Overdrive -- the amp or the pedal?!?

It's a legitimate question. And it seems to have come up in discussion with other colleagues lately. We spend our whole careers as guitarists thinking about this, and hopefully making the right choice. Just like any other time a question is posed about guitar playing, most of the answers you get online (forums/message boards) tend to be about the gear itself, rather than the playing (the important part), so for the sake of this writing, we will assume the readers can all actually play with something resembling proficiency. Here are the questions you must ask yourself:

1. Is this a “professional” endeavor? – It's simple really...are you getting paid to make these guitar sounds? If you are, then the choice is not up to you, it's up to whoever is signing the check, or the musical director, the artist, contractor, etc. If these people are “trusting” your professional expertise and leaving it up to you, then there are further considerations...
2. Are you reproducing a recording? If you are, then one quick google search will tell you the gear used on that recording. That should give you a good place to start
3. Is it YOUR gig? Self explanatory: do whatever you want.
4. Are you part of a creative process, like the writing of original music, or a collaboration? If so, you need to have a few tools handy, a few different pedals, maybe a couple different amp & gtr choices, and combinations of them, and see which one works for the collaborative effort through simple trial-n-error and experimentation.
5. Are you using other analog/digital FX along with the overdrive? Because those effects will behave differently depending on what else you're using.

Modeling:

It's 2013, we have to make a living, and things like direct-to-console digital modeling rigs, no amplifiers (or wedges) on stage, and shields around drummers are a reality. I've learned not to take it personally, it really has nothing to do with the actual musicians. It's another simple case of what's happened in the recent past, like the last 20 years or so. As usual, technological advancements are leaving musicians in the dust, and we need to race to keep up. The rise of digital recording platforms, digital FOH/monitor consoles, concerts/productions being run digitally within software, etc. have all proliferated the need for guitarists to familiarize themselves with digital modeling technology (by companies like Line 6, Vox tonelab, Boss, Zoom, etc...) and to try and squeeze good sound out of it. Most of us at the professional level are not in love with these modeling sounds. Digital reproductions of timeless amp, effects, cabinets, mics, etc are getting closer all the time, but we all agree that they still don't sound entirely like the real thing. However, it's a professional language we must learn in fluency if we are to remain competetive in making our living. In short, they don't sound good. We use them because we have to, and because they're paying us.

So...in the event that we DO NOT have to use a modeler, how do we make the choice between amplifier distortion and pedal distortion?

Unfortunately it's not simple. We have a LOT of choices. There are more high-end, wonderfully handcrafted, and amazing sounding overdrive pedals then there have ever been. This gets back to what I always say about trying to find information online about new products, many times the guys writing the reviews are not the guys who can actually PLAY, so tread carefully. I personally like to consult my fellow pros first.

The same is true for amplifiers...there are more than there have ever been. If we ARE using an amp, more often than not, if it's OUR amp, it's a tube amp. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for companies still manufacturing vacuum tube technologies, guitarists are the only ones keeping them in business anymore. Glass tubes are not the most reliable of technology, but nothing else sounds that good.

You don't always “get what you pay for” with these things either. I know many guys who try and “buy” their way into being talented, and it never works. Spending 3 times what I do on an amp or a pedal does not make you a better player. Spending three times the amount of practice time actually does. And it shouldn't matter WHAT you're making music with, if you call yourself a musician, it should always sound like music, even if the equipment sucks.

MY Choice:

It's my personal belief that Leo Fender, followed immediately by Jim Marshall, followed then by Randall Smith, were all on to something. We all already know this, but what they did for us was gave us amps that sound nicely distorted when they're turned up, and that distortion, or overdrive, comes from a combination of both the (smaller) preamp tubes and the (larger) power amp tubes working together to produce those rich harmonics and overtones that give us our rock distortion sound. So, with that in mind, I like to use an amp first, if it's my choice.

A 2 channel amp with master volume(s), if I can, and if it's all MY gear, I use a THREE channel amp. I need three levels of overdrive to really express myself the way I want to:

1. A very chimey, high-headroom clean sound that doesn't break up too easily … unless I really slam it with my hands or hit it with a pedal
2. A nice early-Marshall low- to mid-gain “grunt” sound for blues and what I call “non-invasive” overdrive playing
3. A high gain, sustaining, singing lead sound

Being a professional guitar player puts me in the position of having to check my artistic preferences at the door, and does not afford me the luxury of playing the music I actually LIKE for a living. My job is to (at least minimally) enjoy every style, and play convincingly in each one. However, by origin, and in my heart and soul, I am a ROCK GUITAR PLAYER. I always will be, and I will never downplay my allegiance to rock music first. So, I tend to gravitate towards those kinds of amp and pedal choices.

Finding an amp that has both a usable clean sound AND a usable rock sound is a tall order, but again, there are many choices of both two- and three-channel amps out there. I am pretty loyal to Mesa Boogie, and I have 4 choices of amps from them, all with at least two channels. My favorite one (from the famed Mark series) has three. I also enjoy some other amps like Fryette, Bogner, Fuchs, etc... when get the chance to play them.

We can't fly our amps anymore, and we probably never will be able to ever again, so on tour, I RARELY get a two-channel amp, and if I do, one of the channels is usually unusable, so a couple of good distortion boxes are necessary. I like to have a tube-screamer type, and a Rat or Boss DS1 type. They don't quite sound like an overdriven amp, but they're good enough.

There is one kind of distortion I never use an amp for, because it's technically impossible to, and that's fuzz. I also keep two fuzz pedals on my #1 board, which is (mostly) analog. A fuzz-face type pedal, and an octavia-type pedal. My idolatry of Hendrix makes me unable to rid my rig of these two sounds. When used musically, they're extremely effective, even for ballads and r&b. I'd also like to thank the Queens of the Stone Age guitar players for being largely responsible for the repopularization of fuzz pedals in recent years. In any event, I have two or three amp channels, and those two pedals on the floor, used only with cleaner amp sounds, and those are all the flavors that I need for any gig I do.

The only two things in my main rig that ARE digital are delay and reverb, and those go in the effects loop of whatever tube amp I have chosen for the job. Hopefully the loop is active (perhaps even buffered with a tube), and has level controls for both send and return.

In a modeling rig you'll have all these choices and a million other ones too, but choose carefully. When we start cranking up the gain and turning on too many FX we run the risk of losing a lot of fundamental musicality. The number one priority for making gear choices for us guitar players is being MUSICAL.

We live in a glorious time for guitar gear, and the amount of choices we have is remarkable. Unfortunately, stores are not much help, especially the big ones. Make sure there's a decent return policy involved, because we are not really gonna know how good anything is until we take it to a musical situation with other musicians. And rest easy that if it's new enough, in good condition, and at least semi-desirable, it's easy to lay off an amp or a pedal on ebay, or to one of our friends who also plays.

I'm going to close this piece with something I just found today in a book, and it is from a very wonderful guitarist named Marc Ducret:

“Very few instruments share the particular characteristic of being, like the electric guitar, divided into totally separate parts: the body of the guitar and the amplifier. From this comes a slight schizophrenia. The body, which we hold against ourselves, which we touch and slap, with which we dance, is connected by a cord (umbilical) to a head [amplifier] which determines the quality of sound produced. This causes a complete disconnection between the work on the instrument and it's real sound--a strange situation for a musician, something a trumpet player could never understand, for example. The task of the guitarist perhaps consists of reuniting these two elements and finally making the 'head' sound like the 'body.'”