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!!
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.
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
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!!
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
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.
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.
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!
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 😊🙏🤟
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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!
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!
The genius of the Klon Centaur, and what I feel is Bill Finnegan's greatest contribution, was to *precondition* the signal to extract the best possible overdrive sound from a decent tube amp. That is, it anticipated what the amp would do, and arranged things for the guitar signal to make the amp behave in a certain way. If one has ever had the opportunity to try using a Klon as an overdrive tone in itself (i.e., dimed the gain but kept the output level low, feeding it to a clean solid-state amp), it was nothing special. Indeed, rather anemic. BECAUSE IT WASN'T DESIGNED TO DO THAT! What made it labelled as "transparent" (and pretty much ushered in the use of the term) is that it brought out the overdrive character of the amp, without imposing its own characteristics; like putting nicely-tailored clothes and flattering haircut/makeup on a woman that is already beautiful (sorry for the sexism, but it was an analogy I knew would be immediately understood to many here). It's transparent in that it is *revealing* rather than *imposing* . There is a difference between a pedal intended to provide an "overdriven sound" of its own, quite apart from the amp characteristics, and a circuit intended to push an amp into pleasing overdrive, unique to THAT amp. Another aspect of what makes an overdrive pedal "transparent" is the massive difference in headroom between a tube amp, and a 9V-powered pedal. The often-excessive harmonic content generated via diodes and such in a 9V-powered pedal, BECAUSE of that limited headroom, can easily result in the clarity of individual notes getting lost in a haze, when compared to the sound of an amp being pushed harder (in the right way). That's a part of what allows a circuit intended to push the amp, rather than create its own tone, to be thought of and described as "transparent". That harmonic haze is also why distortions and overdrives are generally the first pedal a new guitar-player buys: because it mimics the "busy" harmonic content when one plays loud with a complete band, even though it's just you in your bedroom. None of this is to take away from the pleasing quality that many pedals provide via their own overdriven tone. And one should further distinguish between "clean boost" - which is used to push an amp or other pedal into clipping but does not alter the harmonic content itself - and the audible consequences of using one, when the amp or some other pedal has been pushed hard. Few people use so-called clean boosts to simply shift between one untainted/uncolored level and another - something they could easily do with a volume pedal/preset. Are "transparent" boosters and overdrives shaping the tone and providing coloration? As Brian's video amply demonstrates, YES. BUt the intent is to make the amp sing rather than fizz. Bill told me himself that, even thought the Treble control on the Centaur provides cut AND boost, he really meant it to be used primarily in cut mode, to tame the harmonic content so that the amplifier would not generate too much fizz. Few people like harmonics of harmonics or harmonics. We like those lower-order harmonics in the right proportions.
Well, done. I think you should have your own channel. Another great thing about having a transparent O/D is that it stays out of the way of the vocalist too. Everyone should have one in their arsenal. Try Brian's Euphoria/Ecstasy. His most misunderstood, under-rated, and the greatest pedal he's ever made.
@@lukeingram7655 Let's not rush to judgment! I'm no "legend". I've just been following the field and reading for over 40 years, and you learn a thing or two over time. My strength is explaining things to people. Went to a talk the other day by Prince's former engineer (now Berklee prof) Susan Rogers. Aand when I mentioned the name of one of my former McGill profs to her, her face lit into a big smile, as she referred to him as her "intellectual grandfather" (Albert Bregman, originator of "auditory scene analysis"). When you have good sources to draw on, you get smarter. Since the advent of the web and gear-related forums, a great many truly knowledgeable people have been very generous in their knowledge. It also doesn't hurt having access to all those schematics...something we didn't have in the 1970s or '80s. We had Craig Anderton, Robert Penfold, and a few others, and had to wait a month or two for another bit of info to show up in a magazine. I was over the moon when I finally got to meet Craig at last year's Summer NAMM. What a sweet guy and what a great teacher. Now *there's* a legend.
@@markhammer643 You are too humble, let me just put it another way.. If there was a Guitar Pedal Hall of Fame, Mark Hammer would be an inductee for excellence in technical assistance . In my opinion you're right up there with R.G. as far as pedal cred is concerned and I think plently might consider him a legend so if you're not one, you're still pretty darn close!
@@lukeingram7655 Thanks. Much appreciated. But we should switch back to the Brian show, already in progress. He makes a good product that makes many people happy. That's where the rubber hits the road.
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
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.
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.
I salute all attempts at demolishing the "magic black box" view of pedals, and looks at them from an objective topologic viewpoint, rather than silly subjective terms like *Dumble*, *Plexi*, *tweed*, etc.
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!
@@Jeff-fx5vu oh it overdrives. Most clipping comes in the mid-range frequencies anyway. So other than just boosting the output, you can really pump those mids for some crunch. Maybe on a fender amp it would be tougher, but anything that's already cranked, a boss EQ will definitely make it "scream"
All Wampler pedals need a Dynamic Range switch to get more "resolution" from the guitar volume pot, just like the designer Steve Dawson did on the Marshall Vintage Modern 2266 has Two Preamp Volume pots called Body and Detail so that single coil pickups and other guitars can interface better with the input stage of the guitar pedals. The Dynamic Range mode on the marshall vintage modern 2266 gives you a lot of "Resolution" of the guitars volume pots because the designer Steve Dawson custom made the design so you can get variety of CLEAN UP tones. Most wampler pedals don't have a wide resolution range for clean up tones very limited and narrow window, plus not having the body and detail volume pots you can't use a variety of guitar pickups to fine tune and interface correctly with the guitar pedals front end stage circuitry. Pass this on to your EE Engineers to make an upgrade to your pedal designs.
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!
@@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.
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!
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.
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 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 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!
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!
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!!! 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?
Something I've noticed is that a lot of times guys will have the gain turned wide open and then be like "I'm' losing articulation..." yeah, no jack sherlock- turn the gain down. Transparent to me just means that I don't lose articulation- and if a pedal can do that at higher gain settings- then it's a winner. I don't have a tube amp so- I'm not crying if the sound of my peavey amp gets covered up- that's generally speaking my intentions. Unless I'm playing jazz- I have to admit, if you want a beautiful clean sound for jazz or something similar- Peavey is great. Some of the higher end peaveys probably sound great in general- but these little combo amps pretty much suck. That said- if you take the time to upgrade the speaker- it does wonders for it. I've played it through a friend of mine's cab- a cream back 65 watt 12 inch Celestion- sounds really good. With the tube emulation turned on- it's surprisingly good. I'm considering cutting the head off my combo amp and mounting it to the top of a 1x12 cab but- I probably won't- I may want to sell the redstripe 112 someday- ppl buy them, for some reason. Collectors, I think.
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?
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.
Too often we get mired in the nomenclature imposed on us by others... WTF is a transparent overdrive anyway and why would I want one? Brian has one of THE BEST ears of all the pedal manufacturers. The Tumnus is my "always on" pedal because it sounds great. I don't care a whit if it's transparent or not. If you listen carefully, Brian will teach you so much about tone. Brian, I like the Morning Glory but does Wampler have a Bluesbreaker circuit?
The way I understood "Transparent Overdrive" was an overdrive that brings out the tone of the amplifier rather than replacing it. All these guitar words... arrg.
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.
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.
I'm sure you've tried (or at least joked about) a circuit that when in the "off" position goes through like a 500 ohm resistor, and when "ON" goes straight through with no resistor. There's your transparent overdrive. And it would sell like hotcakes because as Josh Scott says, loud is more good.
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...
So... What happens if you leave the bass to distort with everything else and remove the bass in the later stage? Making it reversed to usual overdrive design. Is it gonna sound like a tame and lame fuzz?
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?
I always thougth I want a bluesbreaker-pedal, but I like the 1 khz boost. Most People on youtube play pedals and are drowning in effects they want to show - you play guitar. Thanks : ))
Hi Brian, love your videos, but I absolutely disagree. Yes it's indisputable that no overdrive pedal is transparent, but what people like myself are looking for is an overdrive - like you said - that doesn't change the sound of the instrument. You also said about adding the bass back in at the end. What I would be interested to see would be a spectrum analyzer reading white noise through the pedals circuit, thanks to your videos I now understand more about the electrical engineering side, but as an audio professional, having a full range overdrive is beneficial to more than just guitar players. Surely, creating a compressionless (except for the natural compression of clipping/overdriving something) full range - perhaps multi-band - overdrive is achievable? Even if you have to take away some bass (or highs/mids) and then blend the filtered dry or wet signal back in to make up for it. TL;DR - Surely it's what comes out of the pedal, not what happens inside, that matters? After all, it should always be about the sound, even if the circuit is destroying it in the process (blues breaker sounds more natural to me)
Well, transparent or not, I love the open setting on my Euphoria on the edge of breakup. I wonder though, if transparent overdrive pedals are meant to not change the tone of your guitar, then why are there tone knobs on them? And wouldn't the ultimate transparent drives be boost pedals? There's this pedal maker in Montreal called Jonny Rock Gear who makes a pedal called the Rewolver which is a fantastic circuit of a JFET cascading into another JFET, each has it's own boost knob and there is a volume knob to attenuate. Can do clean boosts, push to breakup, and it can give a distorted amp more boom or really saturate the gain. I assume it could be considered transparent. It's a great pedal either way.
It’s not about mathematical transparency but audio transparency so the drive just sounds like a louder version of your cleaner sounds and I think it’s obvious that means having some eq tweaks because when you boost things even completely flat they won’t be perceived as flat nor will they interact with things in a flat way. It’s just straight lines on a curved world.
Had a Duncan 805 once. It sounded awesome, just wish it had a little more gain, but boy oh boy those germanium diodes just sounded harmonically rich. 😯
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?
IHMO amp in a box like overdrives are less "transparent" compared with other overdrive pedals. Amp in a box for me is a pedal that change a lot the eq characteristics of the sound not only overdrives it making an amp sound completely different not only adding grit and some hump. What happened for me for example. I had a OCD clone for lead sounds, but I changed for a rat clone. For my situation, even with the mid hump of the rat clone, I fell it more transparent, because when I step on it I have the previous overdrive sound (from other pedals that are not mid hump) with more gain and the mid hump. The OCD clone I didn´t like because when I step on it, what come is a completely different sound and that was not what I expect, I think most because of the aggressive eq OCD does at higher gain levels. I would prefer OCD clone for using as an always on pedal transforming my clean amp on a rock and roll amp changing the "base" sound, but it is not my case. I think OCD gets more transparent, if you use it less gainy (first part of the circuit). But, in my case I already have low gain stages that I like, so that position was not open. hehe That is my experience with transparency. Hope it is useful for somebody.
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
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 ?
@@dmac-333 the boss eq us so versatile.I use it as an acoustic pre and it sounds as good as Baggs or Fishman.If I need a clean boost GE 7 is there but it also can drive to amp.I am not a Boss guy but the GE 7 is one of the best ever
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!
what is transparent according to an EQ curve isn't the same as what is transparent to our ears, especially when clipping is involved. but nonetheless, great point, well made in this video.
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?
my favourite transparent od is the dr scientist elements, it has billy gibbons amounts of gain ;) although it has 3 band eq and switchable bass cut so i dont let it be transparent very often
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?
