Good distortion pedal

Paperboy, the best amp I have ever used EVER, is the Fender Hot Rod Deville. I may be partial because I own one, but for a blues/rock tone, you can't go wrong.

A favorite amp I own is a Fender BXR 25, a little 25-watt solid-state bass amp, which sounds absolutely awesome with guitar. I'm thinking about buying another one for cheap and putting the control tray into a seperate box for portability and (with an external amp) the availibility to really turn it up with a seperate cab.

That's cool. Thank you for the advice guys! I've been watching the Twin Reverb amps on eBay, but they're still wicked expensive. When I get closer to affording it I'll try a few amps out. I just love the tone those vintage Fender tube amps give you. For the hell of it, now I'd like to try one of those BXR 25's.

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"And so I throw the windows wide
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It's not a bad amp at all, awesome clean tone. They're pretty cheap too, $75-$150 on eBay.

I have a metal zone and I am quite happy with it. It's all a matter of EQ. Try this setting on the EQ of the pedal itself.

High 1/2
Low 3/4

middle 3/4
Mid Freq 1/4

It should get a "fade to black" kinda sound
Obviously no good for Floyd... I use a different pedal for that!
But still, i like how it sounds for heavier stuff. Pretty juicy for leads too. Nice sustain!

i can see that i'm not the only one with a DS-1

what i did once is plug my lp-100 into my sisters kareoke machine and i think i put it through the DS-1 also and it was so crunchy!! it was just awesome... and i think since when i cranked up the level and the vol on the guitar it got crunchier, so its probably a compression system built in so when you hit high notes it doesnt blow the speakers. this is definately a good way to go for the crunchiness if thats what your looking for. not very clean as is but you could get an overdrive (TS-808 kicks) and a comp. (dynacomp ?) and mess with the controls till the crunch is almost isolated so that you can still play the full tonal range.

hope thats what your looking for

Wow, I just read a post of mine from 2004. Sometime shortly after, I did actually go out and try tube amps until I found one I loved. I ended up getting a Marshall Triple Super Lead 60 watt combo with a single 12" speaker and spring reverb. After playing all sorts of amps, I realized I prefer the body and grittiness of a Marshall. When I play the Marshall, I like to use the amp's two built in distortion channels instead of using pedals. I almost bought a used Fender Evil Twin which had a sound much like the TSL 601, but I ultimately fell in love with the Marshall. I did recently pick up an Epiphone Valve Junior, which has a great vintage sound. While I love my Marshall, it is a lot easier to grab the little Valve Junior if I am running over someone's house and we're just going to hang out. With the Epiphone, I do like to use my Marshall Gov'ner pedal for distortion. Back when I posted in 2004, I was playing on a Johnson copy of a Fender stratocaster. I had changed out the pickups on my strat copy and replaced them with Fender vintage noiseless pickups. I still have that strat copy, but have since found a new love. Now I play almost entirely on an Epiphone Les Paul Special that I modified. I changed out the pickups on that pup, and installed locking, auto-trim tuners. I installed Seymour Duncan Pearly-Gates (humbucker) at the bridge, and a Gibson P-94 single coil at the neck. I love my Pearly-Gates. The P-94 is a good heavy single coil which is great when you need that sound, but I do find I lean towards playing more with the Pearly-Gates.

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"And so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky"

Ahh the infamous "distortion pedal?" question. Asking which distortion pedal is best is like asking a group of individuals their preferred ice cream flavor. You're going to get alot of different responses. A better question would be "What kind of distortion should I get to do ______. (insert purpose here). If you want a good Dave tone which I assume you do since you're in this forum, the Big Muff is a good place to start, which alot of people have mentioned. Also, the Boss Blues Driver is another good choice. I picked up a Boss GT-3, the first GT effects unit they ever made and I must say, I can pretty much nail the tone on the PULSE version of "Sorrow" and "Run Like Hell" using that unit's delay/compression and a Danelectro Daddy-O. One thing to remember about effects processors is DO NOT use their distortion because it ALWAYS is bad. (My experiences anyways)

Another important thing is the amp -- tube definitely required. A Marshall and anything that uses a similar circuitry *ALOT of amps* break up really easily. Dave uses Hiwatt amps which are notorious for having a low break tolerance. Matchless is another amp with this characteristic. I play through a Traynor Mark II head, which is basically a Marshall Super Lead 100 circuit and I get close to his tone despite the tendency for it to overdrive.

With any blues based guitarist I think the most important thing when trying to replicate them is do your own thing and get the point across. Dave never plays the same solo twice so why should you try to play his exact solo? If you break into "Comfortably Numb" at a bar and you rip out a sweet solo and it's not exactly the way he played it, who cares. No one is going to call you on it and if they do, they better prove themselves as a superior guitarist

The hard thing about pinning down a Dave tone is that his tone changed throughout the years. You almost have to pick a decade of his music and go from there. I prefer the Delicate Sound Of Thunder/PULSE tour tone so that's what I shoot for.

-Taylor

I've since figured out that a really good sound is hard to get. The only distortion I've ever been completely happy with was the one built into the Marshall Mode-Four head. And since that cost $1000, I didn't buy it. Ah well. The DS-1 will have to do for now.

And a word of warning: never buy a DOD Distortion Factory pedal. It's horrible.

I've still got my old Digitech RP-80 Processor and I'm happy with it, especially since I haven't played the electric in a while and I can't remember how the effects sound like.

Or anything from DOD for that matter.

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