Why do distortion pedals disppear in the mix when used with other pedals?

[mbengs1]

I found that when used in mono, distortions don't cut through the mix. all I hear is gain, and I have to boost the high frequencies to make it cut through. Is this normal for a distortion pedal? but a distortion pedal on its own has much of the highs it needs. but when used in stereo the unique sound of the distortion pedal still comes through

I also found that to get the same sound as the distortion running on it's own (no other pedals in the signal chain), I have to boost the treble a lot to get the same clarity when many pedals are used (like delay, noise suppression, flange, chorus, etc. I only knew this recently. distortion pedals disappear the more pedals u put on your floorboard

[daddymack]

The noise suppressor could be killing your distortion...do you us a 'buffer' pedal? Do you use a compressor? Are your pedals 'true bypass'?

[1001gear]

Please elaborate on the term gain.

[mikesr1963]

To much bass dialed in it whether it's by the pedal or the amp.  It just gets covered up by other instruments that are present.  The sound alone you dial in may suck but in the mix is present and pronounced.  

[WRGKMC]

15 hours ago, mbengs1 said:

I found that when used in mono, distortions don't cut through the mix. all I hear is gain, and I have to boost the high frequencies to make it cut through. Is this normal for a distortion pedal? but a distortion pedal on its own has much of the highs it needs. but when used in stereo the unique sound of the distortion pedal still comes through

I also found that to get the same sound as the distortion running on it's own (no other pedals in the signal chain), I have to boost the treble a lot to get the same clarity when many pedals are used (like delay, noise suppression, flange, chorus, etc. I only knew this recently. distortion pedals disappear the more pedals u put on your floorboard

Yes its normal. 

Here's a pretty good picture to show you want happens as you add distortion.  

The blue wave is a clean signal (guitar signals are more complex but this will do)

We'll say the Blue is guitar with no distortion.   The Yellow is what happens with pedals like overdrive,  Fuzz or low amounts of distortion are added.

The red completely flattens the peaks and eventually turns the signal into a square wave instead of it being a sine wave.  There are other instruments that produce similar square waves without the need of electronics.  Most of your reed instruments like Sax, Clarinet and Oboe all create square waves naturally when seen with an oscilloscope.  Electronic instruments like Synths and reed Organs also use them.   

  

 

A guitar string produces a very complex sine wave.  if you've ever watched a string vibrate using an magnifying glass you'll see it not only vibrates side to side, it can wobble in and elliptical orbit and even have different parts of the string divide into separate nodes. 

What you wind up getting isn't just a simple pure sine wave containing a fundamental note.  You actually get several different vibrations occurring in the same string called harmonics.  These harmonics are typically smaller in size compared to the largest Fundamental tone.  They also contain different frequencies which is what gives you everything from the root note up to much higher frequencies. 

In this pic you seen the green Fundamental note which is the largest.  Its the harmonics and overtones that give the instrument its unique sound.  Without them the guitar sounds more like a synthetic instrument then it does a string instrument.

The red is your second harmonic. Its twice the frequency of the Fundamental (1st) harmonic) Example you play an open E note but pick the string in the middle.  You'll have some of the 12th fret octave chime in the string as a Harmonic.  You'll also have the 3rd, 4th, 5th harmonics that correspond to other string nodes like the harmonics at the 5th, 7th and 9th frets.   

 

Now here's the question for you.  If you flatten the largest fundamental frequency, what do you think is going to happen to all those smaller harmonics that make the guitar sound like a guitar?   The more drive you add the more they flatten and become unrecognizable.  Once you push past the 50/50% mark of half clean and half driven its all down hill for any kind of recognizable tone.  The instrument may be easier to play of course but you no longer have any dynamic control over the notes. The slightest touch crops the sine wave off into a square wave and its really no different then playing an organ without touch response. 

My best recommendation is, never use more drive then you need.  An easy way to know can be gauged by your guitars volume control.  Dial up what you think is a decent amount of drive then try backing down on your guitars volume.  If it doesn't clean up going from 10 to 7 on the knob, you have too much drive sat and you're likely loosing most of those rich sounding overtones. 

The other item sounds counter intuitive but its actually factual, and most of your better players know it.  Overdrive always makes the guitar sound smaller, not bigger.  The biggest guitars in a mix are the cleanest.  The smallest and most easily buried in a mix are highly driven guitars. 

Guitarists often have a hard time understanding this because they allow the feel of the instrument against their chest to override what they actually hear with their ears.  They are also more likely to hear the sound reflecting off the wall instead of the sound feeding directly into their ears.   The solution, raise the amp up to ear level before trying to dial in your gain.  If its ear piercing at that height then its ear piercing to the mic as well. 

By the way,  I'm just as guilty as anyone else when it comes to over juicing my instrument tracking.  My first couple of tracks are almost always too hot and throw away tracks.  When you have too much drive there isn't a dam thing you can do to improve them.  If you are too clean you can always add more.  For most stuff I record I try and keep the gain vs clean as close to a 50/50 mix as possible.  You need to look ahead when recording and know those tracks will get several layers of compression and limiting when mixing and mastering which always makes them hotter. leave some headroom and you can always add more drive when needed.  You cross the 50/50 mark it quickly becomes a hopeless cause.  

 

[mbengs1]

19 hours ago, daddymack said:

The noise suppressor could be killing your distortion...do you us a 'buffer' pedal? Do you use a compressor? Are your pedals 'true bypass'?

Yes, I use the boss ns-2 and the distortion is in the loop after the overdrive (which is also in the loop). I don't have true bypass and I use a compressor after the noise suppressor sometimes. buffers kill the distortion? 

[mbengs1]

12 hours ago, 1001gear said:

Please elaborate on the term gain.

Gain is natural compression and sustain when you turn up the volume of an amp. I dunno how to describe preamp distortion though

[1001gear]

9 minutes ago, mbengs1 said:

Gain is natural compression and sustain when you turn up the volume of an amp. I dunno how to describe preamp distortion though

Ok. Gain by definition has to do with signal amplitude and they label the drive/disto knob gain. So when you say all you hear is gain, that's about as buried in meaning as your distortion is in the mix. I know that scooped tones don't cut well but the very jagged qualities that make distortion stand out probably are easily filled in and obscured by any sustaining content in the same spectrum. This I think is the primary reason guitarist might habitually play too loud.

[Phil O'Keefe]

3 hours ago, mbengs1 said:

the distortion is in the loop after the overdrive (which is also in the loop)

Why are you running dirt pedals in the effects loop?

It's usually best to run those "in front" of the amp - before the input jack - as opposed to putting them in the effects loop. Save the loop for things that are better suited for insertion between the amp's preamp stage and power amp stage, such as reverb and delay pedals. 

 

[daddymack]

4 hours ago, mbengs1 said:

Yes, I use the boss ns-2 and the distortion is in the loop after the overdrive (which is also in the loop). I don't have true bypass and I use a compressor after the noise suppressor sometimes. buffers kill the distortion? 

no, the buffer keeps the signal from degrading across multiple pedals; If you have more than three pedals chained, especially if they are not 'true bypass', then I would get a buffer pedal on the front end of the chain.

Your noise suppressor could be 'stepping on' your distortion, because it may see it as 'noise'. I had that issue with an old Boss ME unit...had to keep the NS settings pretty low if I was running the OD.

Phil beat me to it, also, that the devices best left out of an fx loop are distortion/OD/fuzz pedals. Those should be interacting with the amp from the front end. The devices best used in a loop are the modulation devices, like reverb, delay, flange and chorus...the ones that don't 'add' to the signal, but alter it...although, in some cases, chorus or flange with OD in front of an amp can produce great 'sweep'.

Another question...do you run your pedals on 'wall warts' or on batteries?

[WRGKMC]

I believe he uses a DS 1 distortion? 

Putting that in the effects loop is going to change the response quite a bit.   That pedal rolls off lows frequencies below starting at about 200Hz until its -12dB at the lowest frequencies. 

It also rolls off high frequencies above 7K or so.  That's not too awful because most guitar speakers will also roll off highs above 5K or so.  You may loose allot of chime tones and its likely to be noisy as hell in the high frequency bands. 

As others said its not a smart move to stick that pedal in a loop.  Distortion pedals are notorious for producing low fidelity so you are bottlenecking the sound between the preamp and power amp when you do that.  Loops are best for Time based pedals like Echo and reverb.  Those pedals typically have a full fidelity mix control and bypass so they allow the amps full tone to get to the power amp.  They also see all drive before they get to the reflections.  Ideally you'd want the speakers reflecting sound off actual walls to create that reverb and echoes.  When that's not possible those pedals help you fake it.  Putting them in the effects loop puts them before the speakers and power amp so they wont capture the power amp and speaker distortion but that's still allot better then having them before the preamp or other pedals. 

 

 

[mbengs1]

12 hours ago, Phil O'Keefe said:

Why are you running dirt pedals in the effects loop?

It's usually best to run those "in front" of the amp - before the input jack - as opposed to putting them in the effects loop. Save the loop for things that are better suited for insertion between the amp's preamp stage and power amp stage, such as reverb and delay pedals. 

 

misunderstanding... I mean loop of the noise suppressor. Noise suppressors now have a send and return when the gain pedals would go. 

[mbengs1]

11 hours ago, daddymack said:

no, the buffer keeps the signal from degrading across multiple pedals; If you have more than three pedals chained, especially if they are not 'true bypass', then I would get a buffer pedal on the front end of the chain.

Your noise suppressor could be 'stepping on' your distortion, because it may see it as 'noise'. I had that issue with an old Boss ME unit...had to keep the NS settings pretty low if I was running the OD.

Phil beat me to it, also, that the devices best left out of an fx loop are distortion/OD/fuzz pedals. Those should be interacting with the amp from the front end. The devices best used in a loop are the modulation devices, like reverb, delay, flange and chorus...the ones that don't 'add' to the signal, but alter it...although, in some cases, chorus or flange with OD in front of an amp can produce great 'sweep'.

Another question...do you run your pedals on 'wall warts' or on batteries?

I use batteries on my wahs, a chorus and univibe. the rest are powered by my joyo power supply.

[WRGKMC]

18 hours ago, mbengs1 said:

misunderstanding... I mean loop of the noise suppressor. Noise suppressors now have a send and return when the gain pedals would go. 

You must be using something like a Boss Noise suppressor if that have that configuration. 

You'd normally use it by connecting the drive pedals in its loop and the pedal was connected where you would normally have the drive pedals in the chain. 

I used to use one of those for about 6 months then dumped using it.  I didn't like what it did to the sound when using certain pedals. You want to be sure you use that pedal on its own power supply.  If you put it on a daisy chain with other pedals some weird audio artifacts can occur which sound like distortion. (which might be the reason you posted this thread) 

It took me awhile to figure out what was causing it.  I'd get this grainy sound like a blown transistor when sharing power with other pedals. When I used it on a separate Boss wall wart it cleaned right up and those problems disappeared. 

It still seems to lower the signal level however.  When I removed it from the board and simply used the drive pedals bypass I got allot of gain and tone back. 

I thought about trying a Hush pedal instead but eventually built a dual loop pedal instead.  I now have two loops with two drive pedals on each and I can set up any configs I need and simply bypass either or all with the two switches and completely remove those pedals and their wiring from the pedal chain.  You don't realize how much tone and gain suck you have until you shorten your effects chain.  Even if the pedals are true bypass, there's allot of extra wiring there that reduces the signal. 

 

My suggestion is first try a separate wall wart for that particular pedal. Either a Boss or a Dan Electro Zero hum work properly.  if you still have issues try a different gate pedal. 

 

 

 

[StratStevo]

Mor Midrange 

[mbengs1]

5 hours ago, StratStevo said:

Mor Midrange 

I found it's the treble that needs to be boosted to hear the distortion pedals... but it ends up being quite high like with a DS-1, the tone should be set about at 1 o clock. for a ds-1 that is a very bright setting.

[1001gear]

That is the midrange.

[daddymack]

Bengs, please, diagram/write out your signal chain so we can get some kind of understanding of how you set up your rig, because your confusion as to what terminology applies is making this particularly difficult

for instance:

guitar->buffer-> compressor->boost->OD->slapback->long delay->amp

[mbengs1]

12 hours ago, daddymack said:

Bengs, please, diagram/write out your signal chain so we can get some kind of understanding of how you set up your rig, because your confusion as to what terminology applies is making this particularly difficult

for instance:

guitar->buffer-> compressor->boost->OD->slapback->long delay->amp

First let me share that I set the amp on the clean channel for a nice clean sound. Out of the guitar the first thing is the wahwah-->Phase 90-->Noise suppressor-->Overdrive-->distortion -->equalizer--> Flanger--> chorus--> Delay-->Reverb-->volume pedal

When the distortion is on by itself (in mono), it's very unclear sounding, lacking definition. but boosting the highs makes up for it. But in stereo, the distortion comes out quite clear. 

[Phil O'Keefe]

19 hours ago, daddymack said:

Bengs, please, diagram/write out your signal chain so we can get some kind of understanding of how you set up your rig, because your confusion as to what terminology applies is making this particularly difficult

 

Yes, please do!

It would also help to have the specific makes / models of the various pieces of gear you're using too.