eoengineer
Gold Supporting Member
- Messages
- 2,293
I enjoy the SD-1 and Rat emulations as well. In my case I owned and used both pedals in my rig prior to owning the HXFX and was pleased to find the HXFX got close enough on those models that I could pull the originals off the floor. They live in my gear closet now. If I A/B them I still feel the hardware units feel a little better, but it’s close..... and speaking of preconceptions ... I had heard or read on my travels that a Rat pedal can do singing, smooth lead tones. Spurred on by my realisation above about the goodness to be found in the humble SD-1, tonight I resolved to give the Rat (Vermin Dist) a go ... despite another preconception that I am not going to like a distortion pedal that also gets fuzzy.
I dialled down the gain and level (defaults were both waaay too high) and then fairly quickly realised the Vermin felt good under my fingers, and got on famously with my Strat's neck pickup. A bit of tweaking of the Filter control and I got enough darkness into the bass end of things, but that still left me with too much treble and too much cocked wah. About 10 minutes tweaking with the 10 band eq and I had got to a good place. Then recorded a loop with the Vermin off, and started playing over the loop with the Vermin back on ... quickly realising that I could now tweak in context over the loop ... how bloody good is that from one unit!! (sorry ... that's probably an obvious and routine thing to do for most people here ... but new to me, and soooo easy to set up ... again, massive kudos to Line 6 for such a brilliant UI).
So ... in the space of 2 days I've discovered that I really get along with 2 distortion pedals that I never would have even thought to try. I still don't think I am close to Allen Hinds' smooth lead tones, but I am, nevertheless, loving the fact I've found some new tone tools that I literally would never have run into without owning HX Effects.
Not unlike what happens in the physical world, my OD preferences change depending on which amp and guitar I’m using. There are a couple models I’ve seen people consistently recommend here that don’t work for me at all with any of my gear. That’s life, I guess.
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