Do Pedals Sound Alright Through A Digital Amp?

Question:I am wondering how a Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal or an EQ pedal would sound in combo with a Digital Solid State Amp..anyone know?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am wondering how a Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal or an EQ pedal would sound in combo with a Digital Solid State Amp..anyone know?

It really depends on your amp, the quality of your guitar, and what you want to use the pedals for.

I've used both distortion and EQ pedals in front of my rig before. Usually I'll use an EQ pedal to change the signal right before the distortion pedal and leave it always on. Electric guitars have a lot of "mud" in their lower mids, so cutting anywhere from 300 hz to 1 khz depending on the guitar can really help clean up the sound - which will give you a cleaner clean and distortion sound, by the way.

I've used distortion for both my rhythm crunch and for solo boosts, though more rhythm than solo. Often I would leave my amp on clean (especially if I didn't have a footswitch for it!) and use my pedal to go from clean to dirty to clean.

For me personally, I'd choose EQ over a distortion pedal first. The ability to tune distortion with EQ is something that so many guitarists never pick up on.

Everything sounds a little bit better going into a tube amp. Well, not really, that's a very cliched statement, but it's usually true to some degree.

That said, you can usually tune your pedals to your amp with some degree of success. The smaller your amp, however, the less difference you will notice - less headroom, less volume to hear the nuances.

If you have a small amp, get a bigger and better one. You can hear sounds out of a 12" speaker that you just can't out of an 8", for instance, and the sound of a 65 w speaker will obliterate a 13w.

Saul

Your pedals would sound fine with a solid-state amp. Depending of course on which amp you were talking about, the stomp boxes might be redundant. The on-board effects in the newer solid-state amps are pretty darn good for the average bedroom/garage player. Just make sure it has a foot-switch.

I play various pedals through my little Roland MicroCube as well as through my tube Marshall combo, and I've noticed that it's not so much the pedals as the guitar that makes a difference. My Tele sounds great through a Boss Digital Delay on the Micro Cube, but my Ibanez AF-75 semi-acoustic sounds terrible through the same pedal and amp.