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I've seen an increasing amount of demos where folks run distortion pedals directly into a power amp. And it sounds pretty decent. If I've always got some sort of drive pedal on am I missing out on all the toans by running straight into a regular head? Or rather, is anyone here running pedals into a power amp?

You can use any pedal with a reasonable amount of voltage gain as a 'preamp' even if it isn't labeled as one. You can run a rat or big muff right into a power amp and it will work but it really depends on what you're going for. Usually I see people doing this with pedals meant to emulate an amplifier or the demo is done this way to take the amp out of the equation which kinda works. IMO this kind of setup results in a flatter tone because you have much less filtering of the signal and less compression or gain staging to give the rig a natural feel. If your dirt pedals are primarily in the natural amp OD camp then you might do alright. If you mostly use fuzz I would stick to going into a typical amp. Everything that happens in the amp's preamp makes a huge difference.

I tried running a bad monkey into the power amp of my ahitty marshall bass head and remember liking it. its a bit stupid too. its probably kids who run their clean channel too hot but too quiet realizing that X pedal isnt super compressed

correct me if I am wrong but isnt this what a FX loop does on most heads? Bypassing the pre amp circuit so you don't dirty your sweet tube screamer toanz ?

i'm not sure it would work well. Bob Mould used to run multiple Distortion+es in series straight into the desk on Husker Du's albums, and IMO it sounds fucking awful. i can barely listen to New Day Rising, which is tragic since it contains several of my favorite Huskers songs. it's one of the only tones that's ever actually caused me physical pain like being stabbed in the ears, and i went to MBV without earplugs.

maybe one of those Seymour Duncan-style tube preamp/distortion pedals?

BAXAN

I borrowed a Origin RevivalDrive to try this into a clean power amp into a 2x12 - occasionally I could approach clean Marshall Plexi sounds but it was hard to make it not sound shrill. It wasn't worth investing $600 to put more effort in.

I've looked at the Hilbish Sol Invictus (Sunn Beta preamp) for the same thing, way cheaper than the Origin preamp or the Kingsley ones... but I wound up with a Fractal FM3 modeler and dirt and fuzz sound surprisingly good running into it.

dubkitty wrote:i'm not sure it would work well. Bob Mould used to run multiple Distortion+es in series straight into the desk on Husker Du's albums, and IMO it sounds fucking awful. i can barely listen to New Day Rising, which is tragic since it contains several of my favorite Huskers songs. it's one of the only tones that's ever actually caused me physical pain like being stabbed in the ears, and i went to MBV without earplugs.

maybe one of those Seymour Duncan-style tube preamp/distortion pedals?

I love bob's tone for exactly that reason He really used several tho? I thought he only used his one distortion+ cause it was the only one he dug

vidret wrote:to actually add something to this discussion:

why go into the power amp, why not just use the preamp as the extra EQ it probably offers and set it so clean that it doesn't interfere?

I suppose if the EQ is always too extreme to get around it's an issue, or cranking it gets too compressed too fast, but I'd always make use of that pre-amp EQ instead of trying to fix the harshness/ugly that comes from going directly to the power amp. unless that's what you want go for it

well most people dont know and dont care how an amp tone stack works so they just assume that all knobs at noon is "flat". Running directly into the power amp will be much less scooped; it will have all the "junk" lows and under-power your amp's input too. I agree with your opinion. The clean channel of high gain amps are really clean so it should do. https://www.guitarscience.net/tsc/fender.htm

Also somebody make me shut up about this shit, it's way too nerdy

I think a bax both boosts and cuts, it's some negative feedback thing. Everybody calls a james tonestack baxandall too because they are very similar

Maybe. In the circuit it probably doesnt have much signifigance. Like if you have a booster pedal wih a bax it shouldnt matter much if its a passive eq or not since you are already boosting; go ahead, cut signal out

Did this with a DOD Grunge once and it was pretty fun.