The Pedal Question

[TheFiercestCreature]

Hi Guys, I am trying to decide which pedals to buy. But I imagine a little background is needed. I have a Gibson Firebird studio (all mahogany) which has a Riff Raff neck and a Cold Sweat bridge, which at the moment goes straight into a Blackstar HT-5. I play many different styles, from clean picked stuff to metal. I play lead in a band and at the moment just use the lead channel in my amp.

I wanted to know of a versatile distortion pedal and then a recommendation of a few different types of pedal, which you find invaluable. Cheers for an help.

[Denim n Leather]

Buying pedals without trying them out first invariably leads to selling off a lot of pedals. It's really impossible for someone to make a recommendation without knowing you or your style. And even then, your personal preferences and priorities are probably way different than mine.

Pedal companies that make effects you may find to your liking, however, include:

Xotic
Fulltone
MI
z.vex
Eventide
BOSS

... and a host of others. If you are only using the lead channel, you may want too look into a clean boost or EQ for more sustain and cut for solos instead of distortion. A delay/reverb might also be of more use to you than a distortion/overdrive. And an overdrive pedal generally yields better results into the lead channel of an amp than a distortion channel, but your mileage may vary.

You should also go to www.proguitarshop.com . They have a host of great pedal demo videos.

[Alex]

Typically I think you'd use a milder overdrive to add versatility to your amp. For metal, boosting with a tubescreamer-kind of pedal is the common approach.

I can recommend the Digitech Bad Monkey; it is an excellent pedal, don't let the price make you think it is inferior.

Pros often use Maxon Overdrives or Tubescreamers from Ibanez. They cut a lot of bass, which gives them metal tightness, but the Digitech Bad Monkey is more versatile in that respect.
Good alternatives are
Hardwire CM-2
Visual Sound Route 808
Boss SD-1 and MXR Zakk Wylde (work better with british voiced amps)

[Telerocker]

Maxon OD820, OD9, 808, depending on what flavour you want
Suhr Shiba Drive/ Suhr Riot (distortion)
Barber makes a lot of medium good distortion boxes.
So does MI Audio
Emma Reezafratzitz, handmade in Denmark, very dynamic, from mild to very heavy rock.
Keeley SD-1
Lovepedals, are expensive but very nice
Xotic BB and AC Booster
and of course Ibanez tubescreamers. I have an 1981 TS9, which is good for pumping up your amp and tighten up the lows.

[TheFiercestCreature]

Wow, I explained myself pretty vaguely there, sorry about that. About the lead channel thing, what I meant was that it is currently my only way of getting distortion and it does add a great classic rock sound. But I was hoping that a distortion/overdrive pedal, plus possibly something else (think wah, delay, reverb etc) would give me a much more metal type lead tone. I'm not too much into naming the sounds of other guitarists, as I would like to sound like me, but think Maiden, Metallica, All That Remains type thing.

Thanks for the replies so far. What I am after in a few words is:

1) A good metal type distortion pedal (was thinking of something like Blackstar HT-DistX, if anyone has one and they could let me know what they think of it that would be awesome).

2) Suggestions of any other pedals which would be considered nearly essential to a great lead tone (e.g. reverb, wah etc).

3) My budget is about £300.

Thanks for everything so far guys. I have to say this is one of the most helpful forums I have ever found.

[juansolo]

Had a HT-5. Likes pedals quite a bit indeed I ran a G-Sharp through it's loop for reverb/chorus/flanger/delay/etc. Works well and cleggy has one still for sale in seconds out for £100 if you wanted to go that way.

It also has a ton of gain on tap on the overdrive channel for metal. It can chug with the best of them. A push from a OD will make it even better though. I'd normally recommend a Klone for this, but as I ain't making them any more, a simple SHO or a TS derivative (there are hundreds) should do the job.

For a distortion I'd go for a Skreddy Screwdriver. Technically it's a distortion flavoured fuzz. But it's brilliant.

Difficult to recommend another distortion as you've kinda got the Marshall to Mesa flavour thing going on just by twiddling the settings of the amp.

EDIT: FWIW, it responds well to swapping the pre-tube. I had an RFT in mine, which gave it more gain and it crunched up nicely. But leave the power tube be as it makes little difference. Also it works particularly well with a Celestion Hot100 speaker (which I funilly enough have for sale in seconds out as my new amp prefers a different speaker*).

* I'm really not just using this as an excuse for pimpage, honest!

[Mr. Air]

I haven't tried this one, but I've heard good things about Emma's pisdiyauwot pedal which is primary a metal distortion. If you want a pedal to tighten up your amp Emma's Stinkbug might be a good choice. Emma makes quality pedals, but they are on the pricey side.

[dave_mc]

is it sensible putting £300 of pedals into an ht5? I mean if you want to tighten up the lead tone, all you need is a tubescreamer-style od pedal, and you can pick up a clone for around the £30 mark from the likes of joyo or for £50 from tonerider.

Assuming that works well with the ht5... it might as well already have a solid state od built into it already :lol:

[Crunch]

Watch through a bunch of ProGuitarShop demos. They have a great selection and have the most revealing demonstrations I've ever seen.

[Thrull]

Watch through a bunch of ProGuitarShop demos. They have a great selection and have the most revealing demonstrations I've ever seen.

+1

[TheFiercestCreature]

Cheers guys, will have a look and make a decision.

[Telerocker]

Watch through a bunch of ProGuitarShop demos. They have a great selection and have the most revealing demonstrations I've ever seen.

Good idea, but bear in mind that Andy from Proguitarshop plays nearly everything with his fingers, which will produce different tones then with plectrums. And he seldom plays the pedals in front of highgainamps.

[Sancho]

Mainstays on my pedalboard are :
Korg Pitchblack Tuner
MXR Phase 90

Can't help with the metal distortion pedal bit. Best distortion pedal I've ever used was the Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde, but that's not really aggresively voiced.
Dave_mc makes a good point. With a Tubescreamer style pedal (my favourite is the Maxon OD9) and the amp's tone controls you should be able to get all the tones you need.

[gwEm]

i like denim'n'leather's post here alot.

i've tried the ht-5 in a shop and found it has quite alot of drive. as has been suggested, i'd try something like a g-sharp rack unit in the effects loop, and a nice EQ pedal on the front to dial in a clean boost. i use a modded boss ge-7.

[darkbluemurder]

My favorite Overdrive/Distortion pedal is the Baldringer Dual Drive (www.dual-drive.de). I used two of them on my pedalboard - the first one in the signal chain set up for two different rhythm tones (low drive and high drive) and the second one as two different boosts (one high volume low dirt and one higher dirt and lower volume). All into a clean amp. That gave me six overdrive colours on the basis of driven rhythm tones alone:

1. Low drive for rhythm
2. High drive for rhythm
3. low drive + low dirt boost = blues lead
4. low drive + high dirt boost = standard lead
5. high drive + low dirt boost = standard lead (very similar to 4)
6. high drive + high dirt boost = over the top feedback/sustainy sound

This may sound like overkill but I had to control my volume from the stage since we usually did not have a sound engineer at gigs.

Cheers Stephan