Drive blocks: Stacking drives

Thenewexhibit

Experienced
Hey, guys! I was wondering, are you guys having good results stacking overdrives at all? I do this a lot with my pedalboard and get nice results, but with the axe fx, it seems to get that really "collapsing over itself" falling apart kind of sound, and can't handle it like for example stacking a real tube screamer and timmy together. Am I missing something?
 
Don’t turn the Gain/Drive levels up too much. It’s easy to lose track of how much gain is actually happening when you can be at bedroom levels with tons of pedals.
 
Don’t turn the Gain/Drive levels up too much. It’s easy to lose track of how much gain is actually happening when you can be at bedroom levels with tons of pedals.
Cool! Thank you! I will give that a try! I thought it could have something to do with that because when I turned off the amp block, the drive pedal was clipping my converters, so it made me wonder if it's too loud of a signal going into another drive pedal.
 
Try out the boost settings in the amp block too, as opposed to stacking drive pedals. I prefer to use the boost switch to get more of the amp's distortion (there are various options to color the sound, too), then use a drive block if I want to color it more, get even more gain, etc. When I'm basing the entire preset around one amp channel and multiple scenes, I will also use a scene modifier to tailor the amount of amp boost depending upon the scene.
 
Many hardware drive pedals have unity gain pretty low on the level dial, I often would run many of mine set quite low, like 9o'clock, especially when stacking them, or using another pedal with a lot of gain. Most of the drive blocks in the III tend to have levels up pretty high, so just like if you stacked two hardware pedals that were both dimed, you can get a pretty muddy sound
 
Thank you for all of the suggestions, everyone! I've tired these suggestions, but it still isn't quite there. The boost on the amps works cool, but if I throw something else in front of it, it kinda collapses. It's most noticeable on the neck pickup, but in general gets artifact-ey sounding, where I tend to get a more natural result with real pedals and an amp. While a drive amp into a dirty amp works great, it can't track fast enough with clean amps. Basically trying to simulate edge of breakup amp tones and then turning on one drive for more of that sound, and then another one for more sustain and a good lead sound. Perhaps it's just more experimenting I need. For what it's worth, I feel like the helix did drive pedals really well. If I stacked things, it responded like I expected. With the axe, it seems like I forgot to change the batteries in the drives before a gig if that makes sense haha Just an observation.
 
Thank you for all of the suggestions, everyone! I've tired these suggestions, but it still isn't quite there. The boost on the amps works cool, but if I throw something else in front of it, it kinda collapses. It's most noticeable on the neck pickup, but in general gets artifact-ey sounding, where I tend to get a more natural result with real pedals and an amp. While a drive amp into a dirty amp works great, it can't track fast enough with clean amps. Basically trying to simulate edge of breakup amp tones and then turning on one drive for more of that sound, and then another one for more sustain and a good lead sound. Perhaps it's just more experimenting I need. For what it's worth, I feel like the helix did drive pedals really well. If I stacked things, it responded like I expected. With the axe, it seems like I forgot to change the batteries in the drives before a gig if that makes sense haha Just an observation.
share a preset that you've made and we can help better. we have no idea what settings you're using, and it could be something obvious.
 
share a preset that you've made and we can help better. we have no idea what settings you're using, and it could be something obvious.
I appreciate that! I'll make it up and hopefully it's something I'm overlooking. Like I said, I'm really new to this thing but I dig it :)
 
are you guys having good results stacking overdrives at all?
I've been drive stacking IRL and in Fractal tech for many years now. It works well, but not quite the way it does IRL. You really do have to watch the Output Level values. I get best results when those values aren't too extreme. And, as with how I did it IRL too, I tend to run low clip > higher clip pedals. Two, stacked, tube screamers work wonderfully well in the Fractal world.
 
I've been drive stacking IRL and in Fractal tech for many years now. It works well, but not quite the way it does IRL. You really do have to watch the Output Level values. I get best results when those values aren't too extreme. And, as with how I did it IRL too, I tend to run low clip > higher clip pedals. Two, stacked, tube screamers work wonderfully well in the Fractal world.
Thank you for the heads up! That was some great advice on using two of the same drives! I found some don't work too well together, but TS style drives do! What I was really looking for was "more" of the sound I had, but turning the gain up didn't get it there, so two of the same pedals in a row works great! Also, the graphic eq on the drives works awesome as well! I've been finding that I needed more low end when stacking. That fills the bottom end out and makes it sound less "collapsed" sounding, or less obvious of that.
 
Back
Top Bottom