OD into SS amps.

[loopfinding]

So just a fact: saturation is saturation regardless of whether it comes from tubes or not. Clipping is a physical phenomenon. You can see it on an oscilloscope. It's not little elves in a vacuum. Ok sure a tube amp interaction, preamp and power tubes blah blah bah, but if all you want is "warmth and a bit of drive to your tone" then a good pedal will sound great.

but saturation isn't the same "regardless of whether it comes from tubes or not."

with triodes, basically the waveform starts soft clipping asymmetrically, then it hard clips symmetrically, then it starts getting hard clipped on one side and unclipped on the other, and does this pulse width thing with the differently clipped portions of the wave as it gets slammed harder. even order harmonics are more emphasized at various points. the signal on the grid distorts too.

but it also goes through the power amp, which adds crossover distortion and clips it symmetrically, emphasizing odd harmonics (pentodes and differential configurations). the transformer smooths it out a bit, and may introduce weird notchy stuff. but generally you do end up with something pretty squarish which can look and sound a bit like the output of an OD pedal.

so yeah, it's possible to get a similar sound as the final product of the whole amp riding hard from clipper pedals, or possible to get a similar transfer function as a triode operating at a specific point just clipping the signal asymmetrically. but it requires some effort to get the transfer functions the same or similar enough through the whole range of gain, to get the right response from transients. not many out there actually trying to get SS to do that.

you could argue this all has more of an effect on feel than it does sound, but "saturation is saturation,” is a bit of an oversimplification. the saturation of the device or config is going to mess with its operating point and change how the input maps to the output, and it's clearly observable on a scope.

 

[maxvintage]

Alternate take:

If the purpose of an overdrive was to drive the input of some other component hard, every design would be a clean amplifier. As covered in Brian Wampler's article on the basic design of overdrive pedals, that isn't the case.

Why anyone wanting tube sound would put something solid-state in front of the input of a tube amp is beyond me, but people keep doing it.

Yes ideally you'd have a boost pedal with a couple different levels of boost and that would drive your tube am harder, but you'd still have volume problems. Guitar players are always dreaming of that gig where they had glorious tone and forgetting that everyone else in the band was disgusted with how they were way too loud and patrons left the gig for the same reason.

The whole business is about reproducing various kinds of tube tone at all possible volumes. Tube amps sound great when they're overdriven, but you get zero control over volume, and so we have multiple schemes for managing that including master volume amps, and attenuators, but also pedals. Thousands of guys raving about the sound of tubes are just amplifying solid state circuits which imitate tube amps. There was some thread recently where a guy was loudly insisting that nothing sounds like tubes maaan and he showed a picture of his amp and pedal chain which included three solid state overdrives. That could be anybody in rock guitar world. Ok, tubes rule bro!

If you demystify the whole business you're just trying to produce saturation and clipping. yes, there's "sag" and interaction with the speaker: but put aside the whole "sounds the same" debate and 90% of tube die hards are just amplifying the sound of solid state circuits with a tube amp

 

[wildschwein]

My favourite OD and distortion sounds come from clipping LEDs.

 

[hopdybob]

A transistor can behave very similarly to a tube, so a well designed solid state amp can absolutely sound great with an OD pedal. There are great ss amps just like there are lousy tube amps.

when i look/hear on youtube you mostly have the tube amps that take part in the tone the pedal produce.
but starting guitarist often start with a guitar and SS amp on a budget.
a cheap way to make the sound better, so it seems, is to use a pedal if you would believe some posters on Youtube.

i have a good clean SS amp, peavey express 112 blue stripe.
but i don't like the sometime harsh brittle distorion from the supersat channel.
than again the old yamaha AR2500 SS amp had a nice smooth round distortion that i still can't find in a pedal.
maybe i would need a pedal that fakes a amp

 

[northernguitar]

Alternate take:

If the purpose of an overdrive was to drive the input of some other component hard, every design would be a clean amplifier. As covered in Brian Wampler's article on the basic design of overdrive pedals, that isn't the case.

Why anyone wanting tube sound would put something solid-state in front of the input of a tube amp is beyond me, but people keep doing it.

Because it sounds fantastic.

 

[D_Malone]

A transistor can behave very similarly to a tube, so a well designed solid state amp can absolutely sound great with an OD pedal. There are great ss amps just like there are lousy tube amps.

And there’s your answer. Carry on.

 

[4pickupguy]

What if I’m looking for a classic fart sound?

 

[Red Ryder]

What if I’m looking for a classic fart sound?

It's usually best to mic that effect and then loop it.

 

[TokyoPortrait]

Hi.

I get some saturated sounds that I like through the judicious use of ones and zeros. How’s that for blasphemy?

Pax/
Dean

 

[Blrfl]

Because it sounds fantastic.

You must not be one of those cork sniffers I keep hearing about.

 

[northernguitar]

You must not be one of those cork sniffers I keep hearing about.

It’s like chocolate syrup on chocolate ice cream.

 

[NoTeleBob]

I run an overdrive into an overdrive and then run that into a solid state amp.

But it can't possibly sound good. By definition.

 

[telequacktastic]

Impressive, 38 posts and you've got it all figured out.

 

[11 Gauge]

I run an overdrive into an overdrive and then run that into a solid state amp.

But it can't possibly sound good. By definition.

I use every combination possible.

I even use OD and boost pedals into the crunch channel of my Kat 50, which also has some boost/OD added internally, in the amp.

I think we tend to get too hung up on the idea that only a triode stage can deliver the right clipping and harmonic structure. IMO, yes, triodes are indeed great for some things, but there's so much more beyond that.

Really, if anything, I tend to like that OD pedals are capable of 'tight and smooth', while just trying to get that from multiple triode stages tends to be a bit trickier, and requires a bit of internal hardwiring to roll off the necessary amount of bass, in particular.

I also like that with SS devices, it's possible to add in some characteristics that triodes either don't do well, or simply do really poorly. I'm mainly talking about fuzzes, and the ability to super-exaggerate the asymmetric clipping nature, and also do some potentially really cool things octave-wise.

Especially WRT flexibility/modularity, it's kind of hard to deny the potential big advantages of having as much of this occurring before the amp as possible.

 

[loopfinding]

My favorite distortion comes from the overdrive channel of my Lab Series L5, and it’s not a tube amp (heck it uses a CA3080 OTA for clipping!), so I guess I can’t help out here…

that's one of the few designs that has made really a solid attempt. i have futzed with it a little bit, it's not a dead ringer in stock form, but using the control on the OTA to manipulate distortion characteristics is a fantastic idea, especially with the comp for sag emulation. definitely worthy of copying or expanding upon, but mostly overlooked.

i have come across bias against stuff like that in pedal/amp builders, that designs/methods like that are "overkill" or something. but if you take the distortion + comp blocks just by themselves, that's pretty standard parts count/run of the mill design for a synth circuit like a waveshaper (unsurprising considering who designed it). and you can do much more than just tube emulation with solid state...

 

[4pickupguy]

You can drive a tube amp with an overdrive thats not what many were designed to do. The Rat was designed so it’s designer could get a Marshall’y sound out his clean Twin. Solid state used to have a very SS sound but honestly, I think the wet side (ss state) of my sounds like (as good as) my Fender Deluxe (dry).
I don’t drive my amp with ODs.
They sound fine.

 

[Ben Harmless]

Hi.

I get some saturated sounds that I like through the judicious use of ones and zeros. How’s that for blasphemy?

My sounds are so saturated, they're all 1s. 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

 

[Miff]

What if I’m looking for a classic fart sound?

The usual method is to mic-up your rear-end. However, regardless of how ‘classic’ or not it may seem, do not attempt to use ‘true-bypass’.

 

[11 Gauge]

I also wanted to add that one of my favorite overdriven tones is a result of using an OD pedal with something like a Vibrolux Reverb or Super Reverb with the vibrato channel's vol set to either very clean or mostly clean.

I actually tend to prefer that to the sound of a BF/SF Fender amp going into heavy overdrive on its own.

So in that specific instance, the overdriven tones are specific to pedals and amps that compliment each other, and are intentionally chosen.

 

[cyclopean]

I kind of thought that the point of an OD pedal was to make an amp sound like it is being overdriven at a lower volume than required to really overdrive it.

If you just want to hit the front end of an amp harder, you would use a boost pedal.

You said what I was going to say perfectly.

OD changes the tone. That’s why you’d use it.

Because tone is in the gear.