Reinhardt
I've tried allot of pedal, boss gt8 excluded, but all the other pedals sounded thin. One pedal I could remember was the uberdistortion, sounded quite spiff. What do u guys think?
Mr-M
What sort of high gain sound? Metal - type of metal (thrash, death etc.)? Hard Rock? Screamo/ Core (hopefully not!)? Basically Genre (or how much gain do you need and must it be tight or loose etc.) is what I'm asking.
Also, how much do you want to spend?
Explorerlover
You can try the Rocktron Silver Dragon. It's a tube driven pedal which allows you to play anything from Rock to Norwegian Black Metal
Reinhardt
I'm not going 2 buy any (atleast not now). I've been saving for a highgain amp ? But I'm just interested, because I could'nt find any. I bought a Boss DS-1 and louped it through my Boss GT8, and used the eq on the gt8 and boosed the mids, it sounded quite good, because I got that analog sound, but it was still very thin? Am I correct If I say, it also depend on wich amp you run the pedal through? Like when you have a "Kaka" clean chanal the tone is going 2 be "kaka", or when you have a decent clean valve, it will sound better?
Highgain for more a metal type sound...
Werner-Carstens
Hi Reinhardt, the problem here is universal and that is that what sounds thick to you might sound thin to me. It is really a question of trying out as much as you can and deciding what YOU like. In terms of high gain stompers that will give you something different I can recommend the following:
Electro-Harmonix Metal Muff
Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde
Blackstar HT Dual
Carl Martin Crush Zone
Malkav
Yo dude, you also gotta remember that Higain sounds aren't necessarily a side of effect of a distortion pedal...
Most bands get their high gain recordings done by having gain somewhere by 5 or 6 and having volume way up there, after that it becomes a question of picking dynamics and string gauge. heavy strings plus heavy picking on medium gain with high volume = ballsy chunky heavy tone. in fact most amps get thinner as you push up the gain stage and generally the reason big amps sound so good isn't because of high gain but because they push more air than small amps.
Plus remember high gain = higher chance of shitty squeally noises coming out of your guitar which is kaka in a live scenario. I don't know what kinda music you dig but as far as these things are concerned these are the general rules of thumb. play with volume, eq and gain to get good tone - it's not all about one factor in the line up to ear pleasing low end and nice crunchy highs.
toastyrat
Reinhardt Matthysen wrote
I'm not going 2 buy any (atleast not now). I've been saving for a highgain amp.
To me that is the most important part of getting the sound you want. Obviously pedals add their own colour and sound, but you have to let the amp do it's job...
Reinhardt
Yeah I agree...
Werner thanx, will check them out. But I never saw some of those pedals?
Werner-Carstens
Hi Reinhardt, they are not generally available in every music shop. As I am not familiar with all the music shops in Pretoria I don't know which ones will specialise in stomp boxes. I know that Marshall Music usually have a good selection, but all of them are available in South Africa as I have seen them (and actually use them) in shops.
deanBailey
I'd say the GT8 is more than you need right there!
It kinda really does have everything you need at that price range.
Opeth use GT8's into the clean(I think clean or OD) channel of their amps live but with their gain knobs turned off completely.
So every sound you hear from them is pure GT8.
Dunno if you messed with the COSM amps yet (5150, soldano 100, rectifier) but those sound fairly useable by themselves but you will have to adjust them (and add a Tubescreamer ?). Just raise the lower mids and you miiight have to scoop around 1k because those amp sims tend to get really tinny as you mentioned in your first post. Also you should try the 4 cable method (FX loops etc)
I've had the priviledge of messing around on the GT10 (Thanks Dylan) and I'm fairly impressed with it's capabilities. But I haven't noticed anything THAT different to the GT8. The tones I've been getting, I would actually consider using on demo's etc. (true story)
Keep the DS-1 (or give it to me ?).
My opinion regarding the Silver dragon is not in it's favour unfortunately. My previous band's guitarist had one and it just has one small preamp tube in it and it stunk when used for too long hehe (pun intended) and it wasn't that 'awesome tube smell' you get from amp heads.
It doesn't have much (if any) tube character to it. :/
peace
Werner-Carstens
Hi Dean. I agree with the comment regarding Opeth. I read that they use GT8's because they are never sure about the backline that will be available at festivals they play around the world. As a means of ensuring more or less the same sound wherever they go they decided on GT8'S with the gain on whatever backline is available turned to zero.
deanBailey
Indeed
I just re-read my post and was embarresed by the english mistakes lol.
I guess it would make more sense to actually post a clip of what I mean. I'll see if I can scrape some free time to record something with a GT 10's tone only.
Malkav
I love my GT-10, in the long run people who change to it won't get it instantly but if you've been on an 8 for a very long time you'll instantly notice how much more responsive the 10 is...
Also dynamically the 8 applied the same algorythm of gain to the entire frequency range, the 10 applies different algorythms to different frequency bands which is what real tube amps do.
The 10 also is more user friendly, in the sense that half the time the tones on the 8 needed serious tweaking before they sounded real and not processed, with the 10 I find that almost from the start the tones sound realistic and responsive with minimal effort to get exactly what I want.
Also the built in loop station is great, now I can practice modes over progressions on the fly with no need for backing tracks ? I just wish that it wasn't so F***ing bright and that the pedal on the thing was made out of metal rather - in terms of build quality I think the 8 was better but tonally (which is what counts) the 10 screws it up big time ?
Most amazingly, and Dean you should have been happy about this really fast, the GT-10 has a USB output ? ? ? ? ? hell's yeah so now recording and storing patches works and for anyone who had the GT-8 librarian the GT-10 librarian is backwards compatable ? wooohooo....
Bottom line though is that with most of these effect boards you have to sit with them, learn them and use them otherwise they'll always sound bad.
I think it's very cool that Opeth are using modelling pedals as the technology has come a damn long way and is starting to really get it right now ? and for anyone who's interested Opeth use Laney GH100s ?
Plus as a GT-10 user I guess i've just got a jaded outlook on my beloved pedal, I did own an 8 for two years though so I know the differences ?, not trying to sound like an endorser but honestly the 10 is better than the other pedals available in my mind (I mean come on the Line 6 does vocals how off the point is that?).
Reinhardt
Dean I agree. If I had 2 buy all those pedal that u get in the gt8, it wouldive been damn expensive. If you take an analog tuner, a tap delay pedal and a eq, you are already over R3000, and I got it for R3500. I have a cube amp aswell, and I love the tone, but the problem with the cube is that you can't set the length of the delay and the volume of the delay, plus u can't tap the tempo. But I found gr8t tone on the gt8 yipee!
The other cool thing about the gt8 is that you can check out all the pedals and experiment with them (so that you know what u want 2 buy in the future for your pedal board). One of the pedals I like ALLOT is the octave pedal, damn that thing is sexy.
That DS1 is awesome, I love the aftertones it gives.
Chad, is the Gt10 made out of plastic? What do you mean with algorythm? What do you guys think of the vox multi effects pedal?
deanBailey
Yeah, Akerfeldt uses the GH100 and Peter/Akesson used the VH100 (which I've actually learned to like by itself if tweaked correctly)
But I've heard for live use, Akesson actually uses the Marshall JVM now (used on the latest Opeth album) and imo probably the best amp I've ever heard in person...ever. I didn't even need a tubescreamer on the OD channel and it was beyond anything I've heard out of a tube amp. I almost considered swapping my krank for it lol.
anyway that's OT. :-[
Gearhead
Reinhardt Matthysen wrote
What do you mean with algorythm?
The same thing as modelling: the software inside the pedal uses a mathmatical way of analysing the input sound waves, applies more math on how a real amp and/or real stomp boxes behave (model), and then uses even more math in calculating what the output should be.
To say that the one pedal uses the same algorythm basically means that they're going to do the exact same math. Whether they're going to sound the same then depends on the A/D and D/A converters the buffer stages and the power supply.
Reinhardt
wow ???
What's the A/D and D/A?
FatBoy
I believe it stands for analogue to digital and digital to analogue converters, but ya other than that I am as lost as you are!
Gearhead
Sorry if I got you guys confused. I suppose what I was trying to clarify about the algorythm you did understand? The last sentence was supposed to explain why two units using the same algorythm might still sound a bit different (which I might have just not mentioned). I am not saying that the 8 and the 10 sound different btw, I have no idea. To make it up to you I will save you the whole googling -and-wading-through-stacks-of-info thing.
A/D converters basically turn the analog signal that comes out of your guitar (or pedal or whatever) into a digital one. They work slightly more complicated than this, but here's a good way of looking at them: let's say the guitar signal goes up and down between -1 and +1 V. Let's say that the A/D thing makes 56636 little voltages at equal intervals between -1 and +1 V and compares each of those lines to the signal at some point in time. It will be able to tell where the signal is at that time by doing the comparison and it stores that as a number between 0 and 56635. Let's now say that it does that 44100 times per second at sort of regular intervals, we would have a pretty good idea of the waves coming out of your guitar during that second. In fact, that's the quality that CD's store the music in (16 bit, 44kHz). A good A/D converter for studio purposes these days will be a whole lot more detailed by the way (24 bit, 96 kHz). The quality difference between A/D converters comes down to how accurately their 56636 little voltages are at equal intervals and how accurately time is kept (the latter often overlooked, called jitter). Remember that these intervals should also not change when the chip is getting a little hot and so forth.
D/A converters do the opposite: they read the digital signal and turn it into analog. The quality difference again being number of intervals, frequency, how accurately those are maintained and temperature dependence.
Another big thing about analog signals is, like some guy Ohm wants us to believe, that a weak signal source will not put the same volts out when it is connected to a very powerful user (like a speaker) as when connected to not such a power-hungry user (like a preamp). This is called impedance: a guitar is high impedance which means you can not connect it to something hungry and still expect it to put out what it does unconnected. An amp output is low impedance since it will put out roughly the same voltage regardless of what you connect to it (don't overdo that though). An amp input is high impedance since it leaves the voltage of even the faintest guitar signal intact, and so forth.
For example if you turn your amp down low you might have as many volts running from your guitar to the amp as from the amp to the speaker. Still you cannot connect the speaker directly to the guitar because the voltage would be about 10000 times less.
People call amps that do not amplify voltage, but have a high input impedance and a low output impedance, buffers. They are in most equipment like stompboxes to separate a high impedance signal source from a low impedance user.
I also mentioned the power supply because it it kinda hard for things like converters and buffers to do their job properly if their input voltages are not kept constant. Power supplies tend to be the most expensive parts of most devices and that's for a good reason. It's also the reason why cheap stuff does not sound like expensive stuff.
Long post, serves me right for overcomplicating things.
Reinhardt
Thanx gearhead for the info!
