Balancing pedal levels..

[Tone Jones]

I've been having trouble balancing the levels of the different drive pedals I stack together. The two pedals in question are a Bogner Blue and Rockett Blue Note. I set one side of the Bogner as my low gain tone, I goose that setting with the Blue Note as my mid gain tone, and activate the second side of the Bogner with the Blue Note for my high gain tone. I really dig the sound but the levels get increasingly louder with each thing I stack - most noticeably when I stack the low gain side of the Bogner with the Blue Note. I have tried bringing the level down on the Blue Note but it has an adverse effect on the tone I'm going for so it has to be set the way it is which results in quite a volume bump.

This is leaving me with needing to pad/attenuate the signal after it has been goosed to keep the levels the same. I know some guys use the rationale that as they add gain the band is usually also ramping up in volume but in my case, I want them all to be even and only louder than the other when I want to solo with one of those tones. I don't want to have to step on a volume pedal either to bring the level down on the back end as that's too much foot work and distracting.

One idea was to use something like a Disaster Area DPC-5 along with a Source Audio EQ pedal that would basically give me presets with volume control over each tone. The trouble there is its just more crap to add to the equation not to mention significantly growing my pedal board size.

Just wondering if any of you guys have a workaround you can suggest that accomplishes the same thing?

 

[tripstan]

Watch the order of your pedals. Placing a lower gain boost pedal after your gain/distortion pedal will give you a big volume spike. If the (higher)gain pedal is after the boost (lower gain) the boost pedal will add saturation and not volume and vice versa. It sounds like you have the Bogner second in the chain. Try swapping the order.

 

[gibson08]

I use the volume knobs on the pedals to set level, I find the boost on the Blue a little out of control even with the volume and gain knobs all the way down, so I don't use it.

 

[Tone Jones]

Watch the order of your pedals. Placing a lower gain boost pedal after your gain/distortion pedal will give you a big volume spike. If the (higher)gain pedal is after the boost (lower gain) the boost pedal will add saturation and not volume and vice versa. It sounds like you have the Bogner second in the chain. Try swapping the order.

Thing is I like the way the Blue Note goosing the Bogner sounds. If I switch the order I lose that.

 

[Tone Jones]

I use the volume knobs on the pedals to set level, I find the boost on the Blue a little out of control even with the volume and gain knobs all the way down, so I don't use it.

If I drop the volume of the Blue Note and compensate for the missed boost with the gain knob + hot switch, it just isn't the same. Seems there is no way for me to keep the tones I'm liking without a volume bump. Just looking for the simplest solution to keep the levels even.

 

[gibson08]

I use the volume knobs on the pedals to set level, I find the boost on the Blue a little out of control even with the volume and gain knobs all the way down, so I don't use it.

If I drop the volume of the Blue Note and compensate for the missed boost with the gain knob + hot switch, it just isn't the same. Seems there is no way for me to keep the tones I'm liking without a volume bump. Just looking for the simplest solution to keep the levels even.

Yeah I know what you mean, but unfortunately volume up=boost, maybe a separate high gain pedal would work better for you.

 

[Tone Jones]

I use the volume knobs on the pedals to set level, I find the boost on the Blue a little out of control even with the volume and gain knobs all the way down, so I don't use it.

If I drop the volume of the Blue Note and compensate for the missed boost with the gain knob + hot switch, it just isn't the same. Seems there is no way for me to keep the tones I'm liking without a volume bump. Just looking for the simplest solution to keep the levels even.

Yeah I know what you mean, but unfortunately volume up=boost, maybe a separate high gain pedal would work better for you.

It took sooooo long to find the right combo of pedals for me in terms of tone and playing nice with each other. I hear what you're saying, just not sure I want re-embark on the pedal hunt. I may just suck it up and do the DCP-5/Source Audio MIDI EQ thing, as much as I want to resist! Thanks for chiming in!