Took a long layoff from this site - let's just say a lot of life things happened. But now I'm back - and I can see where I left off, I can see all my draft blog posts detailing all the projects that were about to be undertaken, etc. I have to say this site really served its purpose for me as a personal diary of guitar projects. Readership has not increased though, which is fine and expected really!
So, I figured that my first post back would be about something that I'm working on at the moment...I can go back and fill out all those draft blog posts of completed projects later. I've been working on some low volume distortion sounds...especially useful for the gear enthusiast living with others that don't share their love for loud guitars.
Personally I have a couple of options available to me when I feel the need to play late at night. The first is the Yamaha THR amp. I've got the THR 10, and I highly recommend it as a practice amp. It is not a tube amp; instead it uses Yamaha's VCM technology to model how a tube amp behaves. Does it do it convincingly? To be honest, I don't know - I have never A/B-ed them and I don't even own a Marshall/Mesa/Vox that it purportedly tries to emulate. Its Blackface em is ok but not that great. What I can say is this...it is a whole lot of fun to play through, sometimes you can get a pretty convincing power section compression type sound out of it, it's got plenty of features that are great for a practice amp such as Aux In (3.5mm stereo jack) and headphones out. Is it the perfect practice amp? Nah, not by a long shot...there are features that can be added to it to make it a much better product, the Master and Gain controls reacts totally differently depending on which amp emulation its on (although this could be intended functionality, it does cause massive volume drops/boosts when you go between patches), etc. I may do a blog post on that particular product in the future to give more information on the details but at the end of the day, I still think it's a great product and I actually own 2 of them (THR 10 and THR 10c).
The second option that I'm exploring in this blog post is the use of a volume pedal as sort of a master volume before it hits your amps. I've relied this method it lately as a volume gate and love the convenience factor of not having to touch my amp settings - especially handy if you've got it dialed in how you like it on normal volume levels. Also it obviously can help when you need to control your volume on the fly in the middle of a song.
What I have found with this method:
1. I set up my volume pedal generally in between drives and reverb/distortion. This can be changed easily since I'm using a pedal switcher but this is where it sits 90% of the time. Placement of the volume pedal is important because if you set it before drive pedals, you can alter the character of the drive based on how much signal the volume pedal is letting through. Placing it after reverb and delay pedals would mean you don't get the trails once the volume pedal is fully off. The other consideration would be low/high input impedance for the type of volume pedal you have, especially if it's the first pedal in the chain. Lots of information can be found elsewhere on this topic.
2. The amplifier(s) will not be getting a large signal fed into it (on account of it being throttled by the VP), so any distortion/overdrive tones that you are getting will be purely from the pedals. A lot of people (myself included) get their overdriven tones from pedals but have their amps set up just on the verge of breakup. If it is set up this way, but with the volume pedal is throttling the signal right down, the amp will have plenty of headroom. Don't expect the tone to remain the same, is what I'm saying. However I find it an acceptable compromise for low volumes.
3. Similar to the above point, any compression of your signal would not be coming from your amp at all. This would mostly be coming from your drive pedals, or a compressor if you have one in your signal chain. This can be a pain, especially if you're used to playing with the volume pot on your guitar...I've found the responsiveness to be a little different. You can still get clean up with your guitar volume, however in my experience it just does not respond the same way, again I suspect because there is no compression coming from the amp at all.
Having said all that I managed to do a quick recording of the setup last weekend. In this clip I have the signal going through a Boss CS-2 compressor, Suhr Riot, Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive Mod, EB VP Jr Volume Pedal then into the Fender Princeton 65RI. I can't remember if I had any reverb coming from the amp or Big Sky or not, but it sounds like I do have it somewhere. Please forgive the noodling and the fact that I'm recording with a camera mic. But you will be able to hear the attack on the guitar strings acoustically unamplified, that should tell you what a low volume this is at: