Hey guys I have a Fender Blues Junior, and I play a Strat.

I'm looking for a little more overdrive for better sustain than what the FAT channel can provide.

Are these two pedals I'm looking at fairly similar?

Your thoughts?

Keeley Modded BD-2!!

I've never tried the blues driver stock. i do have a keeley bd-2. It has a lot more drive than the tube screamer. The tube screamer is a nice pedal and I think if it was between a stock bd-2 and the tube screamer I would choose the tube screamer. The fulltone Full drive 2 is also a nice pedal as well as the reverend train.

They are similar, TS-9 has a more pronounced mid-hump. The other guys make versions of it without the mid boost, I like it, it focus the sound and cuts through the mix.

Blues drive is a great pedal, also, more lows, more drive.

I had all the boutique drives, I came back to my old, unmodded TS-9.

the ts 808 is my vote.

Fulltone OCD

+1 for the TS-9. I use it with my Orange amp, records very well.

Also check out the BB preamp by Xotic Effects! This pedal actually sounds like an amp rather than a fizzy mess. Don't sleep.

+1,000,000

you will not regret it. I have a Tube Screamer (newer one) and this kid brought in an OCD with him and it blew the Tube Screamer out of the water.

Never quite satisfied with either into my BJ...........bounced around for a while with a number of pedals.

Now I go through Analogman Maxon SD-9 into Sparkledrive.

Call me crazy if you want.

I'd get a new amp and forget about the pedals. If your amp isn't giving you the tone that you need, then you'd just be adding more junk into the mix with a pedal, and I don't care who makes it.

TS-808, OCD, TS-9, Blues Driver ... they're all gonna just cover up a bad fundamental tone with a bit of a distraction. Just another flavor of fizzy, buzzy, mosquito sounding square wave clipping diode distortion.

Get an all tube single ended Class A amp and crank it up. You'll never look at another distortion pedal again.

You are crazy!

Nah, not really. Those are words of wisdom. I get my best tone from cranked tube amps (always more than one).

Sometimes, though, a little extra overdrive fills the bill.

OCD...yes...I have one and love it.

Tube Screamer or Blues Driver? If you want to lose bottom when you stomp get the Tube Screamer...if you want to keep the same low end and not change it much but just add some dirt get the Blues Driver (yes I have owned both...been playing gtr 24 years)

That said...I use an OCD...better than both. Plus it has more character.

Im not going to purchase a new amp. I love my BJ, just at sometimes I need a little more "umph", its not a question about tone, I like the tone, that's why Im not dishing out for a distortion pedal.

I was only looknig at spending around maybe $125

I think ill go to GC and test these two out then

Well, since a new amp is out of the question, then I might suggest the following;

If you're dead set on getting a distortion pedal, then you might want to consider springing for two stompbox EQ pedals, like a GE7 or something like that. Place them on either side of the distortion pedal; one for scuplting the tone from the guitar, the other for the pedal. This is a little known trick used by many pros in the studio, and you can compensate for the EQ of the distortion pedal itself, which many find lacking. Of course, you'd also be introducting more noise into the signal chain, and if you don't have a noise gate, get one.

I'm not a big fan of distortion pedals, personally. I know that there are some good ones out there, and I've tried a lot of them. My personal favorite has been an old H&K Cream Machine, which is really a miniature amp, used in conjunction with an old MXR Distortion + or an old TS-808 with the germanium diodes. I used this setup with a blackface '64 Super Reverb, and the tone was heavenly. This setup also turned me onto the wonders of power tube distortion via the Cream Machine. Haven't turned back since. A cranked tube amp gives me all the harmonic complexity that a pedal just can't reproduce.

In the future, you might want to check out the possibility of modding your amp to point to point wiring and adding a tube rectifier. I'm not sure if the BJ is a Class A or Class AB amp, but 15W into an 8 ohm load with a solid state rectifier would suggest that it's a Class AB push-pull setup. But, since that seems like too much work, stick with the pedal and see what you can come up with. The EQ option does open up your possibilites. Keep us posted on the results!

Peace.

I've tried a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, Catalinabread Silverkiss, Fulltone Fulldrive and OCD, Ibanez TS9, Frantone Brookyln, and I've finallt settled on the Xotic BB Preamp. It's great, just sounds like my amps natural sound being driven harder. It's pretty pricey, about twice as much as a used TS9, but worth it.

+1 on an EQ pedal in front of whichever dist/overdrive you choose.

Really helps sculpt out a tone.

thumbsup RealTube

This. I have a TS7-808mod and a Keeley BD-2, and the TS doesn't even make it onto my pedalboard.

Tube screamer with the old IC, resistor swaps and the asym distortion mod to keep the bottom.

Try an old butler version Tube Driver not the Chandler model. David Gilmour and Eric Johnson swear by them. I own the Chandler but the butler version is better

Once guitarist learn this the better off they will be with their sound, i hate any kind of distortion pedals, they suck the life out of your tone, the best one i ever used and it was still slack was a blues driver modded.
Hey I'm so picky that i will not use anything but monster cables and YES they are a HUGE difference with monster.

imo theres rarely a need for a distortion pedal.
Whats typically way more satisfying is a 'boost pedal'. These can coax attack, body and drive from your amp without the typical artifical flat fuzziness of a distortion box. Once you go boost, distortion sits in the corner and doesnt get to come out and play
Lots of good boost pedals on the market. Keeley, Analogman, Catalinbread, Fulltone....

He never said he didn't like his tone. He just wants some more sustain. There is nothing wrong with adding a good quality pedal into the chain. I love everything that comes out of my Hot Rod Deville 212 and Orange Tiny Terror - Avatar 212 Vintage 30 amps. But when we ran the OCD through them it just made those amps even better than they already are.

Wow.

Didn't think I would spark so many conflicting opinions.

Distortion/Overdrive pedals have a place ... in my case, it's in somebody else's setup. They are practical and have their purposes. If you have a Fender Twin or a JC-120, then they're almost necessary. If you have an old Marshall Major, then absolutely. But, for all intents and purposes, they exist for one reason and one reason only; to reproduce the sound of a tube amp run flat out wide open and loud as hell. They are trying to mimic the even order harmonics and compression characteristics of overdriven power tubes, used in conjunction with a moderate to heavy amount of preamp gain. This is without a doubt. I really don't believe that there is a pedal manufacturer out there who tries to recreate the sound of a "preamp gain on 10, master on 1" kind of overdrive pedal.

If we're talking about sustain, then once again, we're back to the same point. If anyone has every plugged a guitar into an amp with low volume, and then increased the volume, then naturally, sustain will increase. Once again, we're talking about a cranked tube amp. Once again, pedals try to simulate this sound. Whether it's a clean boost, or a mixture of both like the Sparkle Drive, or a straight up distortion/overdrive pedal, we're back to the same thing. Compression is a completely different beast, so it doesn't fall into the scope of this discussion.

One thing we don't know about our fellow slutz's original question is; what kind of sound is he looking for? What kind of tone is the goal here? What are the rest of the pieces of the puzzle? What kind of guitar is he using? What, if any, other pedals are in the mix?

We know that there's a Hot Rod series Blues Junior and that's it.

There are some fundamentals that we don't know about as far as what he's looking for. Hell, for all we know, he might've gone out to the local GC or whatever and bought whatever they had on sale that day and told us all to take a hike.

He could be going for a sustain forever Gimourish type of tone, and have a solid maple bolt neck guitar with lipstick tube pickups for all we know.

One thing I do know is, good tone equals volume. Good distortion comes from power tubes on meltdown. Preamp distortion is great for beginners. Distortion pedals have a place in the toolbox as far as options when dealing with a loud, clean amp. And the pedal wars will never cease. But I still love trying out distortion pedals, even if they will never find their way onto my pedalboard.

Thank you for so many different takes on this subject, and I hope the subby will answer some of the questions I've asked. I'd love to hear how he made out with chasing the tone dragon ...

Peace.

My Theory is, if i can use a pedal in my chain it must pass a few points :
1. Cannot take away ANY gain from my signal.
2. It cannot have any noise, hiss etc.
3. It must be a dependable pedal and not something plastic.

+1 for the Xotic pedals...AC booster is a great clean boost.

Also, not sure if you yankees can get em, but there's a company in Nova Scotia called Diamond that makes my all time fave overdrive, the J-Drive...

(for the record, they also make one of the most badass analog delays ever, too...check em out on the web)

i am very in love with my jacque tube blower which is a great TS808. Its very well built and is very quiet. I put a mxr dynacomp after it and i'm in solo guitar sustain heaven.

Jacques Stompboxes

I think a distinction needs to be made between a "boost" or "overdrive" pedal
and a "distortion" pedal. Tube Screamers, Fulltone FD2's, Klon Centauers, etc aren't really made to generate distortion in the pedal (although they will do this).

They are made to provide enough signal to guarranty that the amplifier itself is driven into disortion. Most of the classic Fender amps for instance do not have high gain. The need to use a "boost" pedal does not mean the amp is poor sounding to begin with, only that there is not enough gain to create the kind of clipping most players crave. My own experience has been most of the classic amps sound better with hot signals, even when playing clean (this is due to added 2nd harmonic distortion from the preamp stages, which is not necessarilly noticeable as clipping at lower levels of distortion).

Boost pedals in some cases will allow you to get distortion at a much lower volume level by overdriving the preamp tubes in the amp. This usually is better sounding that getting the distortion solely through the pedal itself.

When trying to get good distortion at reasonable volume levels I usually try to set the pedal to drive the amp very hot, but not so hot all it can do is distort. I usually have a Blackface Fender volume on about '3' and increase the boost from the pedal until I get a nice clean sound on '5' or '6' on the guitar's volume control, and when I crank the guitar's volume all the way up it sings. If it still doesn't sing at the volume max allowable volume level then I add in some distortion. At this point it usually doesn't take much. Very little in fact. It is very easy to overdo all this and end up with a less than great tone!

If you are using an amp with a clean and overdrive channels (the newer Fender's come to mind)- often times the distortion channels don't sound that great. These tricks work much better going into the clean channel.