Many people are left irritated and confused by the Double Muff. Me too.
It is one of those very sensitive effects and its sound is highly dependant on where you put it and what you choose to put into it.
It likes to be first in the signal chain, getting a high impedance signal (1 Mohm) from your guitar.
So there seems to be only one way of using it - as an overdrive in front of your already dirty amp, giving you more drive (Works nicely with some bass guitars actually).
And that's pretty much what it was intended for too.
Not very versatile.
I like to combine it with a compressor - and behold - the classic compressor into overdrive combination opens new doors.
Let's see:
I set my amp to slightly dirty, the volume of the guitar drives the preamp. With the Crate Palomino I use the Overdrive channel, setting the gain knob and the volume knob of the guitar so that I hear some crunch and setting the master volume as loud as I dare.
One might use the clean channel too but the Double muff gives such a huge volume boost when engaged that my amp simply gets too loud before I can reach the tone I am looking for.
Settings on the B.C.Rich Mockingbird - I like it with the neck pickup, the middle and bridge position gives me more treble if I want it. Tones are rolled back slightly, volume is set so that the pure guitar signal pushes the amp into overdrive. When I find "the spot" I prefer to leave it where it is at.
On to the pedals.
Setting the Double Muff is simple - just switch it to "single" and turn the "Muff 1" knob all the way up.
With that your amp receives additional volume and clipping and gets pushed further into overdrive.
Putting the Soul Preacher in front of the Double muff enables you to "overdrive the overdrive", tricking the double muff into thinking it's a distortion pedal.
The sustain knob of the compressor is all the way down, I just need the volume boost of the Soul Preacher to push the input of the Double Muff.
So with just two pedals I am able to cover the "core sounds" I am after:
Switch on the Soul Preacher into the dirty amp and play kind of clean.
Switch on the Double Muff without the Soul Preacher into the dirty amp and play crunchy rhythm.
Switch on both the Double Muff and the Soul Preacher for distorted lead sounds.
As I like to keep unity gain between my switching options, the hardest thing was to get the volumes at an even level.
The treble changes too when switching things on and off but once I found the right balance between amp, guitar and pedals, I was very happy.
As always, this is a mere reminder for myself, I tend to forget things and settings, so don't take this as a guarantee for great tone.
No comments:
Post a Comment