Message 4/25
Date: 18-Jun-01 @ 09:07 PM -
RE: Best distortion?
i think you'll find a quite large variety of answers to this one
it depends a lot on the source though....when i had my juno 106, a boss hm-2
(heavy metal) worked great with it, but i didn't like it as much on other things.
and it sounds terrible on guitar. i liked both my rat and the turbo rat for most
of my stuff.
the cream machine (i still have this) is great for many things but it tends to lose
bass, you have to add it back (if it matters, usually it doesn't), it's somewhat midrangey.
you don't really need to be as picky though, just try some different things.
it might not be distortion...the nord micromodular has some really sick wave wrapping, rectifying and lo-fi effects that are similar but different to distortion.
lexicons sound rather nasty if you overload their inputs too...fun
one other box which used to be really cheap but the guitarists seem to have figured them out is the boss ROD-10, which is a 1/2 rack effects box with basically 5 different distortions in them (2 overdrives, 2 distortions, 1 fuzz) with a common 3-band EQ
they all use. i got the first one i had for $40, you can still occasionally find them that cheap.
the distortions in some multi-fx are decent for this too, i use my korg A2 for this stuff occasionally.
if you get tube distortions....truth is that often they are way too "over the top" and sound awful when you first try them out, or are hard to get decent volume out of without distortion....switch the 12ax7s out for 12at7s and they sometimes work better (my ada mp-1 was like this....way over the top with the ax7s but with an at7 in the second position it was perfect with my pro-one). don't recommend the mp-1...it sounds OK but programming is a pain and the controls aren't fine enough (at distortion = 27 it's not quite enough, at distortion = 28 it's too much, you get the idea).