Chaos or RDV's HMP (or both!!)

[tungngruv]

Can anyone give me an idea which would be better suited to build for using as a dirty channel to a clean amp sound? My 18 watt amps sound nice and dirty but have to be cranked to get there. I'm looking for a pedal that would be a good dirty sound and then use the amp as my clean tone, like Satriani does. Thanks in advance for any input. Both of the descriptions of these two pedals describe what I'm looking for.

[Mark Hammer]

Ricky Vance's HMP sounds pretty good and is certainly flexible enough tonally.  Hard to tell from the limited soundclip if that's the only trick it has up its sleeve or if there are pleasing sounds that are more, and less, intense (though my guess is that there is likely a whole lot more under the tonal hood given the design).  The EQ setup on the HMP is far superior to the Chaos.  Whether the complexity of it is a deterrent or not, is something only you can decide.

The Chaos is an okay multi-purpose distortion, and is capable of some nice rounder tones because of the nature of the tone control in addition to some pleasing scoop.  Whether it generates enough drive or enough output level for you is another matter, but certainly it is amenable to achieving a variety of tones by tinkering with the gain-setting resistors to ground in each stage.  Given that stage 1 is asymmetrical clipping, and stage 2 symmetrical, it might even be smart to have a Gain 1 and Gain 2 control to play with the harmonic content.

Both of these units use double clipping.  Double-clipping is pretty much the essential ingredient to a lot of satisfying tones and pedals, from the Big Muff right on up.

[tungngruv]

Thanks Mark. I'll probably end up building both, I'm hooked! I almost would like a distortion pedal gain.  Something pretty saturated (like the Roseyray, minus that motorboating sound I can't get rid of) with the mid scoop thing is what I'm looking for. I'll do them both then post what I find. Thanks for the help.