Overloading the input of a pedal or amp

[glassjaw7]

Can someone please explain this to me? Sometimes I run 3 or 4 lower gain od's into a distortion pedal or even my amp to get that really lo-fi breakup type of sound, where the gain structure just falls apart. It's really cool when run into a delay for really nasty sounding leads. Is this bad? I never thought it could hurt anything since it's essentially just stacking gain stages, right?

Wouldn't overloading an input of a device have more to do with the amount of signal level or volume, and not the gain?

 

[Anonymous]

regardless of volume or gain, it won't hurt anything, except the feedback might hurt the neighborhood dogs

 

[glassjaw7]

regardless of volume or gain, it won't hurt anything, except the feedback might hurt the neighborhood dogs

Cool, thanks. Good to know because it sounds freakin awesome! Like you said, feedback when I roll the volume up on the guitar and a really fuzzy lead when it's rolled back.

 

[Anonymous]

the only thing input/outwise i would never do, obviously, is speaker outs to anything other than a speaker or load box.

i used also string 4 boss distortion pedals together back in the day....way before korn made it chic` to do so..just saying.

heavy metal pedal into metallizer into metal zone into the superoverdrive/feedbacker.

it got that mid range thump from the HM, the liquified digitallness of the MZ and i got to shape the tone with the peq settins on the MZ, then, i could step on the feedbacker for that added effect. loved that sound. ran it for a long time into a marshall jcm900. if you keep the gains down on them, you can get some interesting tones, that sound really big and not mushy as you'd expect.

throw a graphic eq in there somewhere, and things start to get really fun to play with.

 

[JakeAC5253]

What you want my friend is a Superfuzz or Superfuzz clone.

This isn't my favorite clone, but it gets the point across.

 

[diagrammatiks]

this is fine. the output of one pedal will never be greater then what the input of the next pedal can handle. most times.

even if you ran like 26 od's into each other the output at the end of that chain will only be the maximum output of that last pedal.

 

[JakeAC5253]

this is fine. the output of one pedal will never be greater then what the input of the next pedal can handle. most times.

even if you ran like 26 od's into each other the output at the end of that chain will only be the maximum output of that last pedal.

I don't think this holds water, I've done enough stompbox modding to know that it's not that simple. Output volume depends largely on amount of transistor/opamp gain and amount of clipping. More clipping = more gain = less output volume. If you cascade a few unclipped or lightly clipped gain stages the output level WILL be much higher than the input level, and may be higher than what the amp wants to see. If the pedal has very heavy clipping then it may never quite reach unity gain even with the level all the way up. You are better off running a few distortion boxes into the front of an amp than you are running a few OD's or clean boosts at the same time, even if it doesn't sound very good. If you do then I would just be mindful of gain structure and consider using the level knob on the final pedal in the chain as a volume attenuator to lower the amp's input volume. Or you could lower the output level of each pedal to unity gain.

 

[Anonymous]

agreed
the op amp clippings are what cause that mushi-ness.

but, it's still pretty safe. maybe resistance will be high, or capacitance, or some shit, but i dont think harmful...unless you get into doing it in some of the local bars we've all been shocked in the mouth while singing and playing....you know, ground loop discussions.

but, for the most part, i'd say it's safe enough for you and the gear.

i wonder how it would change if you use a pedal that actually uses a preamp tube though?

 

[robertkoa]

I still have a few OLD cassettes where I somehow slightly overloaded the input of an AKAI Reel to REEL tape recorder- and sounded very good .

I recently read a Post from Pickup/Tone Guru S Mark where he said Ritchie Blackmore did the same thing at one point, same recorder- but nowadays there's so many ways to get good overdrive, mixing stuff in parallel etc., and amps are SO much better at that, and emulators and Impulses.............