The Tone Ranger
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Balancing Clean and Distorted Levels
- For this experiment, I used something I had designed called the pedal
master. It’s a volume pedal that controls a buffered clean channel,
and two distortion devices.
- One thing I noticed while playing the pedal master was a kind of opposite
reaction in clean to distorted balance at either end of the pedal.
- Balancing both channel's volume at the bottom of the pedal's range
results in a mismatch at the top of the pedal. The reverse was also
true.
- With both channels matched at the top, the clean sound is louder than
the distortion sound at lower levels of volume. Perhaps, matching
both channels in the middle of the pedal's range is a good idea.
- With both channels matched at the bottom, the distortion was louder
at the top end of the pedal than the clean sound. This is because
of the perceived volume level difference between clean and distorted
sounds playing at equal sound pressure levels. In simple terms, the
distortion feels louder because it contains more harmonics and creates
an illusion of power and a sensation of energy. This makes us perceive
it as louder than an equally loud clean tone. There is some connection
between sound pressure level and harmonic content that makes it hard
to balance clean and distorted sounds evenly through the whole range
of a volume pedal.
- How hard you play with your hands has a big effect on your clean versus
distorted tones too, as well as your volume. The volume of your distortion
will also get sucked up when you are playing with a band instead of
by yourself.
- Using medium gain and turning the volume down cleans up the sound.
Using high gain and turning the volume down still results in high-gain
along with a slight decrease in the individuality of different pickup
sounds. It is simply easier to hear those differences with a clean
signal.
- Distortion has a very muscular quality. It basically takes over the
tonal quality, compression level and perceived volume level of a clean
sound. It also requires a different pick attack than a clean tone.
The more gain you add, the more treble it requires to maintain a clear
attack.
- Too high a gain makes it hard to pick out the single notes of a full
chord, but works great for power chords or single note lead work.
- Speakers pushing air that vibrates the strings gives the most harmonically
sweet, balanced distortion or sustaining clean tone.
- Preamp distortion from your amplifiers preamp of a foot pedal offers
higher gain at a lower volume. Sound waves from the speaker will make
the string vibrate much longer than the preamp distortion because
they are forcing the string to move and continue sustaining. This
also creates what I consider more natural and musically balanced harmonics
that seem to ooze out of the notes.
- Preamps can be very helpful in shaping the final distortion quality.
They can add thickness to your clean tone or send your distorted tone
screaming into more gain and/or volume and tone.
- So remember this advice; stop, look and listen.
- The Tone Ranger
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