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Hey guys, I want to know why it's good to have a booster on the board say a spark mini? Is it still good if you have 1 overdrive and 1 distortion where you can just set the level during live before switching etc. or is there much of a tone difference with a booster? but is it important?

OH I gotta add a situation too.

Just a guitar instrumental and without vocals. Personally i don't think it's needed haha.

I find my MXR line driver comes in handy all the time.

At the moment, I'm running it after a fuzz so I can set the fuzz to its sweet spot and then bump the volume afterwards.

I'm gassing for an Xotic RC Booster to run before my FET overdrive to use as a kind of treble boost (actually a bass cut).

is there much of a tone difference with a booster

altering your tone with a clean boost seems to be an oxymoron to me.
that said:
some pedals will throw a wobbly if you send them a boosted signal.
some thicken up / compress.
some seem to just ignore it and do their own thing.

but is it important

not really. depends what you're trying to do.

I use one a lot just as volume jump for a lead line, maybe 3-6db. If I just play the same thing while on my rhythm sound (usual a mid gain OD) it doesn't pop out as much.
It also depends on how you play, if your rhythm playing is low on the neck with first shapes and then everything else you want to stand out is higher up the neck then a booster is probably not really needed.....unless you want to make sure you stand out above everyone else in he band with your blistering solo! Then by all means get a 20db boost and wail away!

Reg18 wrote:I use one a lot just as volume jump for a lead line, maybe 3-6db. If I just play the same thing while on my rhythm sound (usual a mid gain OD) it doesn't pop out as much.

I probably have a couple of pedals on my board that qualify as boosters. One is used the same way as Reg, the other I tend to use to just give a touch of compression to the clean channel which is more noticeable if I attack harder. Also seems to give the channel a little more 'girth' if you like ~ that pedal is always on.

I just pick harder

For the occasional time that I need one on my Excelsior, I found that by turning the distortion control on my Dano Fab Distortion pedal down to zero, that it would act as a clean boost. Alternatively, If the amp volume was set just below breakup I could also then use it to push the amp into natural overdrive. A further bonus on the Excelsior is that this pedal has a tone control which saves having to do the tone switch mod on this amp. The best thing about it is that it's about the cheapest pedal on the market!
Picking harder is also good depending on what you are playing.

Interesting discussion - I used have a boost (MXR micro-amp) that was handy,

But it really depends on the need you have - boosting into a dirty chain will increase drive not just volume. I quite like the idea of a boost at the end of a chain just for volume jumps, but that doesn't work if you have a dirty amp. Sometimes you have to accept a dirtier tone when boosted.

One idea would be to have a foot-switchable attenuator doing the reverse - so once you have your desired tone - you could set an attenuation level to drop to the non-solo volume, and drop it out for solos. Somebody will surely point out that such a thing already exists...

JHorner wrote: altering your tone with a clean boost seems to be an oxymoron to me.

I think this is the kicker - there is a large divide between boost and clean boost

Clean boost the goal is just your signal but louder, no tone shaping, no extra harmonics.
Boosts for the most part are desired for the tone-shaping and extra harmonics they bring.

However, I think the murky thing is that because your ear perceives sounds differently at different volumes, a clean boost might actually shape your tone a little to fit what your ear would expect as a clean frequency curve.

For instance, the MXR Microamp is not always considered a clean boost but look at this graph:

it's flat as a pancake (with the lowest super sub-frequencies rolled off for more power handling).

I use a bacon bits 'clean' boost set to slightly fatten& boost when I've coil-tapped etc with my humbuckers. Very useful to keep a consistency between my pickup selections

When I had a two guitar band, I put a clean boost in the FX loop. Gave me more volume for solos without affecting gain levels (although the tubes at the power stage would work harder and change the tone slightly anyway)