correct usage of a tubescreamer or equivalent
 

Ok... I know its a stupid question and the general answer will be "just play with it till it sounds good", but I can never seem to pull a tone from ANY high gain style amp with ANY kind of pedal in front of it that I like...

Essentially, I'm looking at one of the following 2 configurations:

TS-808 > Marshall JCM TSL 100
or
TS-808 > Peavey 6505

now, no matter how hard I try, all it seems to do is squeal, make a shitload of (unwanted) noise and sounds beyond messy... I could run it through the clean channel, but this is never an ideal sound for my tastes.

I see a lot of people saying they love using a tubescreamer in front of an amp (like a 5150/6506) for a really heavy sound... but I can never get what they mean when I try it myself.

Essentially, I'm playing technical death metal with a hint of "core" in it to help with sound references, bands like the faceless, black dahlia murder, whitechapel, born of osiris, necrophagist etc etc... that kind of style.

could someone let me know of any particular "settings" that could help me get past this problem... or I'll even be happy with "forget the tubescreamer, it's good, but only a mild improvement in sound" cause both amps sound killer as it is, but I'd like to test the waters as were about to hit the studio and would like to see if this will improve it at all for the recording.

thanks in advance

alrihgty!

my fav setting for the screamer is left knob pointing <-- tone knob pointing ^ and right knob pointing -->

So your gain is low, your tone is neutral, and your balance/volume is high.

However, you can NOT have the gain on your amp maxed out.

Try this, set your 6505's rhythm channel with everything at noon, and run the screamer in front.

I'll give that a go and see how it comes out... thanks

i should also mention, that the 6505 is a VERY tight and VERY high gain amp by itself. Using a tubescreamer will do very little with it compared to say, a marshall jcm800/900.

If you want to hear what the big change is, turn your resonance and bass to full, and then turn on the tubescreamer - you'll notice a rather pleasing cut.

i'll give it a go through both amps as well to see what the better sound is (to me anyway).

I find the 6505 cutting enough, let alone turning up the resonance, but ill definately give it a shot... might end up just running the amp straight though, but we'll see what happens