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OVERDRIVES? DISTORTIONS? I was asked many times what kind of overdrive/distortion pedals I prefer or if I use them at all.

I was asked many times what kind of overdrive/dis­tortion pedals I prefer or if I use them at all.

Yes, I do use them even the main portion of distortion in the sound comes from the tube pre-amp. Basically I think the choice should be done first according to the style of music. There could hardly be one pedal used for both death metal and country. Then the next is the style of playing. If you prefer to play chords there must be something different compared to playing tapping, legato licks etc. And the last thing is a personal taste. Every player has (or should have) his dream sound and should get to it as closest as possible in the reality.

That was the boring theory and now about some models. I have started with Boss Overdrives, which are not bad, afterwards I disovered the Ibanez TS group of products which is beside Marshall Bluesbraker the only pedals that work with my relic Fender Super Reverb (anything else even much more expensive was a big buzzing shit). Since a like a smooth singing sound with a long sustain I always put some of the pedal in front of my pre-amp to get a smoother and „longer“ sound than just simply plugging in to the amp. For this purpose I use today 3 various stomps – Fulltone OCD, MXR GT-OD and Proco Solo. Each of them is slightly different but all are very good. Fulltone is more like driving an amp, MXR is a fat rich overdrive and Proco is an edge sound with a tendency to a feedback.

It would definitely be great to try some boutique stomp boxes like Landgraff, Clay Jones, Tim and others, but it is almost impossible to find them in continental Europe.