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Need help with picking overdrive

3K views 21 replies 12 participants last post by  DuncanH 
#1 ·
Hey y’all, I need help finding an od that is very quiet but with lots of gain reasons are, metal!!!! My rig is a mesa boogie mark iv rackmount. But it just doesn’t have quite enough gain. So I’m using a ts9 but it is just too loud. Even with a gate in the front and the back, it’s just too much for my rig. I need something that will tighten my sound, any suggestions?
 
#2 ·
How are you powering your pedals? What is loud about it? Is it a humming or buzzing? If you have noise typically it's related to a grounding issue. Your worst enemy with high gain is having a daisy chain setup powering your pedals. It causes a ground loop making the signal going into the front of the amp buzz. You may need to invest in an isolated power supply.

Also for best tone, i never use pedals for gain unless it's low gain. Tubes provide the absolute best for tone. But there is a fairly cheap nice high gain pedal i am aware of! Golden plexi by tone city pedals. It's about $60 USD. Take a listen to it on YouTube, if your not impressed you'd be the first I've met haha.
 
#3 · (Edited)
How are you powering your pedals? What is loud about it? Is it a humming or buzzing? If you have noise typically it's related to a grounding issue. Your worst enemy with high gain is having a daisy chain setup powering your pedals. It causes a ground loop making the signal going into the front of the amp buzz. You may need to invest in an isolated power supply.

Also for best tone, i never use pedals for gain unless it's low gain. Tubes provide the absolute best for tone. But there is a fairly cheap nice high gain pedal i am aware of! Golden plexi by tone city pedals. It's about $60 USD. Take a listen to it on YouTube, if your not impressed you'd be the first I've met haha.
I do use a daisy chain, but it's for just two pedals, it's a squealing tho. Like when I am not playing it squeals a lot. My noise gate is so high it's starting to interfere with my clean channel. I have heard that the pedal doesn't like to add much gain without squeeling it it's tons of gain. I will definitely try an isolated power supply and see if that fixes it tho. Appreciate your response!
 
#4 ·
Squealing? Sounds like it's harshly compressing your signal. The pedal it self may be the issue. If you're running an OD pedal into clean and it's squealing i would imagine the tone can't be that great. You may want to try to use your high gain channel on the messa and then adding the pedal you are using but turn the gain down on the pedal. Just to give your high gain channel a little boost.
 
#6 · (Edited)
No am not familiar with that pedal. Isn't the mark iv a mesa that petrucci uses or used? I know you said it was a rack mount setup, i am just trying to figure out what you are using. The mark iv isn't a really high gain amp so... i feel your pain. I'm not a metal guy myself, but i like screaming gain like van halen or joe satriani.
 
#7 ·
I always like watching Andertons Tv YouTube channel for gear.



Check this out, they have a nice group of metal pedals you might like. The EvH pedal is actually really nice. It has a lot of nice features. But it's probably over priced because it's an evh pedal.
 
#8 ·
Hey y'all, I need help finding an od that is very quiet but with lots of gain reasons are, metal!!!! My rig is a mesa boogie mark iv rackmount. But it just doesn't have quite enough gain. So I'm using a ts9 but it is just too loud. Even with a gate in the front and the back, it's just too much for my rig. I need something that will tighten my sound, any suggestions?
I have a Mark IV Combo and used it for metal often with no pedals. It has PLENTY of gain. Might help to know specifically what kind of metal sound. There is more than one :) I did use pedals with it occasionally, mainly an EVX Metal Muff or one of my Tubescreamers. I haven't used the amp in probably close to two years now but I kept a notebook of various settings (I play all kinds of music not just metal) I used. I transferred a lot of those settings to presets on my Fractals. But again without knowing what specific metal sound you are going for, its just guessing.
 
#12 ·
Hey y'all, I need help finding an od that is very quiet but with lots of gain reasons are, metal!!!! My rig is a mesa boogie mark iv rackmount. But it just doesn't have quite enough gain. So I'm using a ts9 but it is just too loud. Even with a gate in the front and the back, it's just too much for my rig. I need something that will tighten my sound, any suggestions?
.

Analog Mike might have you a solution, he does TS mods and I think one of them is to quiet them.

Are you going for just out and out saturation for leads? Something else? The MXR Custom Badass Line might be up your alley.

Luke
 
#13 ·
Mesa Boogie’s customer service is second to none so it might be worth asking them if they have any suggestions. The Mark IV has quite a bit of gain so they might be more concerned about that aspect first. Assuming the amp is in good working order, they will probably recommend their own pedals which is probably good advice. Send them an email. You will get one back, written by a real person, within a few days. ;)
 
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