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I'm running a Yamaha AES 820 baritone into a 70s Acoustic 150 amp head through a Marshall Cab. It sounds amazing, but has no natural overdrive whatsoever at the volume I play at, and input clipping on that amp is not something you want to hear.

I'm looking for an overdrive that I can put in front of the amp for mostly clean sounds with a little bit of grit. It needs to be fairly cheap, not mess with the EQ too much (especially the low end), sound good at low gain into a clean amp, and sound good with fuzz and distortion stacked into it. Any suggestions?

I use my TC Dark Matter in a similar situation and I love it. They market it as a distortion but it's mostly a clear overdrive with an active EQ unless you're diming it. Plays alright with stuff going into it, definitely better suited to going into other dirt and is cheaper than cheap.

I run a 250 and it's nice. Totally different rig, but I've run a drop A guitar through it and it's nice. Amp was a solid state orange stripe Randall, so maybe not super different

While it may not fit the price point, I love the Fuck Overdrive for my baritone in basically this exact setup. With the threshold set just out of range of playing dynamics, playing a fuzz into it is incredible.

I ran my EGC baritone into my Traynor TS-25 with a 412 today.
Sounded super badass!
So maybe a Tronographic Boxidizer?

I love a RAT or a DOD 250 with baritone and bass vi. The Fuck is a great suggestion for low to medium gain, and Klon style drives sound great into older solid states.

Also MXR just came out with a pedal called the Shin Juku drive that sounds incredible, as does the '78 Distortion.

BoatRich wrote:I love a RAT or a DOD 250 with baritone and bass vi. The Fuck is a great suggestion for low to medium gain, and Klon style drives sound great into older solid states.

Also MXR just came out with a pedal called the Shin Juku drive that sounds incredible, as does the '78 Distortion.

I forgot all about the Rat. I have a Rat clone I can try that I forgot I have. It might sound weird with the gain super low, but it might not.

I would be surprised if it didn't sound great. Low gain rat is great for low guitar/bass.

It's not so much the gain of the pedal that I'd be looking at as step 1.

You mention it sounding like ass with input clipping - you want a pedal that sounds good at unity gain or thereabouts, and with adjustable distortion.

The unity gain here is going to be substantially something to consider to avoid input clipping.

Try out the TC Electronic MojoMojo. Tons of lows and only $50.

rfurtkamp wrote:It's not so much the gain of the pedal that I'd be looking at as step 1.

You mention it sounding like ass with input clipping - you want a pedal that sounds good at unity gain or thereabouts, and with adjustable distortion.

The unity gain here is going to be substantially something to consider to avoid input clipping.

The amp has both high and low gain inputs, so you can run your pedal at above unity gain on the low-gain input and it won't overdrive the amp. You pretty much need to use the low gain input for humbuckers anyway, because the high gain input clips. But you don't have the thing where the overdrive is mixing with the overdrive sounds from the amp, which happens with even a fairly clean tube amp. I had been running the preamp out from a Laney Pro Tube 30 combo, and that sounded massive, but I've been having trouble keeping the Laney working.

Low gain settings on the overdrives I've got (Rat clone, Black Forest clone, Crunch box clone) have a weird bark in the midrange with such a clean amp. I remember having problems with the Rat on other solid state amps as well. The Black Forest sounds good when you crank it more, though.

The MojoMojo is an idea, for sure.

Never messed with an amp like yours, but as far as light od for bass and baritone goes...You should try a hotcake if you get the chance.

I actually like it more on bass/baritone than on guitar. That dark woolyness you start hearing as you turn the gain up, sounds a bit too muddy on guitar imo. But for some reason it works wonders bass/baritone, and I never even switched my hotcake to the bass setting.

Fwiw, contrary to what I expected, I prefered it over the otherwhise far superiour The Elements I had at that time. But that also had to do with the zillions of confusing knobbies that kept me fiddling and tweeking instead of playing...

Marshall Guv'nor MkI

I've actually got the same setup, and I like running things that have a more interactive eq for dirt. As off now I have a preamp pedal based on the peavey f800b I use for dirt and it rips! Before I was running some kind of OCD/250 variant the one I used has a 3 band eq so for me, that's important when running dirt with the amp.