Unity Gain?

[Bassboar]

Hey broskis, I'm not quite sure if thing belongs in Gear, but I guess it pertains to it. How improtant is unity gain, I mean is it truly as important as everyone makes it up to be. Like when you stomp on your fuzz, it should be louder then the signal bypassed, at least the way I see it. What do you guys think?

[foomanfat]

I like all my stuff to stay at unity. Granted unity in a mix and unity in my bedroom are two different things.
I hate hitting a pedal that is louder than my bypass and getting turned down by the soundperson. Then when I turn the pedal off I am gone in the mix.

[Holy Schnikes]

I hate hitting a pedal that is louder than my bypass and getting turned down by the soundperson. Then when I turn the pedal off I am gone in the mix.

My feelings exactly. I also hate most sound guys.

[Gunner Recall]

I like unity to be early in the sweep with plenty of boost/volume on tap.

[Officer Bukowski]

I like unity to be early in the sweep with plenty of boost/volume on tap.

That's how my Torn's Peaker is. Unity gain is at like 8 o'clock and there's a totally stupid (in a good way) amount of gain on tap. But I'm sure you all already knew that.

I like to have a huge boost available but I also like unity gain to be easy to hit. Sometimes if a knob has a huge sweep it can be hard to settle where you want it.

I usually set my pedals at unity when I'm with my band and set them all over the place when I'm by myself.

[devnulljp]

The opposite is a PitA -- when you stomp on a fuzz and the volume drops away to nothing, like the Fender Blender reissues and some Super-Fuzzes. WTF is the point of that?

[StopReferencing]

The opposite is a PitA -- when you stomp on a fuzz and the volume drops away to nothing, like the Fender Blender reissues and some Super-Fuzzes. WTF is the point of that?

[tuffteef]

theres boost past unity then theres overkill cant use it unless its on 247

[modernage]

I also hate most sound guys.

That's because they are almost always too busy hanging out at the bar or trying to hook up with the bands groupies instead of rockin those faders.

[01010111]

I've noticed with a lot of fuzzes and boosts that a lot of their character is revealed when they're above unity. My wolf computer is that way, yeah if it's set at unity it's a really uppermidrangey kind of fuzz, but if it's set above unity a ways a lot of character comes out.

I think a lot of sound engineering is purely designed to take out the dynamics in music which is a big part of music. Fuck unity unless it's what's you intend to do musically.

[theavondon]

I run most of my fuzzes at max volume, not because I haven't tried any other setting and I'm a luddite, but because I really like a dynamic CHANGE when I step on a pedal. If I'm gonna get distorted, the song will need to be louder. It only makes sense.

[Bassus Sanguinis]

I run most of my fuzzes at max volume, not because I haven't tried any other setting and I'm a luddite, but because I really like a dynamic CHANGE when I step on a pedal. If I'm gonna get distorted, the song will need to be louder. It only makes sense.

Yeah, this. I like the clean sound to be nice, clean, and with full low end... then boosted cleanish, treble takes over and clips like hell. When I want to go full steam, it really blows up full steam, way past unity gain level. I'm more troubled about some pedals having so radically different gain levels, but I'm working with the stacking order and combinations and the needed tweaking between the songs/song parts.

In live situations it does lead to the question of dynamics. You can, of course, always go to the asshole sound guy and tell him - since HE'S working for YOU, not the other way around - that yeah, he's going to have some dynamic stage sound to work with, so let's just keep it interesting (rather than just put the house compressor and auto-limitter on and leave for coffee for the show).

I believe the dynamics is exactly what the sound check is for, and I have only a few times agreed to pass by it, at festival settings, when trying to catch up with the schedule and not cut down show time. Oh, and with one Norwegian headliner (no, out of courtesy I will not tell who) we warmed up for with my old band, since they didn't really give us sound check time after the first night. 10 minutes hardly counts as sound check. Perhaps we shouldn't have played better than them.

The opposite is a PitA -- when you stomp on a fuzz and the volume drops away to nothing, like the Fender Blender reissues and some Super-Fuzzes. WTF is the point of that?

Verily, verily, I say to thee: NOTHING is more fucked up than the volume drop caused by a bad pedal unable to reach even the unity gain.

[coldbrightsunlight]

If I used my fuzzes at full volume I'd probably break my amp or something. I'd definitely piss people off by practicing too loud. For playing in a band I set my fuzzes fairly loud, because it's kind of the whole point of massive fuzz and also sometimes they don't cut through that well in a mix. I do get annoyed when volumes with different pedals are all over the place practicing, but it's waaayy less noticeable live when the amp is turned up.

[univalve]

I hate hitting a pedal that is louder than my bypass and getting turned down by the soundperson. Then when I turn the pedal off I am gone in the mix.

My feelings exactly. I also hate most sound guys.

hmmm, never expierenced "gone" in the last years. i play at the soundcheck only my loudest sound (and my fuzz is loud as fuck). on stage i only need to hear my amp and the drums. fuck the rest

[dubkitty]

i set everything so that the total peaks when i hit loud chords with the distortion etc. ON and with the stuff OFF are roughly equal. distortion is only part of my rig, the front end of the board, and i have to keep the filters, modulation and delays happy when they're being used and the distortion is being turned on/off. also, i want the non-distorted parts to be audible in comparison LOL.