Monday, April 12, 2010

New Gear Day - Death Metal Pedal

Yes, I got a Digitech "Death Metal" distortion pedal. $30 from Craigslist.

I've played with it at home, both through my Frontman and my little 9-volt bedroom amp, and I liked the results with those amps. In my main gig, which is guitar to pedals to DI to board, I step on the button and immediately get GREAT GOBS OF HORRIBLE NOISE in my earbuds. I'm used to some buzz, but not this much. And normally, the buzz goes away when I turn the volume down on the guitar. In fact, I tried to set it up during a quiet spot where I was hoping to lead into a singing tone. BZZZT! and I gave up, but the leader looked back at me, wondering who was making the noise.

But that was all non-vol knobs at 12 noon. I zeroed out the bass and dimed mids and highs and got something nice, but I got to that in a more full-band situation, and when you have drums, bass, keys, acoustic guitar, and piano going in your head, the horrible noise of your distortion pedal is buried under a lot of other sounds.

I don't have the thing dialed in yet. I think it's something I'll like. But it is all the more reason to get myself a good volume pedal.

2 comments:

dibsmjf said...

Hi Dave, been following your blog for a while, just thought I would ask you if you have a speaker simulator in your main rig? When you are playing through a proper amp the amp and speaker filter out all the harsh high frequencies but if you are going straight out of your pedals and into a DI to the desk, then this may explain the horrible noise you were hearing!

You can get DI boxes with speaker simulators in them, Behringer do one I think-might be worth looking into?

Thanks and keep the posts coming!

Charlie

Dave Jacob said...

Thanks.

I have an AX1500G, which has a speaker and amp sim. The pedal itself has to-speaker and to-board outputs, which I haven't yet tried. I will have to look at that some more, especially when I have more setup time.