Volume Boost?!

[Metal_Messiah]

Hey. I'm in a 6 piece band with 2 other guitarists. With 3 guitars going all the time, I need an insane volume boost for solo's and other leads at times. If anyone could recomend a pedal or something, it would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[nobozos]

Unfortunately, your kind of screwed if you are playing through a high gain amplifier. What tends to happen is when you put an overdrive pedal in front of your amp to boost your volume, it just adds more gain.

I wanted to buy a pedal to boost the volume on the crunch channel on my 5150 combo, because I was never really happy with the lead channel tone out of that amp. Anyway, I was really excited to see the new Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster pedal because it was supposed to bump up the volume of the input signal without affecting the tone. I tried it on the clean side, and it worked as advertised, but when I put it on crunch, it merely added more gain, and did little to boost the volume.

The best thing I've seen is the Mesa amps that have a "Lead" button on the footswitch. It basically is a switch that toggles between two different volume knobs on the same channel. Works slick as ****.

 

[deadringer]

A great tool for this is the Boss graphic EQ pedal. Boost your mid freqs and the overall level at the same time!

 

[hbucker]

I'll second the Boss GE-7 EQ in the loop. Set the eq however you want but raise the level up and you'll get the insane volume boost you're looking for.

The only question to this is if you're already running your amp wide open you might just get more distortion from your power tubes. But if you've got any headroom left, you should get a really good boost.

 

[gproud5150]

Absolutely. Boss GE-7. With ALL the amps I've had over the years, I've always had a GE-7 in there for boost. It's one of the few pieces of original equipment I have left. Besides my EBMM EVH of course.

 

[freeman]

To boost Clean channel or Crunch channel, the following pedals sounds awesome.

Zvex super hard on
Zvex super duper 2 in 1
Banzai new rising sun 2

 

[koogie2k]

I happen to have picked up the BOSS GE-7.....great EQ. I would recommend it for your as others have.

 

[musikarero]

I use a Fulltone Fatboost with nice results!

 

[GrooveHT]

I use a Fulltone Fatboost with nice results!

Hey guys, I have a question. If you use a clean boost, aren't you just going to be hitting the front end harder, not really resulting in much more volume but instead more distortion? I mean, that would explain why the SD Pickup booster didn't work...just more output from the guitar hitting the amp, basically.

 

[Metal_Messiah]

Thanks to all that have recommeneded different possibilities. I'm going to try them all out and see what works best for me!

 

[musikarero]

For me I use a boost to give more volume and push when needed. As for as distortion goes I use a Dr.Z Carmen Ghia which breaks up pretty quick anyway, but the boost works perfectly for what I need it for. Guess it all comes down to how your amp reacts to certain boost pedals. I've also had good results using a AC Boost too.

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

I used a GE7 in the FX loop of my JCM900 Marshalls for years, and it gave a great volume boost for Solo's. I tried it with the Engl amp I use now, and it did not really work that well. Mind you the Engl has 2 master volumes so there is no need for it anyhow!

Here is a picture of my old pedal board.

 

[Jedidad]

I use a MXR Micro Amp in the effects loop of my Marshall. It can give a serious volume boost and in my situation, it didn't affect tone. It just made it louder.

 

[CudBucket]

I second the Fulltone Fatboost.