Distortion / drives - what do you use with the Marshall models?

[BBD_123]

I like to give the older Marshall models a bit of extra bite by using a drive pedal directly in front of the amp.

 

I always seem to come back to the Tube Distortion and Tube Screamer in front of the Plexi and JTM-45. Output high, drive low; the usual thing.

 

But perhaps I'm missing a trick. What do others like to use for distortion / drive effects with these amp models? Any clever tricks for setting the pedal controls?

 

Any suggestions welcome, even if it's just 'stick to what you are doing' :)

 

 

 

 

[joel_brown]

What you're doing is what people do in real life.  Seeing that Line6 tried to capture real life results in their product it makes sense to do the same thing.  

 

This is why quite a few people would mod their Plexi amp to give them more gain at the front end - such as Van Halen.  Supposedly he did the cascaded input mod for more gain in the front, biased the power amp tubes very hot, then used a variac to reduce the A/C voltage to the amp down to 90v and, of course, ran it wide open.

[BBD_123]

you might want to venture in the fuzz territory, like this guy did quite well (his patches included in the YT clips descriptions)

 

applied to marshall model

How to get a Hendrix tone with HD500

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applied to other amp models

A Good HD500X Fuzz Tone

 

 

Thanks, Nico - I always enjoy your video clips and will watch these later when peace descends on this household (ie wife & child gone to bed :-) ).  Good picks, as I feel that I've really neglected the *fuzz* pedals in favour of overdrive. Fun later, hopefully.

[BBD_123]

What you're doing is what people do in real life.  Seeing that Line6 tried to capture real life results in their product it makes sense to do the same thing.  

 

This is why quite a few people would mod their Plexi amp to give them more gain at the front end - such as Van Halen.  Supposedly he did the cascaded input mod for more gain in the front, biased the power amp tubes very hot, then used a variac to reduce the A/C voltage to the amp down to 90v and, of course, ran it wide open.

 

 

It's what I used to do in real life until I turned into a POD person :-) That's why I love the POD so much - it behaves very like real world kit.

 

As a fun project, I spent a while on getting a decent VH1 'brown sound' out of a Kramer Baretta with an EVH Frankenstein pickup using the POD. The results were the best I've ever had in ~35 years of trying, on-and-off, to nail that tone. The trick is to use the normal channel Plexi, not the bright channel model as you might expect, then dial in the bite with the TS and the groove with the bias and bias x :-)