"Takes pedals well" - what amps don't?

No first hand experience but there was a post a couple of days back where someone stated their JC had incredible cleans but didn’t take any dirt pedals well at all.

 

Old marshalls at low volumes and drive pedals. Ewwww.

 

Every amp takes some pedals well, not every amp takes every pedal well.

I find Voxes don’t take most pedals I want to use well, especially overdrives. But they do fine with a clean boost.

 

Best thing for an amp that doesn't take some pedals well?... an EQ pedal.

... and know how to use it...or.... futz around til it sounds good...

 

Some times ' takes pedals well' really means ' needs a pedal to make it sound good!'
( I honestly feel that way about my old blonde Blues Jr., which IMO comes to life, and sounds great WITH a Blues Driver)

But not all amps like every OD/dirt pedal. There has to be (IMO) a complimentary EQ relationship going on, to make things sound good.

Just my own ( small sampling, I know) experience:
-My '68 DR ( when I owned it) sounded great with a TS and terrible with a Blues Driver - fizzy dirt and too much treble/transparency

- the complete opposite with those 2 pedals and my Blues Jr.

 

This... I still think pedals are just often biased towards mid-scooped amps cause they're so popular. If you're coming off playing blackface type amps and get a mid-focused amp after playing lots of scooped amps you just need to reset your expectations about which pedals to use.

Fender amp players often say a pedal "disappears in the mix" and that's basically code for "that pedal was supposed to be used with an amp with strong mids".

The stereotypical ones to me:

TS into mid-scooped clean or dirty amp = OK
TS into mid-humped amp clean = Bad
TS into mid-humped amp dirty = OK

Muff/DS-1 into mid-scooped amp clean/dirty = disappears
Muff/DS-1 into mid-humped amp clean/dirty = OK

Lots of Tilt-EQ pedals seemingly falling into that second category.

I've never had one but I'd like to try the ODR-1 as it's unique EQ kind of morphs it between the two categories of pedals.

 

Not all amps take pedals well the same way. The effects loop is for chorus and delay on my 75 (which is whatever since it uses a TRS cable for it....) because fuzz, OD, and dirt sound like poo if they don't hit the front. I had similar feelings about HRdlx. Peavey C30 did ok with dirt in effects loop, but OD and Fuzz was better in the front. Supro isn't as picky as the 75, but I just run everything to the front, even though the pedal board is setup to put the small clone and AD999 to run separate from the other stuff for the 75.

Sometimes "pedal platform " reads "junk gain channel " like a champ 12 or the older HRdlx.
Vox's dont take ODs and fuzzes as universally well as other stuff.

 

Some Mesas. If you hit their preamps hard, you can get mud pretty quick. And their effects loops are parallel, so you need pedals that go full wet.

 

Right, you’ve just got to know what works with your amp’s tonal signature and adjust accordingly. It makes total sense to have different boards for different amps.

 

no pedal needed

 

Vox ac15. Most drive pedals sound pretty rough when I had mine.

 

I've noticed the same thing with my TMDR. It likes my TS-type pedal, but does not like my OCD (which I think of as similar in type to a BD), except at low to very low drive settings; even more so with humbuckers.

 

A 5E3 comes to mind.

 

And, probably any amp that has a grid leak bias input stage.

 

I had some problems with solidstate amps and overdrive pedals. I had a Laney solidstate back when I started and that came to live with my Ibanez Super Tube Lead. I still have the pedal and tried it with a Peavey Express and it was....ahem, questionable. The Peavey works with a Fulltone OCD, so it's obviously about the mids-character of the pedal. Some solidstate sound easily too harsh and brittle with overdrive/distortion.
I never had that problem with my tubeamps. They seem way more....forgiving.

 

Different pickups muddy the equation more. I had to accept that the muff didn't work as well with the Bassman as the 75, and had to adjust everything switching between pickup types. DS1s are an acquired taste. I've always gravitated towards fender style amps, so I certainly dont use pedals the same way as people leaning towards Marshall. Where the bass player sits in the mix is important. Its really useless fighting over sonic real estate with them, if they live on the border of thier zone and the lower mids, I've heard guitar players get drowned out who dont gig much and like what sounds good at home. I've winced at using the bright switch, until a sans amp fan bass player made it needed for the band to sound good.

 

Some amps seem more sensitive to boosting the front end. I assume that means their own architecture has a hotter preamp than others may. (in layman's terms) Princeton Reverbs with too much of an OD in front can get a bit nasty for me. Some tweeds for sure too.

 

I often think the real question is "which pedals?" I've got four OD or distortion pedals, plus a clean boost and an EQ pedal that can function as a clean boost while shaping tone. They're all different and work differently, including more or less well, with different amps.

 

I’m not a big pedal user but I have quite a few pedals. I’d say it depends on the pedal and the amp. I have one rather rare pedal (Kaden Brown Sound) that lights up my 5E3 really well, but most of my others don’t sound as good through that amp. When I looked at the Kaden schematic it’s like a solid state version of a Marshall type de-emphasis circuit. I have a Kantana 100 that really likes just about any pedal I throw at it. I have a home built JCM800 that likes different pedals than the 5E3. My ‘67 Ampeg Reverborocket likes a different set of pedals. I’m talking about overdrives etc. not reverb echo or modulation pedals. As we all know, a good guitar tone is a pretty subjective and personal thing. What I like about the Kantana is it clearly shows the character of each pedal & I’m able to get a usable tone with any pedal I currently own. So I would say that amp takes pedals well.