refuogee wrote:
Pedals definitely do work. They hit the front end of your amp and drive your power tubes if I am not mistaken.
However it is different for every amp. My Boss DS-1 might be have certain characteristics but it won't sound the same hitting the front end of a Fender Bassman as it will a Marshall plexi. You will get distortion but the distortion will sound very different, with only the characteristics of the pedal being the same.
Each amp has its own tone that nothing can ever change, pedals will bring out the amps overdrive/ distortion sound although the ability to turn the amp up will change the characteristic of that once again. This is why you have to try an amp before you buy, if you don't like its tone you can't change it short of modding it.
Pedals work but they don't hit your power tubes hard. Different amps do sound different if you drive them with a boost pedal but that is because the preamps / tonestacks are different.
There is absolutely no way to get power tube distortion without loads of volume or loads of attenuation (with anything but the smallest amps). You can install Variable Voltage Regulators to decrease the headroom of certain tube stages in amps but with amps like these Marshalls, with fixed bias, the VVR doesn't sound that good if you turn it down below about halfway, which still results in massive volumes. This is practically only useful with cathode biased amps where you can turn the VVR down much further.
So yes and no. You can get a big amp to sound lekker at a reasonable volume with pedals and the amp clean, or you can do it at massive volume with the amp driven. The difference comes in at how the amp responds to pick attack and volume changes on the guitar. Most pedals just don't respond the way an amp would i.e. they don't clean up at all, although, things are changing and you get some that will clean up.
Still, if you go with pedals, you may as well get a smaller amp because carrying around a 25kg head and a 40kg 4x12 is a sucky business at best.
Knowing all this though, I still look at these big old Marshalls and want one haha.
