Transparent Overdrive Pedals: Busting the myth- Revisited
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
- About a year and a half ago I made a video discussing my disdain for the term "Transparent Overdrives" (see that video here: • The "myth" about "tran... ). After reading through the comments over the past 18 months I figured now is a good time to clarify and provide more detail.
That Klon circuit you love? Yeah... it's not transparent.
That Bluesbreaker circuit you love? Yeah, it's not either.
I'll show you and play through a truly "transparent" (according to the maths) circuit as well as the other mentioned circuits. PLUS, I'll even show schematics, graphs, charts, and all kinds of geeky stuff. It'll be great. Join in and let's check it out. :-)
OH! I don't have an original Klon and Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal at this time (I loan A LOT of things out to friends), so we'll use the Tumnus and the JHS Morning Glory since they are based on those two circuits.
Question for you: What YOUR favorite "Transparent" overdrive pedal?
I love how Bryan and Josh support each others pedals with such respect.
I'm pissed you haven't come out with a boost or an amp called the wamplerfier
Brian, your compulsion and/or joy in talking shop is inspiring. We are the richer for it.
Dude, your tone in your videos is insane. I get so happy when I hear your Tele.
Thanks so much, I truly appreciate that :-)
Absolutely love how in depth you go!
Excellent video, Brian. I always learn something with your videos but this one really unlocked both of those circuits for me. And excellent tone, BTW!
Love these vids where you take to the breadboard and talk schematics. Perfect mix of technical details and higher-level tone talk. As someone just diving into this world, thank you so much for doing this.
Loved the video and I also love how you use other peoples pedals without dissing them and treating them fairly. That is a very gracious thing to do and it does you no harm whatsoever. By the way Brian, this Brian adores his Euphoria!!
Your channel is a guitar related encyclopedia. Great video man as always.
Really nice video Brian! Nice demo and simulation of the circuits and the variations!
Your vids NEVER disappoint!!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us mere mortals!
One of the best gear channels on youtube... tons of great info. Cheers
G E N T L E W O L F Wempler has no idea what is going on.
@@wetakethetrips6313 explain
Or better yet, ignore the lazy "troll"'s bait.
My grandma trolled me harder when I was still in my diapers.
@@wetakethetrips6313 He seems pretty clued up to me. His pedals are great.
@@wetakethetrips6313 Wempler probably doesn't know. Brian Wampler knows enough to build and easily explain great pedals!
Hey brian, the impulse response of these circuits will also be interesting to look at, especially in terms of dynamics. Great video, and let's get deeper into this!
This is super helpful! I would love graphs like this for all kinds of effect circuits.
That shirt is awesome! Love your in depth vids, keep them coming! Cheers!
I love the nerdy stuff! Keep it coming :)
it would be cool to see someone come out with a sweepable frequency on their od to tune the mids to your own amp. like an eq before or after an od pedal. wait, you do this. love your passion Brian
Thank you so much, my first of your videos because it turned up in my feed this morning. Very informative and easy to understand. Now I’ll see if I can subscribe!
Between Wampler and JHS pedals, I'm going broke! "What a Way To Go"!!! :D From the tech/geek perspective, I don't have a clue, BUT, I really enjoy the different sound samples, that show the actual sound differences (and, in some cases, the similarities, as well), on your channel! Thank You, for those, and all that you do, Bryan! Cheers, and Merry Christmas!!
Very good explanation and opinion.
Keep on rockin' Mr Wampler!!!
Omg I've never been so early to a video before. Just wanna say I love your work. I've learnt so much from your videos. Thanks! But now I feel compelled to start building pedals D:
Love the TPS tee btw!
This video should be required watching for guitarists. My “transparent” OD is a Tumnus and it’s going nowhere!
Not really related to the video, but I recently had a problem with my Velvet Fuzz which was dealt with amazingly by Wampler under warranty. Fast and thorough, and I’m amazingly happy that it’s back on my board so quick. Wampler makes my guitar playing life better.
Great vid and super well explained. I do believe a lot of people have latched on to the “transparent overdrive “thing and didn’t want hundred percent understand… I know what they’re going for but you know petals it’s kind of like horses for courses… You got a tally and you got a twin or say an AC 30...They all react differently together
Hey Brian, fantastic meeting and hanging out with you at NAMM 😊 really appreciated your time! Loving your video man! Really interesting to see and hear the different circuits. Tumnus sounded awesome - love that 1k bump! Have an amazing day and looking forward to next time 😊🙏🤟
Thanks Jay, and great seeing you as well!!
Great video and presentation! Very helpful, thanks!
I really enjoyed this, thanks! I thought the breadboarded circuit with the hard clipping sounded really good actually and I really dug your playing! Rock on!
GREAT VIDEO!! Please do this with boosts, lower gain. That's where the allure of "transparency" really comes into play for a lot of us low-med gain fellas. Thanx!
Reading circuit diagrams is a bit like reading music, both elude me. The more Brian (and one of my friends) show me, the more i begin to understand them.
Thanks for sharing your insight Brian, Cheers.
Brian, please do more of these technical videos! Also, it would be interesting to show the clipping characteristics of different overdrive/ distortion pedals on an A440 sine curve input.
You mean A432, because that is an objectively better tuning based on the Shuman Resonance and will open your Third Eye Chakra.
@@burninglcd Ha!
Thank you so much! I love these types of videos they are incredibly helpful!
These vids really remind me why I buy pedals instead of building them. So thank you for what YOU do.
Brian great segment I didn't see the original video (I'm going to) but this was super educational.I now know that only truly transparent overdrive is no overdrive at all LOL. You don't get something else without something else happening to something......... BTW nice playing
Nice univibe teaser! Looking forward to it!
This was awesome, I love seeing the EQ curves.
Now that attenuators and reactive load boxes are more prevalent, I've been enjoying more power-amp overdrive sounds and really prefer these OD sounds when feasible (though I still love OD pedals).
Any chance you have a way of explaining how the EQ curve changes as the volume rises on pre-amp and power-amp tubes? I suspect it usually isn't a "transparent" change like these circuits you described.
Thanks again.
I love the content, of course, but I also love the Midwest ountry living vibe. Hey from Noblesville!
That midwest country living is what keeps me here xD reminds me of home!
These transparent overdrives aren’t even in transparent enclosures! SMH
try out the deadbeat visual overdrive
I'm a bassist and a few years back a friend gave me his Roland KC-60, which is a 3-channel keyboard/PA amp. Idrc if it had "good toan" cause a good bass amp is huge and heavy on my back and my wallet, and I was just glad to have something that had a good bass response.
But anyway, it had 3 channels, 1 for a mic and 2 others for instruments. That transparent, full-freq response OD reminds me of that amp with a instrument in the mic channel with the gain cranked.
It works for some people, especially bassists that are less looking for crunch and are really looking for grime and beef. We dont need a midrange boost and we really need our bass tone kept intact.
But whatever. Great video! My guitarist friend loves the Klon and also loves CS Lewis so sometime soon I'm gonna get him the Tumnus Deluxe hopefully.
Man the playing in this video is phenomenal
Great video, mate. Really like the tech-vibe... Keep them coming. Quick question: harmonic content. Why do some drives have lots of it and others don't? I have a morning glory clone made by a local builder that has a tremendous amount of harmonic content (pretty noisy too, but that's manageable). Even more than the original morning glory (it's a v3 clone, if that helps).
Also, that t-style never disappoints. Been looking into them, actually...
Glad you're back, mate.
Cheers
I never understood what transparent overdrive meant since you are trying to color the sound anyway. But yes, I like you explaining the flat eq idea, that 8s not always desirable. But in the listening, even though both pedals are different they sounded similar in that I heard that unmistakable tele sound. So I get it. Thanks, Brian for once again explaining the unexplainable.
Great video, thanks! Super useful info!
Are most clean boosts less compressed than the average overdrive?
I’ve been trying so many gain pedals,and found a 27db boost pedal that seems to really have that bright,jangly open sound I crave, it feels like a lot of OD pedals are too creamy,compressed..where that Boost seems devoid of all that..
Is this the case?.. I wonder why more folks don’t use a boost rather than overdrives.. just slamming the amp w lots of db seems more natural than turning up the gain on OD or distortion pedals..
Except..the Tumnus, and this other Klone I found, Greenchild Kursk.when I start stacking I get great,tight high gain.. and alone they rule. In a pedal builder’s opinion,
is the Klon circuit really that good?? It seems radically different to me,although I’ve heard other builders say that the Klon is one of their least favorite circuits, but the public wants it, so they build it.. sorry, that’s like a couple of questions..
Hi Bryan, my humble opinion about what they called "transparent overdrive"; is that one you don't have to tweak your clean channel eq with, when you engage it. If the overall balance doesn't change, no matter what kind of overdrive I engage, I'd be able to use for example 3 different overdrives without the need of adjusting the amp's eq for each one (cause i'm playing). I don't think anyone talk about a proper flat eq overdrive.. Nice video anyway!
Thanks for all your great videos and pedals! May I ask what pickups are in your tele? LOVE that guitar!
This is a load of information. Thank you Mr. Wampler.
Very good, thanks for doing these videos, I learned what other people call transparent... for me it was more how the pedal was transparent when rolling off the volume and sounding clean, as if it wasnt there, that's how I test both my pedals so I can leave them on and use the volume to go from clean to crunch just with the volume. So do you design differently for that or is it the same, just that you didn't explore that in the sound bytes?
Thank you for the great educational videos!!!
Great Vid again! Thank you for all the "geeky" stuff, good to know from someone who really needs to know it ;) I liked that you mention pedals sounding different in other amps, this effect lead me to my joy of tube amps as well as tailoring my board for a specific amp or to be used with backlines, whatever's there, etc. And of course, what is right for the music and the song is always paramount! Keep'em comin' Brian!
Liked for the goat content. Great video
Really liked that hard clipping "transparent" tone.
appreciate Brian taking the time to provide his two-cents.
awesome video. This type of analysis is why I noticed you in the first place. after that I tried out (and bought) some pedals. I really like how open you are about how the stuff works.
Thank you so much! 🙏🏼
Hi ! I've been trying to do this circuit to experiment myself with different components but the schematic is missing the power section. Would someone have a simple power supply section? Maybe the power supply from OCD pedal?
Is it possible these frequency response curves are what you need when designing a boost pedal that compensates for how our ears hear according to fletcher Munson curves as volume increases? So electronically not transparent, but our ears hear transparency because as volume goes up we are more sensitive to bass and treble and not so much mids,so a boost in the mids equalizes it better ?
My Paisley Drive is easily my favorite transparent overdrive. When set with the gain below 9 o'clock, it's exactly my base tone, just louder and with a little bit of clipping. The Paisley Drive has crushed every last fancy overdrive I've ever put it up against. Of course it's fully capable of all sorts of tone coloring via the toggle options, but dialed in neutral, I've never experienced a more transparent drive ever.
I love my Paisley Drive!I just picked up a used Vox AC15C1.I am hoping it will work well with my Paisley Drive?
There are just too many good flavors of ice cream. There is a reason why they had 31 flavors. I'll take em all. Sometimes something different inspires you.
Ron Anthony, I've owned many of the greats and I must say the AC15C1 is my desert island amp. It made me sell off all of my vintage Fenders (black, blonde, and brown) with zero regrets. It's also perfect with the Paisley Drive :)
@@rca3rd I've got a Vox AC10 and I love it big time with pedals. There's a little video I made with a gopro on my channel just for one of my buddies that is a co DIE HARD Steelers fan and Rengade by Styx is our "fight song" and I was using a Wampler Sovereign, Hughes and Kettner Rotosphere, TS9, and Boss DD6 and I think it sounds good with pedals and I was literally just picking it up and playing it and not trying to be the next SRV. I think the Vox amps actually do work well with pedals. I've got a Keeley Dark Side now too and it works awesome with that one as well. I think you'll definitely like the Paisley Drive with it because actually I went behind Brad Paisley's stage years ago and looked at his rig and there was actually an AC30 in there. He only puts the Dr Z stuff on the stage but he had an AC30 in the back and that was during the Time Well Wasted tour and his tone was off the charts then!
@@SimpleManGuitars1973 I sold my AC10. I got it out of storeage and played it to make sure it was ok. Damn it sounded good LOL Not having a loop was my problem with it
Love the That Pedal Show t-shirt!
Brian what do you think of the Professor tweed DIY pedal kit?
It's the best don't touch my natural tone circuit so far i have try but am getting old and start to like just a cord to the amp setup (-.o) getting tired for the hunt!
I see you like fender amps & guitars. Is there any way you can do in depth videos on the fender santa ana overdrive? I want to learn more about how it works & how I can more effectively use it to my advantage using it with my hot rod blues Jr 4 & my pro am tele 1
Great video Brian.
Super useful and tons of info.
Love this stuff man. Thanks!
Correction at 4:43, thre is no 20dB cut in the bass, Brian read the frequency instead of the dBV. At 63 Hz the signal was down to just 39 dB, less than 1 dB loss from the 40 dBV plateau in the mid range and most of the treble. Never mind the shape of the curve it really is almost flat!
Thank you Brian, great job! I love my Tumnus!
great info sir love the channel
love the education ...seriously ....thanx
Being a plug and play kind of guy I don't entirely have a grasped yet of EQ curves or pedal circuitry but I really appreciate your transparency in sharing this information in these videos... Question if I understood the video correctly looking at an EQ curve, the curve starts left to right bass, middle then treble?
Andrew Bettis Yes
I would like to hear what you think of the Vertex BOOST!
Thanks for a very informative video. Do you have link to the curcuit program?
www.circuitlab.com/
Great video!!! One thing you seem to gloss over is the phase shift. Wouldn't this actually be really important to the tone? Where I'm coming from: If the "multiples" or harmonics of the lower frequencies are out of phase with the higher frequencies, wouldn't there be some cancellation effect as the signal passes through the chain?
The video talks about overdrives and describes how good the Tumnus and Morning Glory sound (I agree, they sound great) but to me - that clean tone is THE TONE I have been loving!
Thanks! That's just a tele through a hot rod deluxe, and using Celestion creamback 65 speaker Impulse Responses
@@wampler_pedals That's amazing Brian! I reckon your Tele is nothing really special too, meaning it's an everyday type of Telecaster with upgraded pickups - Bryan from the Philippines.
@@bpabustan I'm actually using a Whitfill custom Tele here, but it's patterned after a 52 fender tele
@@wampler_pedals awesome!
I love the Morning Glory as well. I even contacted JHS to see if I could have it modded to allow me to add more bass. Oh, I have both the Tumnus and Tumnus Deluxe andlove those as well.
What became of this? Would they mod the MG? I’d like one to use with my bass rig but it sounded too thin.
Obviously he's right about wanting to filter top and bottom end in certain ways for a decent drive/distortion/fuzz tone.
However what about if you want more drive on an overdrive channel? There's already a pronounced midrange, and adding another circuit which adds drive but narrows the frequency range, will make it sound heavier from the added "gain" bit less heavy from the thinner sound in comparison.
What sort of pedals would you use in this instance?
I don't know if they are technically "transparent" but the Zendrive and Tiki Drive (originals, not Lovepedals) sound transparent to me, in that I feel like I can still hear my original clean tone somewhere in there, although at high gain on the Tiki it will get lost. Very touch responsive pedals that don't massacre your original tone.
Have tried Klon clone too and it kind of had the same thing going on, but the Zen/Tiki pedals kind of have a fresh and unique tint to them, and the grain of the distortion sounds kind of elegant and sophisticated, especially on the Zendrive. That being said, would love to try a Tumnus, that sounded great!
Great video, thanks!
I like that first overdrive sound! reminds me the JTM 45
Can you give me some insight on the G&L Buckshot transparent OD please.. I have a friend who has about 8 for sale and I'm interested in grabbing one of these soon to be collectables being G&L doesn't make many pedals.. Love your channel you and Josh are the most giving people in the industry...
The year before last, Sweetwater practically gave away the new Gonkulator from DOD. I bought it for the ringmod for synth use, but the distortion circuit turned out to be way more useful than I'd imagined. I was surprised that every heavily compressed nuance was coming through, even with gain, drive and level maxed out. I have some Steve Stevens-style, 80s flavored compression right at the start of my signal chain, and the DOD DOES NOT kill anything my compressors do. Best impulse pedal buy ever!
That’s actually the same distortion circuit as the DOD Grunge pedal
i have a pedal that will run on 18volts. when i use the 18v output on my power supply the pedal makes a faint helicopter noise what is up with that?
Could be an issue with the charge pump itself, or the filter capacitor.
I always thought the Big Muff method of getting around the bandwidth limitation is interesting - it splits input signal down two paths, and the tone knob blends them back together post-clipping. That's why the Big Muff has both giant lows and peaky highs! I always wanted that design in more pedals.
I think you may have it confused with a different circuit... big muff is cascaded NPN transistors and the tone control is panning between low pass and high pass filters
I think it depends on what you call "transparent". The fact that the curve is flat doesn't mean the sound is more transparent. it just means that it's transparent for a white noise. In fact guitar signal doesn't behave like a white noise. To my ears, despite the 1k peak on the curve, sound rather close to the original sound where the breadboard distortion is not transparent at all (way too dark) maybe because of the compression that happens with the distortion.
So yeah there really is a difference between simulation and real life situation.
@Wampler Pedals When you brought up the frequency response curve of the blues breaker at 9:53 I immediately went, "Huh. That looks like the A-weighting curve." I wonder if that's coincidence or intentional.
This transparent overdrive concept is very subjective, but I have always thought that it involves compression as well. I mean, should a "transparent overdrive" be more dynamic? My favorite overdrive is now the BOSS OD-3, which response curve resembles an amp curve (slightly mid scooped, with a bump at 800Hz, more or less). I don't know if it can be called transparent (in fact it is yellow), but it is very nice sounding and dynamic. Great video, by the way, as always.
Nice TPS shirt!
What kind of pick ups in your Tele? they sound great!
Bluesbreaker style pedals to me always have a fizzy decay that seems to sit behind each note. Anyone else?
I like to use two troverdrives stacked as you test in the end, first with less gain, but you dont play both pedals on, you got a third excelent rock sound.
What about us guys that use humbuckers as far as demoing tones? I'm using Duncan Pearly Gates pickups which are not ultra hot but fatter than a tele. I love your tones btw but would like to hear you demo stuff through both pickup styles. Thanks
if i had to describe one of my pedals as a ''transparent" overdrive, it would be my "supreaux deux" that the runoffgroove guys designed. my impression of it being transparent comes from the fact that i dont lose high end and clarity, and i can still hear the pick attack and dynamics.
I recently got myself an old Barber LTD SR that really does sound transparent. Chords ring clear and the EQ is flat just as advertised but that's less fun than a pedal with its own voice unless you're really in love with the sound of your amp.
I've used Morning Glory V3&V4 for years. Recently l've found a dislike to the circuit, unless l run it with a Plup n Peel V3 or V4.
I can hear the difference in the midrange with the Tumnus mini, l prefer that tone.
How does the Tumnus Deluxe differ from the Tumnus mini?
The deluxe has more eq options (active bass and mids controls) as well as a switch that adds more gain
Love the shirt.
What about MXR Distortion+? Is it a bluesbreaker or klon style, or is it something else entirely?
It’s different, it’s more simplistic than those two circuits
thanks this is wil help and my experiences !!!
Brian has some really cool licks!!
So happy for your cat! What does your goat want you to build?
a delay and reverb probably!
Just when I tot my double barrel morning glory side sounds transparent!😂 thank you for this educational video.
Joseph Ang 😂
I love these videos, because they take they voodoo out of guitar pedals. They still create magical sounds but you know it's all physics.
I would like to see you also comparing the Blue note and the Timmy.
Listening on my beloved Tannoy System 6 NFM II speakers.
Surprising that Circuitlab seems to work OK without any ground reference for the + input of the opamp!
BTW, low E on a guitar is around 82 Hz, so I normally don't worry about anything lower than that.
Thanks for another great video Brian. Proud Tumnus Deluxe owner here. Would love to add more of your stuff to my board at some point!