Smooth and thick with a little crunchiness for a Tele

honestly, just try a ts9, crank the gain and roll back the tone, set it before the rat and click it on with the rat for a lead.

 

Have you tried the Xotic line? The AC and the BB pre are great with my tele.

Bob

 

I use a Keeley Fuzz Head & Foxrox Hot Silicon with my Tele, both sound excellent. The FH has the internal tone wheel & the HS has the grit knob. The FH works great with other pedals, since it doesn't have huge amounts of gain on tap, where the HS has more than enough gain on it's own.

 

thick, smooth, mid range crunch:

zendrive or eternity

 

Xotic BB works well for me and my Tele

 

The Barber Silver LTD does it for me!

 

+1 on Zendrive. So smooth.....

Wes

 

Occam,

The Zendrive justs loves Tele's!!!

It will do exactly what you are after, plus more. You will not be dissapointed.

Infact using the voice knob, the Zendrive just tunes in perfectly to any amp & guitar combo, at any level, or venue. Be prepared for a real treat.

Cheers,

DD

 

No offense but its HC statments like this that keep me from getting a Zen. I'm sorry but no pedal does what you just described...none.

Bob

 

In this respect, drive boxes are like peanut butter: you can have smooth or you can have crunchy, but if you're expecting both out of the same jar you're bound to be disappointed.

(Alternate answer: with a 15", the stock TS-type is going to smooth out the highs which is where crunch really lives. Assuming you're using vintage strength Tele pickups, I suggest a Keeley Rat: the "Mighty Mouse" high volume/low clipping setting is more flexible than a simple booster box and can add mids where the typical Matamp/Orange-style preamp doesn't naturally accent them. It's also capable of hellah gain and plenty of treble on other settings, should that mood suit you.)

 

The Hotcake is good for smooth sounds with a little bite. My favorite setting with it is as a boost with some hair and thickness into the Carmen Ghia when it's starting to break up. Great for an Allman Brothers @ the Fillmore East type sound, gets more "tooth" to it when switching to single coil mode, especially the "tele-ish" bridge pickup. I like using it for a fatter sound, but now I'm going to be using it with the Hellbaby (mid-range booster) and a Hellbilly (booster that goes from FuzzFace to Rangemaster), so when I get everything all cabled out, I will need to see which boxes do which things the best for my setup.

The Hotcake has a "presence" control that controls the midrange, though sometimes I think it's more of a brightness control (i.e., the more dirt you have, turn the presence down a little so it's not too thin sounding, but up enough where it's not muddy). Using the Hotcake with low-to-medium gain settings yields better results than trying to get a lot of dirt out of it in front of a clean amp. It works much better when using it to overdrive the amp.

 

Another vote for the Zendrive or the silver LTD. Both are smooth sounding lo-medium ODs w/that mid boost that works so well w/single coils.

 

another vote for the Eternity

 

If you boost the signal in to your rat, you are going to lose dynamics no matter what. perhaps something like the the tube screamer which cuts some bass would work best... or maybe a treble booster. If you put a big fat sounding overdrive in front of it with a lot of low end, you are likely to get the exact sound you dont want... basically santana.

 

I really like the Subdecay Liquid Sunshine. It has two different drive controls: one of full range distortion and one for the mids/highs. I think it would do just what you want. It's one of my fave pedals.

 

Barber DD
Hermida Mosferatu
Lovepedal CoT 50
Keeley BD-2 Phat
GGG Std OD

would all do "smooth and crunchy" very nicely.

 

Two Words - Mos Feratu ( 4 knob even better ; } 'Zen with hair'