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My name is Jon Myers. I’m 31, have played guitar for almost 20 years, and until 2am this morning I have never owned a distortion pedal. This is my story.

My high school love is my JCM900. I was too young to see her shortcomings, and now she stays because she owns a small part of my heart. My next love was my Fender Prosonic. I’ll never forget my first night with her out in the back building. At first I was gentle, but her drive channel left us both thrashed.

All these amps have been good and true, but my heart belongs to my Fender Pro Junior. 15watts A/B, one vol knob, one tone knob. She is my only non-master vol amp, and this has been a source of tension in our relationship. I’ve not been able to take her out to some clubs because she can’t open up without dominating the scene. The attenuator I bought left us both unsatisfied, so I started looking into pedals.

Problem is, I’ve never used pedals. (Ok, I have a Morley wah/vol; but I’ve used it more for vol than wah). I don’t know the first thing about them. So I asked for a couple byoc kits (overdrive and shredder) for my birthday. Is it wrong for a 31 yr old man to ask his dad for effect pedals for his bday?.

I finished the Overdrive this morning. At first, I didn’t think the pedal was going to do what I wanted it to. I could get it to overdrive but only at the same vol as tube saturation. It changed the tone of the distortion, but other than that; meh.

I was about to ask you guys for help on how to use a pedal when, in the course of writing the post, I was struck by an epiphany. I have to change my approach to the guitar. Normally I turn the amp up all the way and adjust the vol and saturation levels at the guitar. I’m always playing with the vol knob. Constantly. I’m in a support group for it. Santana is my sponsor.

It occurred to me that the pedal needs the signal from the guitar to make the little square waves. Maybe, just maybe, if I turned the vol on the amp down, and the vol pot on the guitar up, this just might work. It did. And it changed the relationship between all my tone knobs. The guitar dances with the pedal, which dances with the amp.

You remember when Alice went through the rabbit hole to find out everything was different; that there existed possibilities previously unrealized?

Yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Hi Jon,
I'm getting 2 things from your post. Yes, it's ok to ask your dad. And, nice that you found a way to work with that overdrive, which is a killer pedal, and should sound beautiful with your pro junior. Keep an open mind, and the world shall be your oyster.

Geek

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Everyone likes sausage. Nobody wants to see how it's made.

I say turn it all up!

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https://darrenriley.cargo.site/

By the way, this is a great post. Anyone who's visited my band's site and seen the photos of me up front with the Jag may be surprised to hear that I'm actually a bass player. I only play guitar in the band because I write the songs on guitar and it's easier to strum and sing than it is to play bass and sing.

So, I empathise with the post a lot. Playing guitar in a live context is very much a learning process for me. I still don't really know what I'm looking for in a guitar sound sometimes. Fortunately, with an amp like my Twin that doesn't really matter because you plug in, turn it up (I don't think I've ever gone past 4) and it sounds great. I occasionally think a Strat would be better for me on some songs as the neck pick-up on the Jag is pretty nasty in a sometimes bad way.

I tend to side with the volume pot way of managing the sound, particularly with a tube amp. I'm currently working on the Electra distortion circuit and tweaking it to my liking and I've still not decided whether to put a Gain control on it or not. In a live situation I don't have time to alter pedal settings between songs so it makes much more sense to me for the Volume on my guitar to control the pedal's gain.

Like I said though, I'm a bass player - as little work as possible...

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https://darrenriley.cargo.site/

Very cute story.

I sort of coming full circle. I started out not using many pedals. My first bar band was a country band (late 90's when line dancing and Garth were huge) and I used nothing but a Peavey Falcon (a really nice strat type) with a silverface bandmaster. When I got a rock band together I used a few other guitars and a Peavey VTM set semi-dirty and a DOD juice box for solos. I've never really been happy with my sound but I used to think about it way less. Since discovering BYOC I've rarely played a gig with less than 5 pedals. My gigging amp is a Yamaha DG-80 (a seriously good and versatile gigging amp) That amp is great with pedals. I just built a 5E3 Deluxe and that amp is not great with dirt boxes. Fuzz sounds great but Tube Screamers and Rats and other dirt boxes all sound pretty similar. The amp sounds great and I'm going back to using less pedals. I've always used my volume knob but with the Deluxe it's an extreme thing, I love it. Playing an amp is a good thing to know and a lot of players have no idea how to. Thanks to digital modeling among other things

Yeah, the ProJr is great, but live it can be limiting.

Knight – I think those 5E3’s are similer wattage to the Jr.; does it have a master vol? I’ve heard good things about that line of Yamaha amps; I’m not surprised they take pedals well. How does your Deluxe take to pedals other than dirt? My ethos for the last 20 years was if you had a good amp, you didn’t need a pedal. Course, now I need more control… +1 on learning to play an amp.

Pancho – I’ve always used the vol knob to control the amps gain. But that was today’s epiphany, that it controls the pedal’s gain also. I’ve started to think about the pedal as an amp. It helps me play the pedal better. (btw, I dig your Mexican brew!)

So today I was experimenting; trying to get the sound of my dimed Jr. at lower db’s. Overall, it was a successful day. I was able to get a broad range of distortion within a narrow volume band.

There were two major drawbacks:
1. I really love the tone of the amp on 10 and the guitar on 3. The lower guitar vol drops the treble, and all that tube power warms everything up. Sands the sparkle off the sound. I wasn’t able to mimic this sound exactly. It was always too bright, or slightly to thin.

2. The tonal artifacts of the pedal take away from the distortion sound. I love that ProJr. turned up. It sounds more like a Marshall than my Marshall. The pedal got in the way, but I did get really darn close. And that’s before I start modding anything!

Still, this pedal makes the amp more flexible. Thanks for the words of encouragement, Geek! I’m excited to see what the Overdrive mods do. I also got the Shredder; hoping to capitalize on the Marshallness of the ProJr. But that will have to wait until I have time to build…

Nazzy wonders if the time is right to confess that technically, he's a drummer

i relate to jonmyers and knight as to having come full circle. my first "rig" was an '89 Fender japanese strat that i played straight through a Fender Ultimate Chorus Combo (solid state, what was i thinking?!). it was my first "real" amplifier, replacing the small peavey single channel somethingorother i managed to get thrown in when i bought my strat at the pawn shop. this was my rig for 12 years until the day i realized that tube=tone. i upgraded to a hot rod 4x10 and was quite happy, and then by chance a friend loaned me (of all things) his MXR phase 90. it opened the skies to all the possibilities. now, i haven't played a single set without, at the very least, a tremolo and delay. this even goes for my acoustic sets. i actually have a TU-2, a BYOC tremolo (replaced my old boss tr-2) and dd-5 (plus homemade tap) on my "acoustic pedal board" at all times now.

jonmyers, i encourage you to take the time to mod and tweak your pedals until you have what you want. the screamer is a great circuit to play with; lots of options on caps, resistor swappage, IC's and the like. i have a screamer that i spent WEEKS making look and sound the way i wanted and it was all worth it. i've been offered $350 for it before and i don't even blink (anymore) when i reply "not a chance, fool!" good luck, ask LOTS of questions, and welcome to your new addiction.

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Days add up whether we like it or not. We can't stop them from doing so. What we can do is decide what they add up to.
MY MUSIC

Jonmyers, you've actually been using a distortion pedal all along. that 900 of yours (and i mean no disrespect) basically just has a distortion pedal inside. they don't run like the beloved 800's. good is good whether it be a good amp or a good pedal but, pedals are lighter. easier on the back and all. rylan

Damn right. Why doesn't a Twin have a handle at each end so two of us can pick it up? Mind you, I'd rather have a good amp than a good distortion pedal - without the amp the pedal is no use.

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https://darrenriley.cargo.site/

+1, but i'd rather have like 20 good amps if i could... rylan

So I’ve had a great couple of days playing with my pedals. That’s right, I said “pedals.” I forgot that I had another pedal (so I guess the Morley isn’t the only pedal I’ve owned; forgive me!). I use a BBE Sonic Stomp with my Prosonic, but it doesn’t sound very good with the ProJr. However, I learned that if it follows the Screamer, and I dime both knobs on the BBE, it fills in a lot of what the Screamer seems to take from the tone. Brings back some bass and cream.

noshoes – Congratulations on getting the pedal to where you want it to be! I’ve already learned a great deal about mine; she went out last night to band practice for the first time. I had much more control. I’m going to give her a few more days so I can learn her tone a bit more, then start swapping IC’s, then start playing with the guts.

What sound were you looking for, and which mods gave you the best results? (in 50 words or less…)

rylan – no offense taken about the 900! I know her short comings; you’re especially right as I own the 4100 with the IC before the preamp. What can I say, I was young, she was pretty, I ended up buying the first Marshall I plugged into. At least I fared better than my cousin. He also bought the first Marshall he plugged into; and brought home a Valvestate!

The ProJr., when cranked, sounds more like an 800 than anything else. Doesn’t sound anything like a Fender should. And at 20 lbs, it’s very easy on the back.

The amp is as important as the guitar. It has to inspire me to play. The ProJr. does that in spades, and this week was a great week because I was able to get really inspiring sound out of bedroom levels. Seriously, it was fun. Our band had one of the best practices ever, and I think a large part was the lowered volume.

Course, we had to keep telling the bass player to turn down!