Why Overdrive blocks different volumes?

Quad Cortex
1

Did I tweak something by accident or is that the way they are by default? If so, why? Can they be leveled as default?

RangeBoost/Myth/FaceFuzz=Very Loud
BritBlues= Very Low
Others= Medium/Normal

2

In my experience the drives work just like a real pedal and the volume is set by the user etc., otherwise I’m not sure I understand your question but you can save your blocks with whatever default settings you want to use. It will be global etc.

3

Any overdrive pedal shouldn’t add any significant volume to your rig unless you’re using a clean amp with a lot of extra headroom and you have your sound system turned up loud; what is your setup that you’re experiencing these extreme volume disparities? And it’s also good to keep in mind how the original pedals were used; the rangeBoost (rangemaster) was made to SLAM the front of an amp, as was the Klon (myth) so it’s very likely that at “neutral” settings these will be louder than other; especially, again, if you’re using a setup as I described above. Are you finding the volume/level parameters themselves are cranked more for those effects or they just seem louder when you pop them in a preset?

4

I tap on the grid to add an overdrive block. I then scroll through the drives while strumming the guitar. I can then hear the obvious vol differences.

I don’t mind a slight vol difference, but the “British Blues” has to be cranked at full output to just barely match my clean volume.
The “Myth” has to be dropped down to 1.2dB to match the clean volume.

  • In addition, sometimes it sounds like there is a bit of clean blend when using the overdrives. Kinda like the Kempers “direct mix”.
1 Like
5

That sounds normal. Unless every drive block was set to zero gain, unity etc., you would hear a difference when trying various gain blocks

6

I also have this problem.

It does not make sense that the British Blues would have to have the volume on maximum just to get to unity gain. I have real bluesbreaker pedals and this is not a feature of the circuit.

It seems that MP_Mod’s answer demonstrated a misunderstanding of the issue.

I would suggest that it would be ideal for all of the overdrive models to have unity volume at the centre (5.0).

7

I have experienced the same problem with the blues breaker. It doesnt match the loudness of my clean tone. Right now my hot fix for this issue was to replace the Blues Breaker in the grid with my capture of Tube Screamer which added the needed loudness to my overdriven sound. But i will still try to somehow solve the problem with the Blues breaker just because it sounds different from TS and i want that sound on my preset.