How many use two overdrive pedals to get a specific tone?

How many of y'all use two overdrive pedals to get a certain overdrive sound that maybe one pedal alone won't give you?


Me, sometimes i use my barber ltd and my maxon od9+pro

My Keeley Mooded Sparkle Drive is my main OD.... I kick in modded blues driver as a lead boost or a heavy OD when needed.

I use a Visual sound Jekyll & hyde for the TS type of drive and a SD Twin Tube for the more transparent and light OD.

Klon into the OCD. Together, they can give a huge range of tones.
I guess the same is also true for the King of Tone.....it's really two overdrives in one pedal.

One's not an OD, but I do use two drive pedals. The order I engage them in is different based on the kind of music I'm playing.

Keeley DS-1 (SEM/Ultra mods) usually on the Ultra setting
Bad Monkey OD

Bad Monkey then DS-1 if it's softer or classic rock
DS-1 then Bad Monkey if it's the heavy stuff for solo boosts

I find when trying to blend 2 fuzzes, ODs, or distortions, that I end up having to back off the gain/fuzz/distortion a bit compared to just using the pedal by itself...

I use the on-board OD mixed with either an FBM-1 or TS-7 to create certain lead and rhythm tones.

I kick a Keeley Compressor into an OCD sometimes for added sustain at low drive volumes... or, for an almost fuzz like quality at max guitar volume.

I'm actually using 3 boxes right now...
Boss SD-1, this is set around halfway, into a
Ibanez TS-7 Tubescreamer, gain 8 o'clock, volume set to give slight boost, into a
'86 ProCo Rat, gain about 10'oclock, filter 3 oclock, then the other stuff...
Still getting the tuning JUST right, although it was pretty good to begin with. Stangely, I'm using just the TS-7 most of the time...

Franc Robert
Back Alley Blues Band

I've got a couple of trunks packed full of stompboxes, so I'm always messing
with this n' that --- a Z-Vex SHO with a Crowther Hotcake can be quite nice,
but then again so is an MXR Micro-Amp and a Visual Sound Route 66..

I like an OD paired up with a distortion/fuzz sometimes as well.
sometimes a couple of fuzzboxes in line can be just the ticket! :wink:

I've never been a "stacker." Never sounds good to me. The only sort-of exception is when one pedal has TWO levels of drive... like the FD2's Boost or the KOT (2 channels, stackable). THAT I like alot. But I've never been a fan of stacking 2 pedals.

Part of the reason probably is, I get quite a bit of drive from my amps, and more than one pedal added tends to get way too compressed & mushy. Looses all definition.

I use a bad monkey and a little big muff. I haven't had a lot of time with the two together yet, so I am always tweaking settings. I didn't even think about switching which of them is first. New stuff to try out I guess. So far I am really liking the combination though.

Not ODs I guess, more clean boosts, but I often use the Burris Boostier with the Super Chile Picosa. Not for solo boost ... for always on tone.

i guess i'm looking for a booster for my 5f1. i'm trying out the barber eq as a booster right now, i guess it wasn't made for being used as a booster but maybe it was...it does come with a volume pot.

i don't know but it might be too much treble even with the treble pot all the way down. It seems that the treble pot doesn't work going counter clockwise passed 12 oclock.

if the barb eq works for me i'll add the barber ltd even more sustain/gain

Oh... I just saw I didn't answered the question! I have to go back to the english classes...

My favorite tones that I get come from something(okay, anything into my Timmy) Menatone Red Snapper sounds great on its own, but better into my Timmy.
Same for Subdecay Liquid Sunshine, Keeley RAT, and Zvex Box of Rock. The cool thing is that the Timmy sounds amazing on its own as well. You want it to be a clean boost? Just turn Gain, Bass, Treble all the way down and adjust Vol. to taste. Want a little dirt? Turn the gain knob a little. It's the best purchase a guitar player can make for improving their tone.

I use a TS9 for the crunch and blues stuff, a TS10 for a little more overdrive. The two together make some beautiful overtones. Nice feedback.

I'll mix and match a lot of different things, depending.

One of my favorite distortion sounds ever was a Snarling Dogs VeryTone Dog into a Bad Monkey, into a little 10 watt Epiphone Galaxy amp. It was very bright and snarly and dynamic -- not in the least smooth, sophisticated, or tasteful!

I found that not all overdrives chain together well. I tried two Fulltone overdrives and they sounded bad. On the other hand, two Vox Valvetones gave me a great sound. Set one with gain high/level low and set the other with gain low/level high. Gave me clean, clean boost, medium overdrive, and big overdrive.

I run a Bad Monkey into a modified DS1 into a TS9DX.

I never run all three, but I'll run the DS1 into the TS9, or the BM into the DS1.

I've changed the way I use my distortion pedals in the past year. Now I set both my Reezafratzitz and my OCD to a much lower gain setting and then boost each with various pedals. I find that "stacking" in this way give a much, much fatter, fuller, and yet much more cutting sound.

Running my pedals this way means that each pedal gives a much better rhythm sound, and then when boosted, the lead sound is great.

For boosting duties I use an old TS808, a Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster and the fat boost on a Toadworks Deathrattle.

I use a Bad Monkey into a Boss OD3, - in effect I use the BM as a tone control for the OD3, - the bass control on the BM provides a lot of "oomph" to the OD3. There's a tremendous amount of different sounds available with these two, I find.

Rick J

i usually cascade two bad monkeys into each other so i can get a real nice warren haynesy sound when i need it.

I've combined a Bad Monkey with a Boss SD-1 and liked the sound, but it was very noisy (hiss).

I feed a Boss OD3 with a modded SD1, both with the gain set at about 11 o'clock. The OD3 is essentially my amp "modeler", giving me a flat-frequency, amp-on-the-edge crunch, and the SD1 is my "Tube Screamer clone" that sends me into saturated-lead land. I can clean the sound up by lowering my volume control, and I control the overall volume with a volume pedal after both the overdrives.

I've tried many combinations, and many just couldn't work at all. This combination is the best I've tried, but I'm sure there are better ones out there.

I run a Bad Bob booster before my ODs, it's always on, so that gives them an extra little punch as soon as they're engaged. After the BB, there's a Keeley BD-2, a Barber Direct Drive, and a Soul Patch Fuzz from Aramat Effects. One or more of those will run in tandem with the BB when it's time for the crunch. I also have a Danelectro Daddy-O, Keeley Sparkle Drive, stock DS-1, and stock OD-3 that may rotate into that board at times - many flavors, all a little different.

my update on my board is a launch pad before my maxon od 9 pro +.

i been diggin the three gain stages you can get with a small combo amp and just a boost pedal:

1)having a 5-6 watt amp on 5-7 with the guitar volume backed off a couple of notches.

2)hittin the lauch pad to "clean" boost the amp.

3)turning the volume all the way up on the guitar.

If i want clean, i just back off on the volume half or more.

I wish i would of figured out this set up years ago before I spent thousands of dollars buying so many different overdrive type pedals.

I use a Visual sound Jekyll & hyde

that's really two boxes in one -- three, really, if you count the combination of both the Jekyll and the Hyde channels together. that's the only distortion unit on my board ... i'm not much of a power-chord guy, more roots-rock, but i use the Jekyll (tube screamer) for blues/old-school r'r, the Hyde for the more solid rock (i.e. power chords/power lead), and both in combination for Santana and such. and it only takes up one (admittedly large) space on my board.

currently I use 4 od pedals.....never on at the same time, that's lots of hum waiting to happen, yikes.
I use them for specific levels of sweetness or light grit. I do set one of them the arion sod-1 to almost 11:00 for an ambient thing I do with a pair of mountain bike handlebars, that;s cool, but other than that I switch between a ts808, ts5, and an arion tubulator mte-1 which is a nice pedal, though very underrated, it'smy favorite for very subtle overdrive.

In the short run, I just use the single vol knob of these little 5F1 amps to add in the overdrive kick. Not practical all the time as these amps can be too loud, and the resulting OD and tone is pretty much a one-trick pony that's dependent on what guitar/pickups are used.

Many years down the geetar road and I'm still experimenting with boosts and ODs. I really like the tone transparent kick of a Boosta Grande, just gotta figure out what simple OD to stick after it ...

currently i'm pairing up an ltd with a launch pad for the 5f1. the trick is, (for me at least), to always leave the volume pots on the guitar somewhere around half way on, this is were bleeder caps come in handy so your sound down get muddy.

. I really like the tone transparent kick of a Boosta Grande, just gotta figure out what simple OD to stick after it ...

you never tried an ltd with the 5f1 rob? did i take your last one? :eek:

you never tried an ltd with the 5f1 rob? did i take your last one? :eek:

Yeah, the LTD + 5F1 is a good combo - don't have one handy. :mrgreen:

I sometimes use a Klon followed by an older big box Clark Gainster. I'll use either or both depending on the sound I want. Most of the time I wind up just using one or the other.

I use a Bad Monkey into a Prescription Electronics Germ. The Germ is ALWAYS on (it's a two channel clean/dirty boost), so I just switch from clean to dirty. BM into dirty Germ is a KILLER lead sound.

Oh, and I'll add that Germ into BM doesn't work nearly as well - hardly an audible difference, actually. This surprised me, because usually the Germ wants to come first when stacking. I deliberately run BM -> Germ -> Rat for stacking purposes. So if you want to fool around with stacking, make sure you try all possible pedal ordering combinations.

I used to use an EQ with gain after my Tubescreamer as a second clean boost of the overdrive and also to color the tone just the way I like it..not anymore..I just run a Ts9 into my amp..amp almost breaking..ts9 drive down but gain up..just to push the tubes over the top...I work with my guitar volume more than I ever did.