Distortion pedals

[VH4_BigRig]

Hey everyone..I had mentioned in another thread that for practice at home, I use a Kustom 15 watt bass amp and a Sansamp GT2 or Damage Control Demonizer. This got me thinking that it would be cool to know what the rest of you use for distortion pedals when you can't use your Diezels!

I don't think I'm going to be using my VH4 live because it's my baby, and even though it's begging to be used live, I honestly can't afford to replace it if it gets broken or stolen at a gig, so I'm not taking the risk. Therefore I need to figure out what I want to use live, so opinions on distortion pedals would be useful for this situation as well. When talking about what kind of distortion I' m looking for, it's definitely heavy-ass, well defined tone, similar to that of channel 3 on the VH4. Although I know it's pretty much impossible to get this from a pedal, it would be cool to know what pedals are of decent quality.

Do you guys like Krank Distortus Maximus? Line 6 Uber Metal? Digitech Metal Masters? I've tried a bunch out and settled on the two mentioned earlier, but it's always good to know about other options. As long as nobody mentions Boss Metalzones....those should be banned from the face of the earth, every time I hear one it makes me want to throw up, or punch someone

Cheers!

PS Hey Peter, any plans on adding a kick-ass distortion pedal to your list of creations? It would be interesting to see what crazy sounds you could come up with without tubes

 

[Lexicon Devil]

I personally like the old TubeWorks Real Tube pedals with low gain amps to get high gain sounds. That being said, I've been thinking of getting an repro Fuzzface or SupaFuzz type pedal with a Gallium Arsenide transistor to use on Channel 1 of my VH4, because they produce such a differant sounding distortion than channel 3 and channel 4. --They have a very retro sound that compliments low gain amps.

 

[skippystz]

tube screamer on channel 2 actually does scream... it's pretty awesome.

picking a dist. pedal really does depend on what type of amp you're using. i've never had a good experience using a distortion pedal with a clean solid-state amp, or even a clean tube amp for that matter. it sounds better when you have a pushed tube amp and then a pedal that pushes it further into distortion(e.g. jcm800 w/tube screamer). i can't imagine playing out of a kustom bass amp with a pedal you could get anything that resembles channel 3 of the vh4...

has anyone here tried those modded boss "SLO-Diezel" pedals that are on ebay?

 

[White_Van]

Landmine Ld-1.

You can run it straight into the mixer for a great 15 second setup rig that will sound pretty good.

 

[van hellion]

js mods ds-1. they can be ordered from Riks Music in knoxville TN and they friggin rock!!!!

peace
A Wood

 

[VH4_BigRig]

Great guys, keep it coming! Has anyone had any experience with other tube distortion pedals, such as the Blackstar HT series, Vox Cooltron series, Radial Tonebone series, Matchless Hotbox, Soldano Supercharger, Mesa V-Twin, etc? My Demonizer sounds pretty good thanks to its two 12ax7,s but I'm not a huge fan of the EQ pots on it. It takes a while to dial in the right sound, which is why I'm still searching for other options...stupid GAS...

 

[Me]

It's really a fuzz, not distortion, but my fuzz factory has some super fat grizzly sounds. Depending how you dial it you can go from velcro, little bottom end, breaky up fuzz, to massive fat fizzy crunch. Splendid!