distortion pedals? for guitar, changing from clean to distortion...simple pedal?

[black and white beauty]

ok, I want a simple pedal to change clean to distortion and back again. I dont have a huge budget, only £25 or under. what is a simple pedal, or maybe a foot switch that would enable me to change from clean to distortion with my foot...would it be a distortion pedal... or is there something simpler? thanks

[moodus2006]

Boss ds-1. Simple cheap and has a place in rock sound. Outside of that there are a ton of great pedals but they come at a cost much greater (I would trade a child before letting my fulltone - fulldrive go).

[Satch0922]

I got sucked into the TS-9 craze and love the smooth drive you get from them, especially the modded ones. BUT, they can be damn expensive.

As far as cheaper ones, I really liked the Marshall Guvnor I had for a while and I got it CHEAP on eBay.

[Satch0922]

Marshall GV-2 Guv’nor Plus Distortion Pedal NEW! - eBay (item 120369489100 end time Feb-02-09 14:32:11 PST)

[EtriX]

Check the pedal part of the forum, I'm sure you will find all the answers you want there
Pedals - My Les Paul Forums
I would say the guvn'r or a muff version

[stryker59]

tell us more about the gear you are currently using....

[nicolasrivera]

if u have a good tube amp and a les p, then u set the amp to a good crunsh sound and put your neck pickup and turn down the volume, bring it up slowly until u hear a good clean. With this setup its just u, guitar and amp ready to rock the world with a flick of a switch

[Saiko]

Ibanes TS-9 or Boss SD-1 for me. But I only used them for light distortion and to help my leads cut through in a mix. I always have thought the real distortion comes from the amp.

[R.L.]

The basic IMO in the ts-9 but there about twice the price you're talking, I think. 90 to 100 USD. I have a Rouge distortion pedal I got from Musicians Friend on a close out for 20 USD. For the price I love it. Danelectro makes a lot of affordable pedals and I would Look there. Check the revues at Harmony Central to see which one makes the sound you wont, they have off the wall names for there products. Hope this helped.

[skydog]

wrong section of the forum

[Taronja]

Originally Posted by moodus2006

Boss ds-1. Simple cheap and has a place in rock sound. Outside of that there are a ton of great pedals but they come at a cost much greater (I would trade a child before letting my fulltone - fulldrive go).

+10000 the DS-1 is a great simple pedal for very little money.

Jon

[ehamady6]

I like the Line 6 ToneCore Uber Metal, especially the built-in noise gate:



I can adjust it from smooth overdrive to black metal distortion. A very versatile pedal.

[asher67]

Originally Posted by moodus2006

Boss ds-1. Simple cheap and has a place in rock sound. Outside of that there are a ton of great pedals but they come at a cost much greater (I would trade a child before letting my fulltone - fulldrive go).

Agreed. If you want to be able to play full chords with a lower overdrive setting from time-to-time, though, I would suggest the Boss SD-1 (Super Overdrive) or the Ibanez TS-9 (TubeScreamer). Both of them can be set to a higher distortion, although the harmonics aren't as saturated as with the DS-1.

[MesaBoogie]

Rocktron's Silver Dragon

[huw]

Originally Posted by nicolasrivera

if u have a good tube amp and a les p, then u set the amp to a good crunsh sound and put your neck pickup and turn down the volume, bring it up slowly until u hear a good clean. With this setup its just u, guitar and amp ready to rock the world with a flick of a switch

What he said...

With a Les Paul you can pre-set two volume levels & switch between them with the pup selector. The guitar has built in channel switching!

And it's free!

[jodymauk]

the best I have found......period..you can get anything from Clampton,to Kerry King with this puppy...........run it in the clean channel,turn it off at will......................

[Olli]

Does your amp have two channels? Then you need a simple footswitch if the amp as a connector. Many amps that are foot-switcheable don´t come with one from the factory.

If it does not have two channels or is not foot switcheable I would indeed suggest a overdrive pedal. OD-1 is cheap and sounds not bad. Also a TS-9 can be had for little money used from the bay.

If your amp can do it - as many valve amps can - you could also use the volume know of your guitar. On the overdrive channel on my amp I can roll back the volume so that I get a nice clean tone and a nice crunch at full volume.

[type0]

What kind of distortion are you looking for?

Just a slight crunch for blues and classic rock or angry and aggressive heavy metal distortion?

Gollmer The Blues is a nice pedal and can be bought cheap second hand on ebay. It lets you adjust between light twangy distortion to moderate distortion similar to The Offspring, Green Day kind of sound. I have to say that this pedal is one of the best pedals I have. It sounds like a hard working tube amp distortion.

It has three controllers. Gain, tone and level. So you can adjust the amount of distortion, the tone and you can level it so that it corresponds with your clean sound.