Boost with solid state amp - worth it?

[suprleed]

So far I've built a distortion pedal and I have an overdrive in the works right now.  I'm considering a clean boost for my next project after reading many a thread here from fellow DIY'ers praising the great sound they get from their simple boosters.  My concern is this, I only have a crappy 20W solid state practice amp at the moment (I'm also considering building a 386 amp, but that's a different thread).  I'm intrigued by many people here who say the boost helps "fatten" up their tone.  Has anyone here had good results playing boosts into solid state amps, or more specifically cheap solid state amps?  Maybe a boost is just what I need to make the POS sound good?  Or should I just keep saving up for a tube amp so I can enjoy the full benefits of a boost pedal one day down the road?  Thanks.

[Hanglow]

Yes they can add something to your sound and are a worthwhile build even if you don't use them straight in front of your amp - boosters into distortions, treble boosters into fuzzes can yield some nice tones.

That said a shitty 20w ss amp is still a shitty ss practice amp

I'd build a 386 based amp, the ruby was a lot nicer than my park it replaced. You can just put it in the cabinet of your amp and use the stock speaker.

You can get some good cheap tube amps now - the vj and its clones are great value, especially once you have modified them.

[moro]

I made the AMZ mini-booster, unsure of how it would work with my Pod and it sounds great. I put it in front of an SD-1 and it fattens up the tone quite a bit.

I also have a breadboarded SHO that I'm tinkering around with right now and I'm gathering the parts for a Rangemaster. I'll be getting a tube amp soon but IMO, boosters aren't a waste even if you don't have a tube amp.

[Mark Hammer]

A great many amps have some headroom to spare.  That is, they are designed around the assumption that they might very well receive an input signal much hotter than you normally supply it.  The signal to noise ratio they are spec'd at is a function of the background noise relative to the musical signal.  The background noise you hear at the speaker comes from both the amp and any pedals along the way.  Though the booster can't necessarily "fix" noise when only part of it comes from the amp, a bit of boost will nevertheless improve signal-to-noise ratio in a great many instances.  Moreover, it can result in more usable volume from the amp than you had previously thought possible.  Not always - we are not talking about a bit of salt turning a s**t sandwich into a steak - but a pleasing bit of improvement.

Keep in mind that boosters can be used in many positions, to different effect/outcome.  Placed at the head of a series of pedals, they can overdrive subsequent pedals in pleasing or unpleasing ways.  For instance, a booster ahead of an overdrive can turn it from mildly irritable to very angry.  The same boost applied to a phaser can turn it from great-sounding to unpleasantly clipping.  Placed at the end of your pedal-chain, it simply increases the level of whatever tone your signal has.  Placed at the head of your pedal-chain, it can provide useful buffering of your guitar signal.  Placed at the end, unless everything before it is true bypass, it may provide no tonal advantage other than level boosting.

Does the usefulness of a booster pedal exist only when you have a tube amp?  I wouldn't say so.  Certainly they can bring out some very fine qualities of tube amps, but if your "crappy 20W solid state practice amp" has some sort of gain/master controls intended to deliberately achieve overdrive, then heating up the signal may still pull more growl out of even that sort of amp than you currently get.

Finally, if you have a clean booster pedal, it can sometimes be used to bring a voice mic up to decent levels for plugging into an amp, or plugging your pedalboard directly into a power amp, so don't think of the booster only in terms of the one purpose, or even solely in terms of guitar.

[mojo_hand]

I've been trying much the same thing as you're talking about... I run into these delicious sound samples, then breadboard similar circuits, only to find that the nice, bluesy overdrive that the poster's (relatively posh) amp produced is nothing like the dry fizz I'll get running it into a (SS) Vox Pathfinder or whatever.

That said, I have made some progress, and am still working on it.  A plain FET booster, if designed halfway right, will sweeten your sound a little, and lower the noise floor.  It won't sound like Clapton through a dimed Marshall, but it may sound like you're playing through a tube Fender at low volume.  Nice tones, but squeaky clean.  You get the correct proportions of 2nd-3rd-etc. harmonic distortion, but you don't really get the same compression and soft clipping.  Add more FET gain stages, and you'll get the clean sound even more right, but that's all... clipping FETs still don't have much mojo, even in numbers.  I'm fiddling with killing the load regulation of the power supply (starving the gain stages) to give some compression, and I'm also looking at using a low voltage triode and/or audio transformer after the FETs to get the missing clipping characteristics.  But that's a work in progress, and if I do get good tube sounds using a 12A*7, it won't be a very remarkable achievement.

(That is a path you might consider -- a low voltage triode booster.  It won't get you much gain by itself, but getting one to clip is easy to the point of near inevitability.  You wouldn't get the sound of a cranked Mesa Boogie, but you might get something close to the sound of a quiet Mesa Boogie with the gain turned up.  Kind of the Valvetronix approach to the problem, but it sounds like a Valvetronix would be a lot better than what you have now.)

Now, I'm a total noob here, there are probably a ton of great designs I've overlooked, and I'd be delighted if someone would point out some designs that prove me wrong.  But that's my take on things so far.  A good booster *will* help give you tubier cleans, and I'd be the last to discourage you from trying one.  Worst case, it'll take some of the nasty edge off of what you have now, and sound quite nice when you upgrade your amp.  But it's not reliably going to get great distortion tones out of a $79 special.

(NOTE: if I'm dead wrong, and there are some great tube distortion sounds to be had from a SS pedal going into a cheap practice amp, PLEASE correct me, and point me in the direction of the grail.  It would save me a lot of breadboarding time, and money on parts.)

[John Lyons]

The short answer:
If the amp distorts at all by itself the booster will work well straight into the amp to create more distortion and sustain.
If the amp is totally clean when cranked then the boost will not work as a distortion, push over the edge type thing etc etc.
As people have pointed out though, you can use the boost to kick up the overdrive of other pedals.

The quality of an amps sound does not always have to do with how much it costs.
Lots of people use "bad" or un-hip amps and have a great sound and feel.

John

[suprleed]

Sage advice by all.  I appreciate the reminders that boosters have many uses other than just pushing an amp.  Thank you.   Looks like a booster is now on my "to build" list.  Now I just have to narrow down the many possibilities and pick one!

mojo: are you basing your "triode booster" off a specific schematic or just experimenting on your own?  Sounds very interesting.

[mojo_hand]

mojo: are you basing your "triode booster" off a specific schematic or just experimenting on your own?  Sounds very interesting.

Experimenting on my own.  I like what FETs can be made to do, but I, too, am the proud owner of some uninspiring sounding SS amps.  I can't find any amp which is simple, sounds good, is easy to transport (car seat sized, 25 pounds or so), loud enough to *easily* hear over a drummer, and reasonably priced.  So I'm making my own.  A several-pound output transformer is something I want to avoid on grounds of portability and expense, which means I'm using a transistor output stage.  So I'm on a quest to solve the post-1965 dilemma as best I can.  So far that's looking like a FET-based preamp, with a triode or two to drive into clipping, right before the effects loops.  I'm also toying with the idea of sticking a dinky audio transformer into the circuit, to see if it does anything for the sound.  One way or another, I am hellbent on getting the best possible sound out of a SS output stage.

I'm waiting on a couple of parts shipments right now, but will post once I have some tubes and/or output transformers hooked up to my breadboard.

[nebucanazza]

A boost works well on a SS setup if you already have other pedals providing a good tone. On its own, its too uncompressed and "hard" sounding( good for clean rhythm parts though). I have experimented with a Sparkle Boost driving a Keeley Blues Driver into a SS amp + 12" speaker, and it sounded pretty good. So if you can get a good base sound out of your SS setup with another pedal, a boost can certainly help add a touch of mojo.

[suprleed]

A boost works well on a SS setup if you already have other pedals providing a good tone. On its own, its too uncompressed and "hard" sounding( good for clean rhythm parts though). I have experimented with a Sparkle Boost driving a Keeley Blues Driver into a SS amp + 12" speaker, and it sounded pretty good. So if you can get a good base sound out of your SS setup with another pedal, a boost can certainly help add a touch of mojo.

Good to hear.  It's reasuring to hear others having success with SS setups.  Maybe I just got too caught up in the "tube" hype.  Looks like I have a good project and some experimenting to do!