Overdrive with Herbert?

MrFlexx

Active member
Any suggestion about an overdrive pedal to go with the Herbert? Or should I stick with a boost pedal and/or an EQ pedal like for example the Empress ParaEQ? Today I have the Suhr Koko Boost, but haven’t tried it with the Herbert as my Herbert still is in the making at Diezel. Hopefully it’ll come the upcoming week. I didn’t have any Boost- or overdrive pedals the last time I owned the Herbert and it sounded great...but everything can be better still, or?
 
Vfe standout has been stellar with my diezels though the empress is great also just harder to dial in.

Diezel dont like the input boosted too much, they dont “breathe” if you do. EQ shaping and a slight boost or unity is all you need.
 
Have me banned :LOL: :LOL: , but IMHO all kinds of overdrives and boosts are built by people who do not care or not have much of a clue. They copy 70 years old schematics, put 5$ parts into a box and sell that for way too much money. That's ok because most buyers do not have a clue as well. The signal to noise ratio of these devices is ridiculous and if you put these devices in front of channel 3 of a vh4, you'll notice how damn quiet such a Diezel amp is... without the pedal! The little increase in gain and tone coloration is usually accompanied by disproportional background noise.

All these things really do is add lots of white noise (if you are lucky). One booster that does not seem to do that is the MK.4.23 - CLEAN BOOST PEDAL.
"Lower than -115dBu noise floor. Over 140dB signal to noise ratio possible!" I haven't tried it myself, though.

I've tried lots of expensive buffers only to find out that the buffer in the tc polytune is the most quiet one I found. The expensive Mesa stuff is a joke and noisy as hell.
I was really taken aback by what inferior stuff is advertised as a pristine studio quality device.
 
MetalHeadMike":1mlbm6dg said:
Ran an MXR 10 band in the loop and a TS9 out front and thought it sounded great with the Herbert I had.
The only pedals I’ve kept since selling my Friedman Smallbox is the Koko Boost, XTS Multi Precision Overdrive and the Rockbox Boiling Point “the handmade one”
Think I’ll get the Empress ParaEQ for tone sculpting and maybe a Friedman Dirty Shirley pedal or BE-OD to use in the clean channel of the Herbert. Wonder how that’ll sound?
 
I've been looking at the Empress ParaEQ lately, too. I've got their Tape Delay and it's really well built, sounds great. Keep hearing great things about the Dirty Shirley boost, too.

FWIW, I think that a good EQ is one of the best "effects" to have.
 
Maxon OD-808 adds gain and compression without as much associated noise.

Better (less noise) than:

Ibanez TS9 (modded and non-modded)
Boss OD3
MXR FET Driver


That said. I always preferred my Herberts with no boost.
 
I just cut some huge sounding tracks with a Herbert and a Russian Big Muff.
I usually use only , guitar —>amp
So anything can work...

I agree with Churchill, An Eq ( I put it in the loop) is the best effect with Herbert.
 
I think I'll get an EQ pedal for overall tone sculpting and use my Rockbox Boiling Point (The handmade and hand painted one) on Ch.2 for some nice rock tones...and then use my Koko Boost for a slight mid boost for solos. Thanks for all your input.
 
I have a Maxon OD808 and Xotic BB preamp that work really well with it. The Xotic seems to not let the amp breathe as much as mentioned earlier, and i'm having trouble dialing it in to be honest. On my OD808 I usually set it to either Level max, Drive 0, tone 12-1 O'clock; or Level at 3, Drive at 8-9, and tone at 12-1. Meanwhile, on the xotic i'm kind of having trouble finding the right level vs drive balance.
 
I've tried a bunch of OD808/OD9 variations but none of them worked better in my opinion than a good treble booster.

With my Herbert I have achieved the best results with the Friedman Buxom Boost. Boost level just a hair above unity, tight level around 2 o'clock.
 
I Had Suhr Koko boost for a while, before I bought Herbert, must say that pedal + Herbert didn’t sound i any better than amp itself. It’s great amp, you can’t get any better that it is. There are some cases when you need tightening up loosen amp like rectifier(so it’s more about cutting lows before preamp section, rather that adding gain), or if you have only one overdrive channel and you need more gain for leads,
For me Herbert and probably other Diezel’s good on it’s own. Save money get some good cable:)

Never the less I use booster for leads on my DIY 2 channel rectifier
 
belensky":1tvu2hxg said:
I Had Suhr Koko boost for a while, before I bought Herbert, must say that pedal + Herbert didn’t sound i any better than amp itself. It’s great amp, you can’t get any better that it is. There are some cases when you need tightening up loosen amp like rectifier(so it’s more about cutting lows before preamp section, rather that adding gain), or if you have only one overdrive channel and you need more gain for leads,
For me Herbert and probably other Diezel’s good on it’s own. Save money get some good cable:)

Never the less I use booster for leads on my DIY 2 channel rectifier
I feel the same way about the Koko Boost + Herbert now that I’ve tried it, but with one exception.
When running channel 2 with the switch set on “-“ the Koko Boost Mid Boost is great to kick in when going from Malcom Young crunch to Doug Rappoport bluesy lead. Other than that I’ll leave the Koko off.
On the clean channel I’m using the Rockbox Boiling Point set on low gain, unity lvl and the structure switch set on Clean Boost for some meatier Andy Timmons clean tones. I got that tips from Andy who’s using his BOSS Blues Drive for the same thing on his LoneStar. Sounds killer :rock:
 
Vin Diezel":hlumgosk said:
Have me banned :LOL: :LOL: , but IMHO all kinds of overdrives and boosts are built by people who do not care or not have much of a clue. They copy 70 years old schematics, put 5$ parts into a box and sell that for way too much money. That's ok because most buyers do not have a clue as well. The signal to noise ratio of these devices is ridiculous and if you put these devices in front of channel 3 of a vh4, you'll notice how damn quiet such a Diezel amp is... without the pedal! The little increase in gain and tone coloration is usually accompanied by disproportional background noise.

All these things really do is add lots of white noise (if you are lucky). One booster that does not seem to do that is the MK.4.23 - CLEAN BOOST PEDAL.
"Lower than -115dBu noise floor. Over 140dB signal to noise ratio possible!" I haven't tried it myself, though.

I've tried lots of expensive buffers only to find out that the buffer in the tc polytune is the most quiet one I found. The expensive Mesa stuff is a joke and noisy as hell.
I was really taken aback by what inferior stuff is advertised as a pristine studio quality device.
Hi there. That was a perfect descriptions on most 70's and 80's pedals available to the public. But today you can find Pedals company's giving you studio pro quality pedals. Empress Paraeq is an small example of whats a around today. To the OP Try a Empress Paraeq a powerful semi parametric eq with a lot of potential for guitar and other intruments. Once you learn how to use the sky is the limit.
 
mxr2000":32m3gsy7 said:
Hi there. That was a perfect descriptions on most 70's and 80's pedals available to the public. But today you can find Pedals company's giving you studio pro quality pedals. Empress Paraeq is an small example of whats a around today. To the OP Try a Empress Paraeq a powerful semi parametric eq with a lot of potential for guitar and other intruments. Once you learn how to use the sky is the limit.
I used to own the Empress ParaEQ about a year ago and it was magic with my Friedman Smallbox. I sold it and will most definitely buy it again to use with the Herbert.
 
Yeah, I really ought to get one of those. I have a few parametric EQs, including a TC 2240, but the Empress would make a great addition to my pedal board.
 
I've got a Chase Bliss Brothers. It's MIDI controllable too if you get their MIDI box. So I get my 3 Herbert channels, and while switching between them I can switch it in and out with different gains or types of drive that I've matched to the different channels better. Also all my amp only gain patches I don't have it switched in for, I have it recall two more suitable drive/boost/fuzzes sat there ready to go if I want to kick them in. It's like a 100 channel Herbert! :)
 
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