Why We Love Low-Gain Overdrive [And So Do You!]

so mick are you confused about low gain overdrive pedals i'm confused about everything done [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone welcome to that pedal show down here mick here hello that was very nice ah reconnecting with red very very very nice i'd say what i enjoyed about that especially was the dynamic hello which we'll talk about indeed we're talking about low gain overdrives today and whatever transparent means uh and unicorns and mermaids indeed uh before that some housekeeping indeed uh first of all thank you so much for watching if you haven't subscribed please do yep um and what else uh oh yeah go to that pedal show store i was just thinking about my jeans are a bit dirty you notice my jeans are a bit dirty i don't normally wear dirty jeans it's a big disclaimer i i walk the dog at lunch time and um it's really muddy and i didn't take my gators right okay because obviously i own gators right i didn't even notice yeah that's where i am yeah yeah i don't know it's muddy anyway um please go to that pedal show store and buy things like t-shirts and pedals and changes no jeans would be nice to sell jeans tell every fan merch it's the primary way we fund this show um also please visit that pedalshop.com in the usa if you're in the usa and you want to buy some pedals hit up that pedal shop.com where you can buy stuff probably none of this stuff but other stuff indeed i thought we'd have a look today at some low gain overdrives and just discuss that why low gain overdrives are important what they can do for your playing um mike and i talk a lot about dynamics and that sort of stuff we're going to get into that but primarily uh a low gain overdrive is something that has i find it gives you the ability to um interface into your amplifier get a dynamic level of gain that you can control with the volume or with the pick but most importantly for me it's not a boost i'm not boosting into the amplifier i'm not driving the amp gain structure i'm actually a really great use for logo and average drivers is actually to pull things back a little bit yeah right so what i thought we'd do so that you know everyone can hear that we're not actually pushing the pedals is that when we set up these sounds today we're going to make them all a little bit quieter than the direct sound into the amplifiers and the actual amps yep okay so again the maximum amount of headroom from the apps i think before we get into that when we say gain yep what do we mean in this instance because in audio terms gain simply means more yeah more more amplitube we're talking about distortion we're talking about the way the notes distort and limit and clip and all that stuff yeah it's an important distinction because in audio terms if you're talking about gain you just mean you mean make the signal louder or increase the amplitude of the signal what we're talking about is when you get to that point and it starts overdriving so when we use the term gain we it is uh replaceable with overdrive indeed indeed um yeah cool so i just i assembled an array of some really interesting uh pedals that do a really great job at low gain so the low gain thing as opposed to a medium or a high gain thing if you think of high gain as distortion medium as overdrive but the lower gain thing for me is like a subtle dynamic overdrive now obviously there's a million more different pedals that we could have chosen from and the reality is a lot of higher gain overdrives work great as low gain overdrives all you do is turn the overdrive down all you do is you turn that that gain distortion down what we got on there that does loads of overdrive does the nordland do loads of overdrive uh the northern does loads of average i've got a bluetooth let's just define our terms a sec okay and say okay we would call this a higher gain sound we would call this a medium gain sound and we would call this a low gain sound love it never actually plugged the nordland in um so let's see if it works with this dan do you want to play sure is it a good one to use do you think it really is have you tried it i have okay yeah that's going to turn the drive down to zero if you can't see that this one here is the drive knob and you can see the white thing pointing at um no o'clock okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] keep going [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] they start a show on low gain overdrives and they're already into heavy heavy overdrive i think it's purveyors of modern metal tones may disagree but for dan and i that is a high gain overdrive sound indeed it's the sound what you're hearing there is all the clipping in the pedal the amps have very little to do with it at that point because it's dance telly and because of the nature of that guitar it still stays present and alive um so let's i'm going to go back from there and i'm going to get to what we would call a medium overdrive sound okay lovely so i'll start where we were we had both of these pedals on [Music] so [Music] um [Music] so much high-end today i'm not quite sure what that's about anyway um we spanned a lower medium gain yep to a medium gain sound there would you agree i would agree and what you also heard was um the tonality of the overdrive changing a bit as we stack two pedals into one another so we're talking about generalities here aren't we we're not we're not talking about precision there is no point at which this high gain becomes this medium game exactly this low game we're talking about an ever-changing spectrum of 50 shades of game right and but i think it's fair to say that very heavy overdrive sound we had is a higher gain sound what you just heard is a medium gain sound so where does then where do we get to low gain what does that mean the way i define low gain is a tone that is clean when you pick light yeah and as you dig in you start to hear it break up yeah all right now i'm not talking about a fuzz where you back the volume off and it's really clean and then it goes you know woolly mammoth i'm talking about being able to have the tone but your volume basically all the way up and then being able to control a level of distortion with your plane dynamics yeah now of course you can do that with the fuzz as long as you don't turn the volume past 8.7 on a strap yeah and i guess in that you can then classify a really high gain first as a low gain overdrive exactly yeah yeah exactly so it's question of degree all right um so where does that leave us then where do we go from here well what i wanted to do is is go through some these all i've got a different thing about them and basically go through and show you what i think these are really really good at all right so let's start from the right to left this is the um uh the bondi effect sick as we've featured this on the show before it's basically really nice clone with bass and treble right okay so we can control the bass and treble um what you mean down is it's an overdrive inspired by the famous and fabled consent that's what i'm meant to say yeah yeah of course yeah of course making down disclaimer here but i really like the uh in the lower gain settings it's a it's a really lovely and dynamic but that of course it's got that the famous 1k 1k thing but then being able to sorry for those of you who don't know that's why it's ridiculously cryptic the clone center has a pronounced one kilohertz mid frequency kick yeah and a lot of people leave that pedal as they're always on pedal because it it just it works so well especially with fender type amplifiers um but because you've got a bass and treble control not just a treble you can it's quite easy to make this integrate with a wider range of amplifiers so i'll get you to play yeah i will i'll probably grab some humbuckers in a sec as well just so that we're not always on single coils because it's it gets really interesting bookers indeed i'll get you to play and i'll set this up um for a really nice low game and i've discussed it afterwards [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] uh [Music] so so that's a really great example of being able to control the dynamics and the level of clipping simply by how hard you play because of this the that lovely mid-range on that um when it breaks up you really hear that the breakup with that in that frequency yeah um and to me that sort of it's the epitome of a really nice low gain overdrive it's the sort of thing that a lot of people can leave on for that you know for the whole thing so that when they're um when they're digging in it's almost doing the same job as a compressor yeah right so you get a bit of of that exactly whereas with like with that off when you dig in because the amps have got plenty of headroom it's like it's loud loud loud yeah but with a nice low gain overdrive you can have it on and almost use that to control the overall level of everything we've got a nice lot of high-end coming through i don't know whether i just did my ears in in the last video but um try good old less pronounced high-end and humbuckers a sec we'll just see what the experience of that is okay maybe it's just because the acid is out i'm hearing it from the two rock are you yeah okay almost sounds like there's a buffer on somewhere but i think it's not that i think it's just this just is what it is it's mud on your jeans it's the mud on my jeans [Music] you can really hear the mid nose on it with this guitar yeah can you hear can you feel how that mid is sort of breaking up before everything else yeah wonderful yeah let's pick up [Music] it's so playable yeah compared to a clean tone because of everything you just said yep because you get that bit of compression and yet you've got all the dynamic of a clean tone and it's it's still quieter than the clean tone yeah so outside yeah i think and that's for me the main thing about a really nice low gain overdrive is where you still have you get all the dynamics and the harmonics but it's happening without smashing the front end of the amplifier yeah that's sort of a piece of the epitome of what a really nice dynamic uh logo overdrive is so moving on to the nordland uh which is the odrc goodness did that just appear can you believe that it just continued man it was like on it it was like teleportation so kai tichibana who designed one of our favorite overdrive pedals the nobles odl1 he designed this and basically it's the it's the nordland uh odrc there's a few different variants of it yeah but he's designed um he believes in this the original design there's a few shortcomings that he's fixing yeah one has a one there's a version of this with the mid control and a version of it without this is with yeah but it's also got a control in here called odc which is um overdrive compression so you can control the amount of compression that the the clipping has really really clever now what i really like about this you've got bass middle and treble with a pedal such as this with really powerful eq you can marry it into the amplifier so it's more or less sort of just blends in seamlessly come on [Music] uh [Music] do [Music] oh um [Music] ah [Music] i'm presuming there's less compression round to the right on that knob exactly uh and how does that feel so tell me i mean it feels great it's really interesting that you can with uh that's designed for like an amplifier that's got loads of transients and loads of headroom so it's not it's less fizz yeah the break up it's really really clever such as the two rock for example indeed um okay let's have a go with humbuckers then could you i'm interested in that control because from a from a sort of playability point of view it's that feel of the overdrive that appeals to me and doesn't appeal to me so much or to put it a better way is is perhaps more relevant in different situations yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] oh [Music] even with the base around there it takes a bit of base off yeah it's very shapey it yeah which is kind of what you want in an overdrive yeah or at least it's what you want as the gain gets higher sure maybe less so at lower gain yeah i think the the eq is very tweakable so you can get in there and because don't forget we've reduced the level yeah you know we're not we're not at unity gain so we're trying to hear how the pedal is breaking up as opposed to pushing the amp um but yeah i think it's i think with a really powerful eq that compression thing is really clever um but that sort of thing that you can get to blend in to sort of almost whatever amp you're using yeah i mean for me anyway playing rhythm stuff especially under singing you want a bit more of that compression so you're not getting quite so much edge edge on the note so if i i'll just demonstrate that a sec if this is with the least amount of compression in the overdrive [Music] it's a bit quieter yeah because it's compressed it's exactly that and it's also uh taking away the edge so i guess the treble frequencies are going into harder compression exactly are we losing the transients that sort of stuff but that's that's what that compressor is doing and to have it continuously variable yeah is super because it might be you know how it goes and you doing your set one night you got exactly the same settings you had last night but all of a sudden your guitar seems louder or much quieter than stepping on a different pedal or radically changing any major settings at that point is too much of a change just changing the the clip characteristic which is what it is yeah yeah it's really clever really nice um okay blues driver i mean we've used this a thousand times it's just a a really great it's still shapey it still has mid-range in it this the water version has a little bit more bottom end um but loads of really great guitar players over the years um uh our dear friends annie timmons for example this is an always-on pedal for him and he uses his volume control to to clean up still remains really dynamic um but i mean i used my blues driver i had a kelly modder blues drawer that i used for man forever and i just found that the lower gain settings on it was a really beautiful natural feeling like i have a drive we've got this far into the video we haven't said transparent in earnest once yet yeah because that means something different yeah exactly exactly okay so i've got my overdrive on you can't even hear it can't even see it [Music] you [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] it's a classic yeah i turned the game down even even lower than you had it yeah and so it's it's barely beyond boost territory at this point but as you proved it's still doing the clipping in the pedal and i and that's the way a lot of people use that blues driver just to give it a bit of shape that little bit of clipping yeah um but it's a really clever design just to give it that sort of a natural vibe uh the natural clipping vibe which i think is magic [Music] up [Music] so [Music] a really great example of when you dig in it just gives you more yeah dirt but when you back off you're not losing volume you know it's just dynamics yeah it's right on that point isn't it it's right as you said earlier on it's right on that point of where it can be clean yeah or it can be overdriven yep whereas if you whack the overdrive up a bit more you'd have to start using the guitar volume and then it will changes indeed which is no bad thing it's just a different way to do it okay greer amps light speed again we've used this a hundred times at the show it's really fantastic but the it's designed you know there isn't a ton of gain in it but it is specifically designed to be dynamic at lower gain levels right um but also i think it's one of the most shall we say transparent it's one of the most natural all right what does transparent mean so i've got a cat for your pigeons ex right it is when you turn it on and turn it off you should be able to set it to a point we can almost not even tell if it's on right that the eq shaping and everything is is really natural and basically the input shape is very similar to the output shape it's for all those people who love the sound of their guitar and their amp for whatever reason yep and when they step we they we you us all of us step on the overdrive pedal it doesn't radically change the tone indeed and if you think back to your childhood for a second or when you first bought your first extreme distortion pedal the experience of doing that is like yeah okay here we are nice oh my god it's a jar of wasps i don't know what to do so working back from that man i was it's a jar of wasps yes and then i don't know maybe your tastes change maybe you stick with a jar of wasps but whatever at some point you do get to the point where or you might get to the point where you say actually what i want i really like this guitar and am i spent loads of money on it yeah what i want is just a bit more exactly that exactly that and it doesn't mean that any of these aren't that you know we're all still talking about logan average drivers but the transparent thing is a different yeah thing right it's just it's just taking what you've got in this game but you're saying the light speed is really good at that is in in the transparent game it's in the transparent game yes yeah here you go [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] um [Music] it's really good in it to coin a term it's pretty amp like yeah yeah it really is um for me i mean nick rear has done a lot of amazing things this really is a masterpiece uh and because it's amp like you can do things like you know if we if we by amp like what do we mean we mean it it feels like the way an ant breaks up and compresses and compresses that that compression that limiting is is everything about the way it feels under the fingers yeah you might have noticed me grimace when the pedal was off i hit a g chord and the amp went off because it's got loads of headroom it's low it's a tacky and it's a great thing great sound but it's by engaging the pedal we introduce that low gain and we take away that massive transient indeed indeed um and so you know with with an app that's with a pedal that's that uh amp-like in its response it's you can do things like stack into it so uh you know just if we with the sick ass which has got that lovely 1k bump in it um if you play and i just throw that in okay i want to hear the um lightspeed with the telly in a second but um be nice to here yeah let's stack these up and see what happens [Music] um [Music] that's a lovely sound i mean really beautiful really nice under the fingers um there are people who get confused when we say that you've said it before and people go what are you talking about you can't possibly change the feeling of the strings under the fingers with an overdrive pedal no you can't what you can do is change your perception of how hard you hit the string and what comes out of the amp indeed that's what we mean about what do we feel under the fingers yeah it's actually what comes back out of the app after you hit the strings with the plectrum yeah is actually what it is yeah totally but it does what what i find it does the reason we talk about it feeling under the fingers is it because it gives you i don't know i'd introduce a term elasticity where you're a bit freer with what you play because nothing has a hard edge on it so you can be a bit kind of looser with everything yeah and it's such a huge part of the difference between a clean sound and an overdriven sound indeed and whether you're you know eye popping jc 120 clean or absolutely gone what would that be square wave fuzz with no edge whatsoever right somewhere in that spectrum is one of those points that makes you feel good when you play absolutely and it's all different for all of us yeah absolutely you know different guitars different techniques um but yeah i think the lightspeed is a really wonderful example of of a amp-like sounded nice stacked can i hear the light speed with the telly yeah yeah [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] [Music] ah [Music] super impressive nice yeah really cool i've just worked out where i can hear so much treble from the two rock because we've moved it oh okay we did the last video wasn't it yes in the middle all right now it's right behind you yeah you're right right very good because i'm not i'm it's where i am it's absolutely divine yeah yeah it's beautiful it's just it's uh it's doing it to me in the air hall to quote george clinton okay he's talking about the funk obviously he is he is um so this is the red snapper so um brian manner from mannatone i've been a fan of his forever he makes these beautiful pedals he's got a couple of um the absolute classics one of them being the red snapper it is like a really it's it's based around a tube screener with some different uh you know like asymmetrical clipping and um this is the 20th anniversary um version which is done in 2016. so if you think about the way a tube screamer um you know cuts off a bit of bottom end uh cuts off a little bit of top end it has this really lovely um sort of mid upper lower mid if that makes sense like it's between 700 and 900 hertz but the thing about this is that the way it breaks up when you dig in is just flipping so dynamic um yeah i i love it in terms of what can affect that so it's basic design is apologies for any over technicalization here an op-amp and some clipping diodes yes no not going there let's just hear it okay have a listen play i'll play me strat in a minute actually because if it's if it's that it deserves a yeah yeah let's actually grab the trap [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] down [Music] boom [Music] do [Music] food [Music] [Music] it's nice i mean we are playing a lot of lead stuff here up on the high strings where you get that you know where it's helpful to have a little bit of overdrive and a bit of sustain and all of that yeah but the difference is with with the a really great setting low gain overdrive how dynamic it is when you get up there yeah you know what i mean you can say a lot yeah just by changing that bit of pressure what's spinning me out a bit is the amps for a certain volume and dan has deliberately set the pedals to be a bit quieter i think what that's doing is it's not pushing the bottom end through the amps so the amps are losing quite a bit about men just simply by not being loud yeah and you're doing two things by making it quieter not only are you reducing the dynamic range of the amp itself yeah because it's quieter yep so you don't have as much pick yes you're also reducing the dynamic range within the pedal because it's clipping so actually your your option for what can you can drive from here is reduced quite significantly if you turn it up [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] do [Music] you sort of do two things you give yourself more volume to reach into yeah but you also mean that when you turn it down uh it doesn't completely disappear sure now if you did all that just with the amp [Music] there's not much that's pleasant about that just note there but when you add the overdrive [Music] uh obviously you don't have to play blues likes you could play your your chosen style but um yeah that's the magic for me sure no game overdrive is when you've got the all that dynamic all of it yeah yeah so you can you can really start to drive at that point yeah totally uh yeah so a massive fan of the mediterranean stuff and i just think for that mid pushed in the ts veins it's one of the my faves there's something i'd like to hear you do before we move on turn some delay on let's get you a nice modulated delay sound and we're going to set the the pedal as it is maybe even with a little bit more gain okay and with the telly if you could explore that the world between really clean okay and as overdriven as it gets okay i think be quite interesting because this is such a dynamic guitar it could be an interesting experiment as they say here in the west country [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] go [Music] so [Music] [Music] up [Music] [Music] so [Music] it's pretty extraordinary so as you heard when dan played the last chord though there's quite a lot of overdrive but playing dynamically that's exactly that's exactly it that's the whole point it's all that the dynamic range just within here just within there yeah it's a very lovely place to be um you know quite often you need music that's going to support that style of playing but that's up to you um sorry it took me ages to dial the i just trying to get it to the point where it was almost into self-oscillation right okay that point where yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's great nice cool okay thorpy peacekeeper again uh it's got a really powerful eq um and i think it has less of the the mid in it it's sort of more it's one of his first pedals wouldn't it the peacekeeper yeah it's a it's an early one yeah it's an early one um and i think it helped establish thorpey's reputation as you know a serious player in the effects world in the way that um he approaches stuff indeed yeah have strong it's been a long time since i played this i'm interested [Music] be [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] very nice what's that i can't i've got any glasses on is there is there a sweepable frequency presence oh okay so yeah base travel and presence i think the presence control has something to do with the mid frequencies bizarrely right uh even though it's labeled presence man that's nice that's nice it's really beautiful [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Music] me [Music] do [Music] [Applause] so i whacked up the base at the end i've been missing base today i don't know why no you say that no use doing a band mix it's so it reminds me more of like a like a vox sizzle in the in that one it's a really beautiful um but yeah really powerful eq you can get it feeling really natural yeah yeah lovely gain range too yeah really really lovely gain range and as always with thorpe pedals absolutely mega output yeah if you want to yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah all right finally broadcast and again we've used it loads before um based on a neve preamp strip yeah and it's it does that thing we you know we've heard it loads of times on those recordings people use the preamps to overdrive the tarp signal yeah by the time you hear it in that way it's usually way past the point of what the ones we always talk about revolution by the beatles for example yeah the the direct to desk overdrive sound is such a classic noise that you will hear down there yeah loads of steely dan tunes and yeah just to make the point this doesn't have to be that it can just be a lovely fattening preamp as well exactly exactly exactly so have shrinkage on this one okay do [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] um [Music] it's always been a long day but you feel how that breaks up different again it's great everything else i really love i love the broadcast for all kinds of things but that shaping yeah one of the things broadcast has on it is a low cut dan was changing that as we went through when you for basic low gain overdrive i don't want to cut too much low end sure because there's not a huge amount of clipping going on not a huge amount of gain going on yeah therefore things can remain clear so as long as you've gotten out with a bit of headroom it can take the base frequencies what happens is when you start to mash on the gain and start stacking things which is often what happens when you've got a low gain overdrive in your uh chain of effects that bass can get overwhelming especially into a small amp yes so having the low cut on there is really cool play for a second and i'll see if i can demonstrably demand demonstrate the massive video demonstration [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] [Music] two [Music] so what you've got there is a 200 watt speaker with an absolutely giant magnet on the back of it in the back of the two rock cab that can take pretty much anything you throw at it yeah if damn was playing at princeton at this point i mean the ac30 is on as well uh if dan was playing princeton at this point with a 10-inch speaker that was just giving up and giving up that base cut control without any base coat on it would have just be a fantabulously wonderful sludgy sound yeah yeah but if you don't want that fantabulously wonderful sludgy sound you can just carve that bottom end out and it is so so useful yep once you start stacking maybe less relevant to the um [Music] low gain tones as discussed previously sure interesting interesting so so i just wanted to i just thought it's worthwhile yeah running through some low gain stuff the the whole point is you know dynamics and as you progress in your journey you'll get more and more out of your low gain ods yeah um yeah and to experiment experiment with the overdrives you've got by turning the game down that's what i was going to say you know any overdrive really can do low gain just turn the gain down but i for my money harmonics touch sensitivity um feedback in terms of the sort of feedback loop of you as the as the player the amplifier the guitar all of that pedals yep that gets really interesting when you just stack a couple of these slow game things up together as opposed to doing it all in one pedal or all in one amp yeah and of course if you do like the sound of overdrive from your amplifier this all becomes even more relevant at a day point because you're just shaping indeed and we've done that many times with boosts yeah fascinating there we go so if you could take one low gain overdrive out of any of these what are your what are your have you has anything have you loved anything today i've loved the red snapper for the specifically for the solo tones for those lower gain solo tones where you need to push without distortion yeah um broadcast is always mind-blowing uh light speed for the lower volume tones you know what i mean it just or as a as opposed to the boosty things for that's sound to keep that sound at a lower volume magic i mean to be honest this here down yeah you know and these are great but with the rig that we're using at the moment yeah yeah because it all changes i'm definitely going if if i'm singing and playing guitar and playing chords and sitting in a band i'm going light speed every day of the week yeah it's magic it just that whole thing the kind of music i like tends to be americanery type stuff and i'm often playing open chords you know and i think for that sort of stuff lightspeed is banging let me solo bruce the peacekeeper i am reminded yeah right what a fab unit that is yeah but they're all fab i mean we've got some great sounds out of all of them today indeed indeed there we go thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed that again please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed a massive thank you to anyone that's gone to thatpedalshowstore.com and grab some merch it's what helps fund the show t-shirts and strings pedals and hats and you name it it's uh it's there also a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the uk and europe is anderson's music of guildford in surrey i'm doing something very interesting with um pete and additions in the near future oh you i am indeed uh i've got to work out if i can do it yet but pete got in touch with me is it legal i'll get the reports back soon and let you know um but yes thank you also to our mates in australia uh would be pedal empire of brisbane in queensland hello to matt and the gang hope you're well yes thank you to our patrons on patreon indeed we're on patreon patrons look out for emails in your inbox for uh regular giveaways that we're starting to do indeed also for our american friends we have thatpedalshop.com indeed go there um it's for american people or indeed people in america not necessarily the same thing and you can buy pedals and stuff there accessories there's also some amps i believe going on soon and some interesting information to thatpedalshop.com indeed thanks so much everyone have a fantastic day we'll see you on monday for viewers comments and questions see you then cheers bye [Music] [Applause]

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 177,118

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Id: MtBb2oCu8dE

Length: 66min 16sec (3976 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022