Always on pedals, a popular option?

[Progrockabuse]

Sounds like a proper klon-gearpage-boutique title, but genuinely curious if anyone has a go to combo or setup with an always on pedal for your base tone.

Since getting the fuzz face, I really find I prefer leaving it on all the time and using the old school guitar volume trick to vary the gain/amount of fuzz. I’ve found it’s quite a dynamic setup, compared to previous experiences with germanium based fuzz circuits. I’ve tried stacking it with the other drives I have, but most of the time I just love the base fuzz face sound into a slightly edgy breakup from the amp.

Anyone else got a base tone that revolves round pedals?

[aen]

I'm pretty close in one band. I have a Model Fet on for 9/10 songs as the "base tone."

[plopswagon]

I rarely plug in without my Rat with at least a tiny bit of dirt dialed in.

[riotshield]

I have a Carl Martin compressor/limiter always running.
Besides that, I think the Memory Man is practically on most of the time, as well as just a touch of reverb from the Mr. Black Supermoon.

[Thom]

I have two really, have set my RE-202 so that the preamp emulation is always on, and I have set the saturation at about 9 o’clock. Then I have a pedal set to low gain, have used the Honey Bee or 1981 DRV a lot, but at the moment have got a Blackstar Dept.10 Boost for that and it does a great job of fattening up the strat with its valve and eq.

[dub]

Klons are good for this though.

I'm currently assembling a big ass pedalboard with a switcher, more for my own amusement than anything else, so doing less stacking, but on my smaller setup I often used a DRV clone set low with the volume nearly maxed as an "always on" that responded pretty well to volume changes.

[taylornutt]

I usually will run my MBM Saltbooster to give my Fender guitars a lift. With the addition of the DECO, the tape saturation is another option I am exploring.

[Bacchus]

When I was gigging regularly, I usually used a Roland Cube or whatever else clean I could get my hands on, but I would never play clean. All my overdrive sounds would come from my board, which (from memory) was MBM Saltbooster>MBM OCD/DLS clone>Dano Timmy clone>MBM Klon. I might have had the Dano Peach Fuzz in there somewhere too, and possibly a wah, but I can't remember.

Anyway, all the pedals would be set fairly low gain and I would stack them for higher gain (think the OCD was set dirtier). So there was always an "always on" of one or two of them depending on the song, then another one or two for solos and lead etc. That along with the volume knob gave an incredible variety of subtly different drive flavours that I enjoyed exploring. Probably nobody else noticed or cared.

Then I bought a Matamp.

[NickD]

If you count reverb, then yes, I have that on pretty much all the time. I keep the amp turned up to about 7 (non MV Marshall), control the volume with an attenuator and the amount of drive with the volume controls on the guitar.

[Progrockabuse]

Anything counts nickD, just very interested in what people’s base tone consists of.

Today I’ve been running the fuzz face into the clean channel of my MG10. It tames some of the strats natural brightness and gives it so many sweet spots for gain depending on pickup selection and volume position. I’ve even started liking the middle pickup alone which I normally don’t bother with.

Proper love my MG10, stupidly good for such a cheap basic amp.

[Thom]

Last week, the day after practice and inspired by your setup Rob, I couldn't be bothered unpacking my board and just plugged in my Fuzzface...there's something special about the Strat-Fuzzface-Marshall combination

[Progrockabuse]

Last week, the day after practice and inspired by your setup Rob, I couldn't be bothered unpacking my board and just plugged in my Fuzzface...there's something special about the Strat-Fuzzface-Marshall combination

It’s quite liberating, all those tones I hear in my head and on some of my favourite recordings start to creep out.

What fuzz face do you have?

[Thom]

Last week, the day after practice and inspired by your setup Rob, I couldn't be bothered unpacking my board and just plugged in my Fuzzface...there's something special about the Strat-Fuzzface-Marshall combination

It’s quite liberating, all those tones I hear in my head and on some of my favourite recordings start to creep out.

What fuzz face do you have?

Absolutely! I have the Hendrix mini (FFM-3) and every time I use it I question why I don’t have it on my board more regularly…

[Progrockabuse]

Similar to mine then. The primal scream one is just a full sized Hendrix fuzz face with a paint job. I was toying with just getting a mini, but this was cheaper. Guessing they didn’t like primal scream ruining their pedalboard aesthetics.

[Thom]

I think the Hendrix versions are the best sounding - am probably biased but…. Yours is such a cool version, I can see it being less “desirable” to the masses but I think it’s ace.

[Progrockabuse]

I think the Hendrix versions are the best sounding - am probably biased but…. Yours is such a cool version, I can see it being less “desirable” to the masses but I think it’s ace.

I like the artwork, defo stands out and still feels like stepping on a land mine.

I’d agree with that. Back in 2015 I did have a full size Hendrix FF and a mini silicon FF. I just never gelled with them at the time, plus didn’t have a Marshall then either as I was fucking around with the god awful hughes and kettners.

I was buying/returning them via Amazon all the time. Wish I’d kept the rotovibe too.

How does the FF stack with your SD-1? I’ve got a lead on an SD-1 for £25 local.

[Thom]

To be honest I don’t think I’ve ever stacked my fuzz face and SD-1. For me the SD-1 either into a driven amp or into a Rat-type is basically where I live. For £25 do it if you can!

[Doog]

Have been using a Digitech 'SCREAMIN' BLUES' Blues Driver copy-but-better as my base 'clean' tone in Doghands, and using a Boss LS-2 to stick a Wampler fuzz after it to enjoy the spiky times of how they interact - GREAT feedback.

That said, may move to just using the LS-2 to toggle between them, as the difference is a lot more pronounced that way; something that's useful when you're trying to make every chorus sound like more than just 2 people.

Ampwise, the PIRATE studios we practise at either has a Boss Katana 100 combo or a Marshall MG half-stack depending on the room, and actually love how I could get the setup to sound; not too interested in classic rock blues toans, so that 'aggressive and direct' vibe suits me just fine. 100% getting a Katana to gig with next year; cheap, lightweight, loud, sounds good.

[Bacchus]

Proper love my MG10, stupidly good for such a cheap basic amp.

More and more lately, I've been coming the conclusion that the best I sound is when I have two minutes to quickly set up whatever really shitty 5w amp I can put my hand on, work out which of the school guitars are least broken and most hold tune, and find a cable that only crackles instead of cutting out completely, then shred it up for 30 seconds before pupils get in for a guitar lesson.

[Progrockabuse]

Have been using a Digitech 'SCREAMIN' BLUES' Blues Driver copy-but-better as my base 'clean' tone in Doghands, and using a Boss LS-2 to stick a Wampler fuzz after it to enjoy the spiky times of how they interact - GREAT feedback.

That said, may move to just using the LS-2 to toggle between them, as the difference is a lot more pronounced that way; something that's useful when you're trying to make every chorus sound like more than just 2 people.

Ampwise, the PIRATE studios we practise at either has a Boss Katana 100 combo or a Marshall MG half-stack depending on the room, and actually love how I could get the setup to sound; not too interested in classic rock blues toans, so that 'aggressive and direct' vibe suits me just fine. 100% getting a Katana to gig with next year; cheap, lightweight, loud, sounds good.

The digitech seems to be a bit of a sleeper pedal, never tried one but used to have a blues driver which was nice but I used to get annoyed with its splatty decay. Might have to keep a lookout for one.

Katanas get a lot of love and quite easy on the wallet for what you get. They seem to of taken the area that used to be dominated by Line 6 spiders but made some actually decent amps.