Hi everyone who’s reading: I’m looking for an overdrive pedal that can go into distortion as well when pushed to high gain (or vice versa). I’m using a TS9 clone now and while I love the sound it provides, it cannot go into full distortion. Is there something that woulf help my needs? Plus point if it’s a “budget” one
Would you consider a digital multi-fx pedal and a frfr speaker?
They’re not typically budget options but you can pick up some good deals if you’re ok getting second hand equipment.
The advantage of a multi-fx pedal is that you can dial in a tone you like and then once you’re happy, buy the equivalent analogue equipment rather than having to try several different combinations of individual pedals, amps and speakers before you find a tone you love.
DOD OD 250 (the yellow one not grey) is still my fav. It was my first pedal and still kicks ass. I believe theres a VST of it now.
As for “budget” you can build one from a PCB or hand wire it yourself, its so old theres no multi layer PCBs, I built one for use with a bass back in 2009 or 2010 since I didn’t want to modify the original.
Can you use amp overdrive and boost with the TS? My alternatives to that are Blackstar HT dual and Strymon Sunset which both have a lower drive side and a heavier side.
Since I’m allergic to tube screamers, I actually usually use a more neutral drive or a treble booster (which is a bass cut or underdrive in disguise) along with amp distortion.
I don’t have a good actual anger answer, though. Distortion pedals are pretty varied and personal taste thing. You might just need to try some. I’m tempted by Rat and Riot clones but don’t have either apart from modelling patches.
You might give a TC Electronic Magus pedal a try. It’s basically an updated version of the old RAT distortion pedals, and it’s really pretty versatile. You can get light, almost clean tones all the way to a pretty punchy rock distortion. There’s a little bit of a learning curve learning to balance the gain and volume knobs to get the distortion level you want (both knobs kind of control both volume and gain, but in slightly different ways), and the tone knob is reversed from most pedals, but it’s not difficult to get the hang of. It’s also not very expensive. When I bought mine I think it was like sixty bucks. That was pre-pandemic though so they’ve probably gone up in price since then, but I’d be surprised if they were more than $80 or $90.
I bought mine on a whim and not really expecting much, but it ended up being my go-to distortion for pretty much everything except super high-gain metal distortion.
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