Hey everyone, I’m a bit out of the loop with these pedals, and I’m trying to understand the ways people are using them.
I understand what they do, I’m just wondering why someone would use a pedal instead of just setting on an amp that has the gain or tone shaping characteristics that they’re looking for.
In particular, because the pedal then (presumably) gets plugged into the amps preamp section anyway, which is going to colour the sound again. So then, would the optimum use be to plug into a really transparent, clean amp?
To be clear, I’m talking about pedals like the UA Ruby, Zvex box of rock, Benson Preamp. Not so much about Helix, ToneX, etc. I know the latter are more like an all-in-one recording solution, so you can DI and still get great sounds at home, but the former? I’m not so sure what they’re best used for!
So I don’t have one of the pedals you mentioned, but I use an EQD speaker cranker which is designed to mimic an amp on the edge of breakup as a “dirty channel” and a Two Notes Torpedo cab to do cab-sim and DI into Logic. I don’t use an amp.
For me it’s combination of size+price+noise level. First, I’d drive my wife and neighbors nuts if I was playing out of an amp at a usable volume every time I play guitar. I use a lot of high gain pedals and make a lot of noise in general. I don’t play live or with other musicians so I don’t really need an amp that weighs 30-50lbs even though I have space. I have a Orange Micro Terror but I don’t use it because I don’t see the need to mic it up when I can accomplish nearly the same sound with the Torpedo cab in a quarter of the space.
Hope that gives some context/insight.