Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Clipped

Perhaps the primary attraction for us distortion dweebs is the (Laney) Ironheart's Pre-Boost feature. This has the same effect of adding a drive pedal to an already distorted amp channel up front not through the loop access. This gives the player more sensitivity in terms of picking, a more sensitive harmonics trigger as well as more body in the distortion per se. This consideration was included in the Ironheart design to save the player some trouble in having to add an external drive pedal to beef up the distortion (eg: adding an Ibanez Tubescreamer).

However, please be informed that at higher Pre-Boost settings, you'd hear this rather obnoxious clipping of notes; meaning- while playing you'd hear your notes 'cut off' as if they are forbidden from crossing a certain limit. I'm aware of the technicalities here; it's the same effect of having a fuzz/ drive circuitry set at higher thresholds to such an extent the signals are truncated- it's more apparent from fuzz units than anything else. As you can see from the pic above, I limit my Pre-Boost to about 40% of the range to avoid the annoyance from being too obvious.

3 comments:

Ian said...

I set my pre-boost to about the same level as well! Gives a perfect amount of boost, anything more would be excessive IMO.

subversion.sg said...

i embrace excess :-)

john said...

i like the attenuation setting, will be appreciated by casual rocker that play in a bedroom most of the time and use for gigging..

However does it sound good on lower wattage?? At volume that won't make neighbor curse on u