BASICS: How to dial in overdrive

The sound of an overdrive pedal into a high-gain amp is behind most of my favorite metal albums, but it’s actually quite easy to get it wrong. 

“How should I dial my overdrive pedal” is the kind of question no one wants to be caught asking, but it’s a question I think a lot of people would love to hear answered. I was using a tube screamer in front of a 5150 for years and hated the sound because I was doing it wrong. 

Here’s a quick guide to how to properly use an overdrive pedal to get a high gain metal tone that sounds heavy, but articulate.

Start with your tone dials at 12. You’ll take care of these later. Get the overdrive right first.

Dial the amp gain way down. This is the most common mistake people make with overdrive. You should start with gain right at the point of breakup, usually somewhere between 8 and 10 o clock tops, depending on your amp.

Dial the gain to 0 on the overdrive pedal. The is second most common mistake. Gain should come from the amp not the pedal. You just want the pedal to pushed the amp input enough to make it brutal.

Dial up the level on the pedal from 0. You may not get the most ferocious tone out of 10/10 level, though that’s what conventional thinking often tells you. Focus on the tone, not the gain, and just slowly roll the knob until you like what you hear. For me this is often at 7. It’s ok if you’re not quite at the gain level you want yet. We’ll do that later.

Dial the pedal tone next. I pretty much always have this at 12 o’ clock, but if you want something brighter for for 1-3, darker would be 10-12 etc.

NOW dial the amp tone. Your tone knobs will do less now that you’re driving the preamp harder, but one good place to start is rolling back the bass knob a bit, I usually wind up around 11. Even if you want heavy chugging, a lot of your rhythm guitar tone is actually going to come from the bass guitar. If your low-end is too powerful it will sound great solo and bad in the mix with other instruments.

Now revisit the amp gain knob. If you’re not getting quite as feral a sound as you want, you can make it up with a notch or two on your gain knob.

If you feel like you’re falling 10% short of the high gain tone you want, use the above to get back to basics.