Gain Stacking – How to Use Pedals to Alter Your Amp Tone
Guitar players love pedals. They love collecting them and using them, but many players who are new to pedals may struggle with the concept of gain stacking.
In this lesson you’re going to learn a little about gain stacking and how different gain types can affect your tone.
In the accompanying video, I use 4 different gain style pedals to show the impact they have on both a clean and overdriven amp tone.
Clean Boost
A clean boost is a pedal that is designed to lift your volume without adding any tonal colouration. If you use a clean boost that is running very loud it can in some cases cause the front end of the amp to start breaking up into a light overdrive.
If you run a clean boost into a clean channel, the most common thing you’ll experience is a volume lift.
If you run a clean boost into an overdriven amp you will get the volume boost, but depending on how hot the pedal is set, you will also introduce a little extra gain to the signal. To get the overdrive the preamp is working hard, by running a boost into this, you’re working the preamp a little more.
Overdrive
Overdrive pedals are designed to replicate the tone of an amp running loud. It is a soft style of clipping meaning it sounds smooth and warm to the ear.
Running an overdrive into a clean amp will add overdrive to your clean tone. Many players like this approach as it allows them to get a good solid amp tone as a platform and refine their drive tone using whatever pedals they want to use.
Running this into an already overdriven amp yields some tone shaping benefits. The overdrive pedal will not only add extra gain if you need it to, but it will also apply its own tonestack on the amps tonestack. This can result in a lot of tone shaping options.
If you run an overdrive pedal into a high gain amp, it can add tightness and focus to the sound.
Distortion
Distortion is a harder clipping style than overdrive so it provides a more intense and sharper tone.
Into a clean amp, distortion can be harsh which many players really love the sound of. On it’s own, it can have a really aggressive tone with lots of high frequencies and harmonics.
When running a distortion pedal into an already overdriven amp, you’ll notice a huge jump in the level of gain and you may also find the tone is brighter and more aggressive.
Fuzz
By far the highest level of gain and saturation comes from fuzz pedals.
Fuzz into a clean amp will add a lot of fullness to the signal as well as lots of saturation.
Fuzz into an overdriven amp is there the fun really starts. With an overdriven amp, fuzz pushes it to the limit. Depending on what type of fuzz you use and how much gain you’re using, you can create some glitchy tones that sound like the drive section of the amp collapsing on itself. Fuzz can be noisy but it’s a lot of fun.
It will add a lot of every frequency to your tone, many fuzzes will boost the low end.
Double Gain Stacking
You can also stack drive pedals with each other as you’ll see in the video, There are plenty of tone shaping and gain boosting options available.
There is no right or wrong way to approach this. You can experiment with this. It will be different depending on what pedals you choose and what amp you are using. Spend time experimenting and find the right combination for you.