So then, lets talk about distortion. I have a new found appreciation for recording direct. Its simple, quick, efficient and usually gives very good results. However, you need something to add some dirt to your sound. For a while I was trying to find a flexible, high-quality distortion box specifically for this. Something that will have the same "feel" of an amp breaking up.
The answer was the Tonebone Trimode from Radial Design. I love this pedal. Its got two channels driven by a 12AX7 for true tube distortion. What really impressed me, aside from the overall sound quality, was how flexible it is. It has separate controls for volume, drive and the midboost for EACH channel, not something you see very often in a pedal.
Apart from the drive controls, there is a switch that selects the overall amount of gain you want, split into three different tiers. This effectively turns the drive knob into a fine tuner for your sound. Theres a switch that controls the roll-off of the top end which I found to be really useful to brighten it up a bit. O yeah, theres an FX loop for the solo channel. Great stuff.
The Trimode is also highly responsive to dynamics and cleans up really smoothly as you quiet down. None of that built in compression that o so many pedals have. It feels and sounds JUST like amp distortion, all in a tiny box. Perfect for recording direct but also great otherwise. The distortion I get with this thing is every bit as good, if not better, than what I get out of most amps. The best sound I've gotten outta this reminds me of an old tweed Fender twin overdriven. (Think Keith Richards or early live Clapton). This is one of my favorites.
picked up the MXR Dyna Comp the other day. Its really cool. Very warm, very punchy. It only has two knobs, output and sensitivity, so its much easier to use than my Ross clone. It also works very differently than the Ross in the sense that it doesn't break up at all. Because of this I wouldn't recommend using it with a booster as is commonly done with Ross-style comps(which is what I do). You'll get a TON of noise using the Dyna in this manner, in fact, it can get a pretty problematic if it sees a lot of gain with the sensitivity set too high. That being said, the Dyna does provide a fair amount of boost by itself. Where the Dyna really shines, though, is in providing smooth, punchy compression, perfect for thick, fat,vintage cleans. It WILL alter your tone a bit, I noticed it rolled off the highs a surprising amount, but that is easy to remedy with an EQ adjustment. It really does warm up your sound. Tomorrow I'm going to plug it into the AC-30 to see how it acts with amp distortion. Thoughts so far: Fantastic for cleans but it can be a little noisy with too much dirt going in to it.
