Q: I own a fairly expensive, name-brand guitar amplifier. It sounds terrific, but lacks a spring reverb unit, so I just bought a reverb pedal. I’ve found that by using the “Hall” setting and tweaking the decay and EQ, I get a really rich, detailed, clean sound. However, when I switch into the amp’s dirty mode, the overall sound is harsh and grainy. Is there any way I can keep the reverb, but get a thicker, smoother overdrive tone?
A: Unfortunately, we’d have to say, “No.” Here’s why: when you are playing clean, your signal goes from the guitar through the reverb pedal and then into the amp, where you can adjust the volume and tone controls, and it sounds terrific. However, once you go into the amp’s overdrive mode, it’s overdriving not only your guitar’s sound, but also that of the reverb pedal. Basically, you are hearing the sound of the reverb being pushed into distortion, and that’s not normally something that our ears find to be pleasing. If the amp has an effects send and return, you could try to place the pedal there, between the preamp and power amp, but the signal level coming out of the preamp in most modern guitar amplifiers is too high, resulting in additional noise and unwanted distortion. One solution is try a stompbox overdrive at the front of the signal chain (that is, between the guitar and the reverb pedal). This would eliminate the problems associated with overdriving a “wet” input.