [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey [Music] foreign [Music] and i'll tell you what i mean the clone is fantastic the jewel is stacked is amazing tremendous amount of fun um again i mean i was i was hammering away on some chords there just to give the full the full fat approach i'm going to just this is guitar as an e flat i'm not massively familiar with it i'm just going to switch to some humbuckers a minute nice and just mess around with the controls um i do love e-flat but it is a bit of a challenge when you're trying to it's very slinky when you don't play in it every day it's hard to find a um like grounds for comparison yeah like a normal context so let's uh try some hamburgers [Music] um [Music] [Music] so [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Applause] speaker is getting me right in the air hole master's doing the same to me that is a loud a loud speaker really nice [Music] so [Music] that's excellent it is wonderful that is really really nice to play yeah it's the eq on all this on all the valve pedals is super interesting yeah yeah um [Music] because it's part of the gang stage of the pedal yeah you know and so it's not just adjusting frequency really cool really really cool okay um let's go black star then this this is the um department 10 i don't know probably as much as a year ago maybe even more right uh black star came out with their department 10 pedals the simplest of which is a single boost with no clever business in it oh that thing's fantastic yeah this adds some clever stuff if you want to learn about that clever stuff hit up the black star website and check out some of the features there it's got a usb port you can do things it has a direct out if you want to go straight to desk via xlr we're going to just concern ourselves with what's here on the top panel very good um which is two sides of overdrive right i think the one on the left is sort of boost the overdrive the one on the right is higher overdrive okay um and we've got a bunch of options as you can see daniel start defender again shall we [Music] boop two [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so so [Music] lots lots and lots and lots of crunchy good ampy it sounds excellent really excellent that might be my fave thus far certainly the most um twee cobbler the two channels is very very cool yeah and there's two gain options on each channel so you can have it clean we started off like a clean boost really um and then ended up a really really really heavy overdrive and just again to say there are lots more options via the app they've got and other stuff which is not really our world so we're just going what's on the top panel there um super cool super cool eq is right where you want it eq is spartan uh black star since inception has had its isf control which is i don't know broadly more american broadly more british sounding okay it's a little more complex than that but you can sort of it's a master eq to shift the range of dominant frequencies so it's kind of more mid more middly or more bassy and trebly wasn't isf and 90s dance man you're unbelievable um yeah lots of singing about cows as well anyway yeah that's fantastic lots of like there um let's just have a listen to that in comparison with the jewelers in the dnm drive then dan i'm scared now [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Music] hey [Music] there is definitely something more familiar about the regular overdrive pedals there is in the way they put the mid-range across yeah they're slightly smoother sounding the what i like about all the valve overdrive so far is that they're hanging out there a bit more right the base is a bit flubbier here and there so yeah on the tube driver it was definitely fuller on the luna the treble frequencies stay kind of present and expressive on the edge of the pick no doubt you could affect all of this with eq and gain levels but yeah there is something dare we say more organic in the presentation so far it's very nice i'm actually surprised that at what's happening into the marshall i thought it would be an ungodly mess oh wow okay just because it's over driving a bit more and when you stuff loads of gain and extra bottom end into that yeah it's kind of now it's holding together it really is yeah sounding lovely okay um double decker then gurus you might remember gurus for doing a really nice echo rec type pedal yes a few years back italian company so this is a somewhat similar to the uh department 10 black star is a dual sided and i think they're very much going after the crank marshall sound with this okay i think is that is the case i'll go first this time dan you're my guest are you i'm funny a bit hard actually today i'm hot it's loud you're on fire young man is what you are ow relentless overdrive what could be worse for a guitar player [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] very marshally sounds glorious yeah i think but it's a sound that i'm definitely not familiar with something much in terms of feel right which is not to say i mean i hope it sounds okay but i am struggling with what to play okay because it's not a sound that is in my wheelhouse vocab okay see what you think [Music] so [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] hey [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] yeah i was struggling with the higher gain ranges of it because i was losing any feel so i turned the gain right down sure gave you some space to work in yeah it's easier then i think yeah and then we had a quick through all the others with the exception of the love bomb which we'll come on to in a minute um it's it so impressions thus far there's like you said before there's a familiarity i think the duelist is absolutely superb uh there's a familiarity with the solid state stuff yeah but i'd surprise surprise feels more like an overdrive pedal yeah yeah but i think like into the amp that's sort of limiting a bit i dig in and just goes black whereas there's a squishiness to the valves that especially the tube driver actually is the most isn't it yeah yeah it's the most squished might be to do with how we've got the bike i i don't really understand how it works so it's at two o'clock where everything sounds best yeah but i'm i'm super impressed i think they all sound fantastic yeah because it's fair to say um [Music] you weren't expecting this were you no you were expecting them to all be a bit rubbish because it's too much going into the front of an amp i wasn't expecting them to be as good as they are yeah let's listen to the love bomb then now the reason we've left this until last we've got a bit of a power issue and we've been struggling to get it quiet along with all the others as an earth issue so we're just going to plug it in now and get going on that vein um we're going to stick with the marshall we think so part of the issue might be with defender because it's a really old amp and it's kind of not really transformer and all that stuff we've tried to figure out we can't so it's you'll just hear it through the marshall um this is a friend of ours gareth who is a really really brilliant producer um and he teamed up with a friend of his i don't suppose you brought the paper in no and i'm sorry we can't remember the friend's name who's the engineer engineer friend yeah and they've collaborated on this as you can see they've gone for an unimposing case size what i like in principle about this is it has a bunch of controls on it that we don't normally see on overdrive pedals right and by looking at the pictures you can t at the controls you can tell gareth is a producer yeah what have we got high and low pass filters we've got power sag we've got drive we've got bias similar to the tube driver but the low and the high pass filters stepped there off this is obviously a shaping device yeah um i shall put down the lester daniel help us rock [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] hmm it sounds how it looks it sounds utterly massive it's unbelievable um the colonel sounds massive in fact they all have the ability to sound massive what i like about that is i was in the middle part of dan's playing there i was turning it on and off and it was almost like it you couldn't tell if it was on and off and i was doing that just to see neutral how neutral it was because what did we hear there we heard that the standard overdrive pedals are the ones that change the tone the most yes in terms of the basic eq of the thing right yep sort of stands to reason in a way because all you've got is a single tone pot whereas on all of the tube uh or valve overdrive pedals well pretty much all of them you've got complete eq and that's really important with the valve overdrive isn't it yeah because of the way the nature of the overdrive at different frequencies some of those extra controls on the love bomb particularly the power sag and the bias take a bit of getting used to sure and they seem subtle in their operation but i think those are the controls where you go ah i just need a bit yeah okay like i don't want a whole load more bass i don't want to it's a fantastic thing to open it up a little bit in a certain area it's completely a field thing can i just try some humbuckers please um i just want to hear how it reacts to the humbuckers [Music] i need some help [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] hello [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] flipping heck yeah big in every way we often talk about fidelity one of the things we love so much about the chase bliss automaton preamp um some other pedals that we could probably mention the the it's definitely the case i think with the standard overdrive pedals that when you've got a huge great dynamic open sound with all the frequencies there the pedal necessarily closes it in a bit that's what a lot of people don't really love about overdrive pedals especially if they really love the cortana ramp yeah to a different degree i think all of the valve overdrive pedals that we've played today do that less sure the love bomb does it the least yeah would you agree absolutely it's it has the highest fidelity yeah i don't think there's any doubt about that no it's amazing if you want that i think the tube driver maybe has the least [Music] yeah it's the closest to a normal overdrive pedal and yet it still has a squishiness and the saggy thing yeah this is where the ridiculous adjectives start coming out like squishy but this is the thing right so if you imagine we've got what we've got one two three there's four valve overdrive pedals there that use the same valve yeah they all sound vastly completely different right so it's it's about the design and like the tube driver you can that's the sound that you've heard yeah on so many albums here it's like oh okay and it's instantly recognizable the the colonel and the uh dual drive could almost be used they're so flexible could almost be used for anything can almost be used just to beef up a clean sound a little bit yeah or to a to a heavy distortion the double decker for me is a bit more narrow focused for that higher gain tighter yeah tone i have to say i preferred it hands down with the gain lower yeah i think as the game gets up it started to get a bit confused might be that with some combination of the other controls on there you can you can dial some of that out but i really liked it i loved that the lower game spectacular yeah love bomb for me though it really shows off how good gareth ears are yeah you know um but whenever that was on it there's it's adding something really fantastic i i don't think for a second gareth is expecting anyone to put it on their pedalboard or if they are they're going to need a whole pedalboard for it because it is slightly large i think it's it's life may predominantly be in studios and recording but um i guess you could use it live then i might have a go if you're a minimalist that a delay pedal yeah you could see um you know white stripes yeah right out there with just that yeah yeah memory man wicked yeah interesting so um i don't know whether it's because i'm a bit tired i don't know whether it's because of what i'm i've was struggling to play a bit today so i don't know if there's a feel thing if it's a volume thing if it's a what i didn't feel as home as at home as i do with my normal collection of solid state yeah boxes yeah well could be the unfamiliar amp yeah or with the above abs yeah all of the above but tonally really really really enjoying everything that's going on there in terms of detail infidelity wonderful so what does the valve overdrive give you gives you that yeah do you like that be super interested to hear what you think in the comments indeed indeed love to hear about your rigs and how you're running your valve overdrive pedals into one rig really cool really cool thank you so much for watching really hope you enjoyed that again please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed um a massive thank you to our patrons on patreon yes thank you very much um you'll get some of what we do as a podcast certainly the vcq every monday uh we also do regular giveaways to our patrons so if you like the sound of that hit up patreon.com that pedal show indeed and again a massive thank you to anyone that's gone to thatpedalshowstore.com and grab some merch grab some t-shirts and guitar pedals and strings and all of that stuff all the stuff all that stuff similarly if you're in the us and you want to buy some pedals head to that pedal shop.com where there are pedals amps accessories and a whole bunch of information so go there it helps us greatly indeed a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the uk and europe anderson's music of guildford in surrey yes lovely lovely chaps they are too and our dear friends in australia would be pedal empire of brisbane in queensland lovely yes i've decided dan we're going to make an end thing so we don't have to do this every week oh okay yeah that'd be good wouldn't it yeah i think we could do it with flashy graphics and like be really 21st century about it okay let's do let's do 20th century about it yeah yeah that's more us isn't it brilliant yeah fantastic uh we hope to see you on monday for viewers comments and questions we can discuss all this or anything else that's on your mind indeed lovely have a great day we'll see you soon bye [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 68,673

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Id: b7UyIqSZLlI

Length: 61min 29sec (3689 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022