I've got a Crate BV60, and I know people use different pedals to boost their distortion, but what seperates these pedals from ones like the Metal Master and Metal Zone?

And, what kind of pedals can I use which would boost my amp's distortion, and not hinder tone? Like a ProCo Rat, or what?

Oh and how would you define a boost pedal?

I guess its a question of quality. And boosters tend to be more transparent I think. My 2 cents.

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A Overdrive pedal such as the Maxon 0D-808, Boss SD-1, and Digitech Bad Monkey dont actually color your sound, they increase the level and have the option of adding more gain if needed. They add alot of clarity and pick attack.

The Metalzone and others do the exact opposite..

You can also you an EQ to boost your amp, set the level to full or whatever you find most pleasing.

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^

And that is the truth.

Are you talking about a "Clean Boost"? This is where you take an overdrive pedal and use it backwards from conventional thought. What you do is dime the level and then turn the drive up until you get a slight increase in volume when you click the pedal on. This boosts the signal coming from your guitar to "cleanly" overdrive the front end of your amp. Clean is a relative term used here though. The pedal is still giving some of the overdive clipping but not much at all. This is how you are "supposed" to use O/D pedals. You are wanting to slam the front end of your anp so that the signal going into the amp starts the amp clipping before the first preamp stage.

You can use a standard distortion pedal the same way but the effect is more severe as distortion pedals cause signal distortion instead of just raising the signal level to natural clipping levels like an OD pedal.

Any of the pedals that BLS mentioned do clean boosting great. If that is not giving you a hairy enough sound try a MXR Distortion+. This was the pedal that Randy Rhoads used. He set it up as a clean boost.

Another way of boosting your signal is to use an EQ pedal. You can set the EQ flat and bump the output level up so you get a volume increase when you turn the pedal on. It essentially does the same thing as using an OD pedal but the signal is not clipping(as in an OD or dist pedal) as it is going into your amp.

Good shit Necrovore, glad to have you here

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totally...

the point of a boost is usually to be more of a gain increase without coloring the origional tone or altering the eq. good luck doing that with a metalzone.

speakeing of clean boosts... i'm starting to be a fan of the seymoure duncan pickup booster into a mesa stilleto. rrreeeaally squishy.

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The SD pickup booster.. is that just a glorified eq with flat settings and the level all the way up?

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i guess you could say that... it's designed to just be a clean boost in your signal. i guess a way of simulating hotter pickups is what they were going for.. but it's tits with a cranked out stilleto duece in 50w mode.

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Hmmm... So it looks like I can use my Boss GE-7 as a preamp boost. I will have to give this a try.

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I have a Marshall Jackhammer JH-1 I used to use in front of a JCM 800. It's basically a pedal with 2 settings, one overdrive and one distortion. Sounded insane with the overdrive setting running through the 800. Sounded just like the amp but more gain. Only really tried it through that. Has 2 contour knobs too, which is nice for the extra EQ flexibilty. The versatility made it worth buying. Don't know if they still sell it.