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Not sure this is the right section for this question so apologies if not.

My question is related to the preamp emulating pedals out there like the OLC Orange Peel or Runoffgroove Flipster. Can you boost a signal going into these types of pedals to get an overdriven sound the same way you would do with an amp?

Probably, the tone you get will most likely depend on what pedal you're overdriving, best thing to do is experiment and let your ears tell you what sounds cool.....

Lots of people overdrive lots of different types of distortion effects for different purposes. You'll get some kind of result and it might be cool. It might not be what you're looking for though.

The biggest question mark is whether the pedal in question is a new circuit whose output simply sounds like the thing it's meant to emulate or if it's an actual clone of a pre-amp in a pedal enclosure. The latter isn't generally an option for tube amps, and most people aren't usually too interested in cloning solid state pre-amps, though a few have done the RG100 and it's a popular one to drive in this fashion.

So if you're talking about a soundalike that's meant to mimic the tone of a tube pre-amp, it likely won't overdrive quite the same way the real thing does. It might still sound good, or it might be different but also cool, but you're stepping outside of the parameters that the circuit was designed around and the solid state components won't react the same way the tubes would (and you might even have a significantly different topology in a soundalike pedal vs the real deal, which is even less likely to react similarly to the original).

You're not likely to break anything by trying though, so give it a shot and see what happens.

Thanks guys!

jerrodw wrote:My question is related to the preamp emulating pedals out there like the OLC Orange Peel or Runoffgroove Flipster. Can you boost a signal going into these types of pedals to get an overdriven sound the same way you would do with an amp?

Putting a boost in front of a soft clipping "amp in a box" pedal can often sound very nice, whether it is a careful reproduction of a specific amp with FETs replacing tubes, a soundalike circuit, or a subtle opamp + diodes clipping in the feedback loop type pedal. Paul Cochranes' timmy pedal works nicely with a boost in front, as does the catalinbread RAH (j page hiwatt type sound): Wampler's plexidrive is a nice marshall-ish pedal, but with a single stage boost up front is also sold as the Velvet fuzz, which is a cool overblown, fuzzface + marshall-on-10-about-to-explode sound.

The best advice is to experiment, you're unlikely to damage anything (expensive).