RA-100 - your favorite od/boost-pedals?

Hi,

Just curious to hear what pedals people are using with Royal? I've been heard its not the best amp to taking pedals.. I mean od/boost-pedals before the preamp, How you see it?

I got experience with only few pedals on RA (Fulltone OCD & Xotic RC booster). I prefer the settings where gain is about at the noon on the gain-channel and using boost when hard-rock or metal is needed because i love also the lower gain sounds from RA.

OCD makes sound little fuzzy, not so clear but RC keeps it original sounding and its more like volume-boost and its good but maybe thinking something else with more gain?

Cheers!

I've been wondering about this too. Since this amp has American and British tones, one is unable to have an American -type overdrive channel like the Lonestar. So, I'm thinking I could use pedals on the clean channel, giving it American clean and however much gain you want, depending on your pedals settings and pedal stacking, etc. This would give you a whole range of American voiced tones. Then switch over to the British side and you got Lo and High gain modes to choose between, adding gain or boost with possibly a couple of different pedals from what was used on the Clean channel. I do not yet own the amp, so I am experimenting in my imagination :lol: This is possibly how I will use the amp, once a get it. This way, I will have all the tones available, whether American or British, clean, high gain, or anywhere in between. The only thing I would not have is a clean British channel, but I'm not interested in that anyways...
So, RA owners, how does this amp take pedals? Is what I said sound feasable? How do YOU use pedals with this amp?

The Way Huge Green Rhino does wonders for me, it gets the gain/saturation ratio to hit the sweet spot for me with the RA. The curve bass control allows it to blend perfectly with the tight low end of the RA without giving a weird character like other boosts. The Rhino almost has an Electra Dyne like chime quality to it, I love it!

Electro-Harmonix LPB-1. Seriously. Best $40 you'll ever spend. I love this pedal on Marshall-voiced upper-midsy amps. Hitting the blue channel with this at about 2 o'clockgives you this huge grindy, grainy, clanky turned-up-way-loud sound-- as much gain as the red channel but much less well-behaved.

I think the amp should take most overdrives well, because it has a ton of headroom. I have gotten good overdrive tones with a Paisley Drive and Tim. I have also used a DMM in the loop set to boost and slapback for a great vintage tone.

Just sold Suhr Riot pedal.. Didn't work well with Royal, IMO. It sounded too scooped with huge amount of gain almost every settings.

I swapped Riot to Xotic bb preamp and this is great. Bb is sounding like a little compressed with lots of middlerange. My favorite settings is level almost full and only small amount of gain when bb is like a boost and the sound won't getting mushy, just kicking your ***!

timop82 said:

Hi,

Just curious to hear what pedals people are using with Royal? I've been heard its not the best amp to taking pedals.. I mean od/boost-pedals before the preamp, How you see it?

I got experience with only few pedals on RA (Fulltone OCD & Xotic RC booster). I prefer the settings where gain is about at the noon on the gain-channel and using boost when hard-rock or metal is needed because i love also the lower gain sounds from RA.

OCD makes sound little fuzzy, not so clear but RC keeps it original sounding and its more like volume-boost and its good but maybe thinking something else with more gain?

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I like the RA-100 with the Fulltone. I have the version 4 OCD and find that I can get a very nice 'pushed' Rectifier sound (low midrange gain tones) from my Royal Atlantic. I do this by pushing the clean channel on the RA with the OCD. I think the key to getting clarity with the OCD is to use an 18 watt adapter with it. Aside from that, I have the gain between 10:00 and noon, keep the tone knob just before noon, LP mode, and set the volume to match the cleans. Sounds really, really good IMO. Gives me a nice bluesy sound and lower midrange tones to my rig. I just figured all of this out yesterday, so I'll let you know if my opinion changes. It sounded good in practice though.

Bump

I've been using an MXR Classic OD I got at GC for $30. Internally, the pedal is a Zakk Wylde Overdrive and a GT-OD depending how you have the internal jumper set. Very similar tones, except that with the ZW you get slightly less mid hum than with the GT. I run the HI channel at about 2 o'clock, and don't typically boost it. If I do, it's a mostly clean boost. However, running a little more gain from the pedal, and punching the LO channel is more fun, when I need a little different flavor. Most of the time, I don't boost this amp. Conversely, when I was playing my Roadster, the Classic OD worked magic on bringing out that aggressive modern sound to the scooped Recto tone.

Im having the same issue, i tried a ts9, mi audio tube zone and tech 21 liverpool. Every time i use those pedals the amp fuzzes really bad, also tried a klon centaur, cae line driver and mxr 10 band eq as od's and i have no issue with those.
It seems like the amp doesnt take well non transparent overdrives, i wantto buy a xotic bb preamp, hermida zendrive and wampler euphoria but now im scared about this issue with the royal atlantic, i dont want to waste money in pedals that mi amp wont take well. Any recomendation?

Sorry about my terrible english and thank you for your help.

I have the RA100 head and use the Maxon 808D as a clean boost. It works wonders for the hi gain channel for rhythm palm muting metal. Love this amp.

I use the Xotic EP booster for leads and also the RC booster(for when I split the coils on my Anderson Cobra humbuckers). The RC brings back the output of the split humbuckers, and still gives the single coil tone. 8)

Simbio said:

Im having the same issue, i tried a ts9, mi audio tube zone and tech 21 liverpool. Every time i use those pedals the amp fuzzes really bad, also tried a klon centaur, cae line driver and mxr 10 band eq as od's and i have no issue with those.
It seems like the amp doesnt take well non transparent overdrives, i wantto buy a xotic bb preamp, hermida zendrive and wampler euphoria but now im scared about this issue with the royal atlantic, i dont want to waste money in pedals that mi amp wont take well. Any recomendation?

Sorry about my terrible english and thank you for your help.

Click to expand...

I have found that with the Royal Atlantic and the Electra Dyne that the amps don't sound great if you set the pedal gain up high. Try setting the pedal LEVEL up high and keep the gain low. The BB Preamp set like that turns these amps into flamethrowers. Take the OCD, if you use that on the dirty channels and you set the gain up high and keep the level low it sounds like a big pile of mush. However, setting the OCD with level low and gain high works well on the clean channel only.

I tried several OD and Dist pedals with the RA 100 last night - Surprisingly the Boss Blues Driver works the best - Worked well on all three channels with the gain at all levels - I could even hit the gain at full and it did not sound dark with my hum buckers but gets mushy/dark with single coils past half gain on the blue and red channels. Tried OCD and Robin Trower and those do not sound good with this amp on any channel which was a surprise because they make most amps sound fantastic. The Nu-Valve by Hermida is great but only with the Green Channel. Lovepedal Eternity does not sound good nor does the Dumkudo. Ethos Overdirve sounds OK but only on Green Channel. None of the BB, RC or AC pedals sounded good to me but the EP booster sounds good with this amp but seems to add gain rather than the clean boost. One other pedal that really actually surprised me was the Angry Charlie which sounded good on all three channels but using this pedal would be overkill but it has encouraged me to try another one of their pedals to see how it works with the RA 100. Gonna do some fuzz and effects loop tests next. I have noticed that analog delays don't sound as well as digital delay in the loop - Guessing thats because the loop was designed for line level.