Distortion pedal don't sound good in studio (bigger amps)?

[MaCcA]

hey guys

i recently got the Biyang Metal End...and it sounded awesome during testing and still sounds gd on my cube 30x. However, when running it in the studio through a Line 6 spider i believe...it's difficult to get a good sound. It sounds too harsh and too piercing even after i've reduced the treble, put it on "warm" and "classic" setting... If i turn the bass up past 12 on the pedal, the sound turns muddy.

Any advice on this? Is it the amp, the pedal, my RG321 stock pickups, or just simply the tweaking of the settings?

 

[Whitestrat]

Line 6 spider i believe...it's difficult to get a good sound. It sounds too harsh and too piercing even after i've reduced the treble, put it on "warm" and "classic" setting... If i turn the bass up past 12 on the pedal, the sound turns muddy.

Never tried the BiYang pedal, but...

It's the amp. I never liked Line 6 amps in studio settings. For home and recordings, they're fine. But when they need to be turned up, they lack this airy-ness that many other tube amps would have. They're rather harsh and brittle.

 

[Godspeed64]

The amp lah.. Obviously.. Line 6 amps suck when cranked (played in the studio or at gigs)..

Or, the pedal isn't suitable for live playing.. There are some pedals that truly shine live, those that shine at bedroom levels, and those that shine all the time.. (And those that don't shine at all lol)

Actually.. While I was testing the Metal End on the 100W Sound Drive amp, I kinda cranked up the volume a lot.. And I noticed it was either too shrill, or too muddy.. I wasn't impressed with the pedal, but this is also my personal preference of fuzzes..
Maybe you can try using the Metal-End at higher volume settings on your amp.. :mrgreen::mrgreen:

 

[MaCcA]

wow that's some fast responses lol

appreciate it!

will test it out with another amp ^^

 

[thor666]

I disagree. It's not the amp, it what you match with it.

I've had more than decent results with the Line 6, and less than stellar. The trick here, is using the right distortion for the right amp.

From my experience, any pedal that sounds awesome on a small low wattage amp tends to perform badly on a big, high headroom amp, and vice versa. There are some pedals that actually don't conform to this, but they are far and few. Things like Metalzone really sound horrible on that small amp, but ranging from acceptable to awesome on other bigger amps.

I used to bring out 2 gain pedals to match the amp in this case, one lower gain and one higher gain. Now I just use a Rutt because I do find the Rutt pretty versatile for both high/low headroom (plus the fact I don't use pedals at home).

 

[Hydrofly]

I like Line 6 amps precisely because of the harsh bite that they have, their the reason why I don't use tube amps when I don't have to.

 

[MaCcA]

too harsh's not really my cup of tea hah....prefer a more bassy and more smooth out distortion...what's "rutt"?

anyway next time i'll try it on the marshall valvestate stacked on a cab and see if i get better results lol

 

[ShredCow]

I've used a line6 amp for jamming before. It was thunderous, insane heavy chug. I was running pedals into the clean preset "Jazz" or something.

I don't think the amp is to be blamed immediately. It could be the pedal. Many hi gain pedals have been designed for the bedroom player... and just... fail when its time to go live and loud.

 

[kerplunk182]

Were your amp settings the same?

 

[Gr3y]

i've got a feeling it's the combo of the 2 bad.

Line6 amps but itself sounds acceptable but hardly with any analog pedals. Digital effects might sound better infact.

Biyang.. never tried b4.. but like most ppl, i believe it's the typical bedroom pedal meant for the low level playing..

Try running some other distortion pedal on line6 again, my crunchbox did lose abit of the thick nice marshall sound but still acceptable.

btw.. where did you try that line6? I have bad experience at a particular jamming studio that uses line6.. The whole jamming studio's grounding is a big problem! Causing the line6 to go worse than expected.

 

[MaCcA]

well it's definitely not a beginner level pedal....but yea high possibility that it's due to the pedal...my other pedals run pretty fine thru the line 6, i.e. Rust Driver and the visual sound J&H...

the line 6 was at Lcube in tanjong pagar ^^

 

[ShredCow]

What's a "beginner level pedal"?

If a pedal isn't designed well - then it shows. At least you know - its not you...

 

[PinkSpId3r]

for your case at lcube..it should be the amp. i have friends that has bad experience with their line6 amps as well.

not sure is Gr3y referring to the same studio as well.

 

[thor666]

.what's "rutt"?

ta-da!

 

[Godspeed64]

It is truly situational..

Thing you can do first is to see if the pedal works better at higher headrooms, simply by blasting your own amp for a while, or trying it out at another studio with different amplifiers.. :mrgreen::mrgreen:

 

[Weiht]

I nv had gd experience with drive pedals into line 6 amps, and i think u will be better off using their amp overdrive. Maybe it works well with line 6 pedals only haha.

But in a way, playing thru a transparent bigger amp/cab setup will let u hear the pedal better, if its gd it will sound even better, in fact maybe u have to change ur settings that u use playing on a small amp.

 

[EugeneSmasher]

I agree with what Gr3y says. Probably because being Line 6, the amplifiers are highly-digitalized. They're way more advanced than standard solid-state amplifiers, much less tube amplifiers, so they probably won't react so well to analog pedals.

 

[mus]

I had bad experience too jamming with my band a L-Cube. I agree with using the overdrives/distortions in the amps.

 

[dtrulez38]

depends on the amp settings...
for spiders...it sounds not bad in low volume
but when u crank it up, it's trebly n dry
so i usually just zero the treble (just for tat specific amp), n oso tweak my gain pedal settings...
be it amp issue or pedal issue, it's always possible to tweak around n get a comfortable tone. unless u're really really picky bout tat =)

 

[Ized]

I never had any good experiences using line 6 amps.

I still remember a particular gig at l cube.....when i plugged my pedalboard into the line 6 amp..and thought to myself "shit this is the first time my pedals actually sounded that bad". It had that horribly nasal tone. sounds big....but not in a nice way. A little too in your face, harsh sounding.

My advice is to use the amp distortion, cos it rocks imo......and make use of the efx loop for your delays and stuff. line 6 is after all, modeeling stuff....