The Steel Guitar Forum

ive had a proco-rat since 1987, ive tried some of others but keep going back to the rat, went to the
st louis steel convention a few yrs ago and was listening to Joe Wright and thought wow his distortion souned great so i ask him what he was using and it was a rat pedal, never expected that

I used a Rat for a while, but I'm using a Fulltone OCD now. I really like the OCD with the steel. It's really the closest thing to actual tube overdrive I've found with a solid state amp and heavy steel guitar pickups.

Mitch Adelman wrote:You might want to give a try for Brad Sarno's EarthDrive instead of the tube screamer. Its an overdrive designed for steel with no harshness and can handle the hot pickups of a steel. Can be used for lots of different sounds and amounts of overdrive and distortion. I luv mine.

Mine arrived today and I am looking forward to using it with my Jazzkat Tomkat and my MB200 with Sica speaker.

Brad Sarno wrote:We voiced (voicing being the overall EQ shape) the Earth Drive to be steel friendly. So many great overdrive pedals have an issue with steel in that they remove TOO MUCH of the low end, the mid-bass, the fat fullness. A tube screamer for example, is a big giant midrange booster. Sounds great for many things, but for steel, it seems to make it sound small and too guitar-like. The Earth Drive is much more neutral and natural sounding. Also, the high end and the overdrive harmonic character is warm and pretty friendly with transistor amps. We'll have them to demo at the ISGC this weekend, but we're down to our last 4 units until late September when our new batch of chassis is scheduled to be finished.

Brad

www.sarnomusicsolutions.com

I just my Earth Drive this week and I've only played it twice through my Jazzkat Tomkat.
This pedal does exactly what Brad wrote above. I agree that overdrive is pretty subjective to ones preference. It's my new favorite for pedal steel.

Tyler Hall wrote:I used a Rat for a while, but I'm using a Fulltone OCD now. I really like the OCD with the steel.

My OCD was one of my favorite pedals in particular because it cleans up very well when you back off the volume on the guitar or pick lightly. But then I ran across a Barber Direct Drive at a great price at GC (it needed a small repair.) The two pedals are very similar but I think that the DD gets a better tone. It also has a fat harmonics mode when you pull up on the tone control. The more I experimented with different settings the more I liked it! This is from the manual:

1. Clean drive- Vol, 12:00 Tone set to max (pull for fatter boost) and drive set between min and 7:30

2. Country rock_ vol 12:00 Tone 4:30 drive 8:00-9:00

3. light electric blues- Vol 12:00 Tone 12:00 to 4:00 (pull for electric delta setting) drive 8:30-10:00.

4. 808 killer!-12:00-2:00 tone 2:00-5:00 (pull for 808+ Tweed!) drive. 11:00-1:00.

5. Vintage Marshall- vol 12:00 tone 3:00-4:00 (pull California rhythm) drive 1:30-3:30.

6. Hot Modded Marshall + early 90’s R.F.***- Vol 12:00 Tone 4:00-max (pull R.F. tone) drive 3:00-max.

I sometimes use both the DD and the OCD to give me a choice between higher and lower gain sounds.
Steve Ahola

*** "early 90's R.F." refers to the Dumble ODS amp that Robben Ford was using back then... the $100,000 boutique amp. (I have had the Barber Small Fry for several years now and it is great for getting Dumble tones.) Yes, I am a big fan of Dave Barber's pedals- many of which have internal trim pots to dial in the exact sound you are looking for.

I'd been reading about the Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret Mk II over at Hello Music for quite awhile before I finally decided to order it a few months ago.

The Dirty Little Secret MkII (DLS MkII) was designed to be the secret weapon in your tone arsenal. Want to get cranked amp tones at bedroom rocker levels? Playing gigs but have to use whatever amp is provided as the backline? Like your clean amp sound but don't care for its overdrive channel? Enter the Dirty Little Secret! The DLS MkII is an overdrive pedal designed to bring you the sound and response of a '70s-era Marshall amplifier.

It is not merely an overdrive pedal- it is like a Marshall preamp circuit that plugs in ahead of your amp. It sounds great by itself but it also works very well with other pedals plugged in before it.

According to their site:the circuit is a combination of key circuit elements from the actual Marshall pre-amp, tuned for a jFET pedal format in conjunction with very careful parts selection. Every capacitor and resistor in the circuit was carefully scrutinized not only by value but by type to get the desired end result. A lot of time was spent tuning the circuit to stack well with other pedals, especially other gain pedals pushing the DLS MkII.

http://www.catalinbread.com/DLSMKII

I have all sorts of overdrive pedals- too many to count!- but the DLS MKII is really like a preamp that you plug in ahead of your amp. It enhances the sound of whatever pedal you plug into it without really changing the tone or character- it just makes them sound better.

Steve Ahola