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I did it for a while. I think back then I had a Blues Driver and a Rat, set them for gentle OD/Boost (BD2), mild overdrive/ distortion (RAT) and both on together for set the controls for the sun. I never had much luck with stacking two pedals for a soft/ touch sensitive overdrive, which is really what I like. These days I use an amp for that touch sensitive basic OD and a Hotcake on top for distortion.

Yeah, I stacked different ODs for years!
Still doing something similarish now, but using a flat EQ volume boost into a Hotcake for my slightly gainer sound, so there are three stages to the gain structure (three seems to be what works best for me), amp just compressing, Hotcake at low/mid gain, and adding the boost before it pushes it into more overdrive. So essentially it's like I have two Hotcakes set differently... I find I have to be slightly careful because pushing the boost into the HC too much causes the sound to start compressing too much for my liking. But there is magic just before that!
Bar what I've got going now, my favourite stacking arrangement was a JHS mini foot fuzz, Hotcake, and Cusack Screamer into a slightly breaking up Tophat. Sounded absolutely mega, and within those three, and playing with the guitar volume there were an abundance of great toans.
It can be a deep hole though because you have to find things that work well together. But when has that stopped any of us...

kdawg2a wrote:My band is looking at covering Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine and I need to get the guitar sound huger than normal. Will this stacking thing work?

For that, you might need a bigger board...

I had a TS-9 into a Timmy for a while there. As polar opposites, they seemed like a perfect mix when together. I imagine a TS style pedal into another similar pedal with a mid hump wouldn't sound so nice, but pedals with flatter EQs usually play nicely with others.

I quite often have a slightly gritty sound (soul food at the moment) and I had a tubescreamer in front of that for a long time. Not all pedals enjoy stacking though. I have the BEOD from friedman, and it's more of a loner I think.

Darth Sabbathi wrote:

kdawg2a wrote:My band is looking at covering Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine and I need to get the guitar sound huger than normal. Will this stacking thing work?

For that, you might need a bigger board...

Not to mention their amp stacks...

My pedal board is basically set up for gain stages. My amp is fairly clean, but low wattage so can reasonably easily get pushed to break up a bit. First pedal is a compressor set with high levels and low sustain, more as a boost and 'thickener', and it keeps my cleans strong and loud. Then I have a low gain drive, then another low gain drive with a second channel for just slightly higher gain, then a clean boost for solos. On their own none of these pedals are particularly high gain, but chuck it all on at the same time and it's pretty raucous. This is basically how an amp works isn't it? Different gain stages? Either way I've been using pretty much this set up for about a decade and still happy with it.

Mmmm MBV are all about a deafening wall of sound, hope they come to NZ, might just be the only band louder than Mogwai that I've seen!

jeremyb wrote:Mmmm MBV are all about a deafening wall of sound, hope they come to NZ, might just be the only band louder than Mogwai that I've seen!

I saw them last time they toured Oz, they switch between the amps for different tones so it wasn't crazy loud during most of the set. They had everything on during the holocaust section of You Made Me Realise and that was loud for sure.

Swans played before them and was actually louder on average. People at front rows kept walking out so I got to the 2nd row by the time they finish.

Sunn O))) is still the loudest band I've seen though, especially now they use a dozen SVT's for oversea tours.

My amp is covering the overdriven tones i am after right now. But stacking pedals is just gain staging like I do with the amp anyway.

Currently i am using built in boost to slightly overdrive the front end of the amp, then a little dirt from overdriving the preamp and then a bit more by pushing the power stage to clipping. I find it has more clarity and dynamics getting kind of an accumulation of slight overdrive from each stage of amplification than trying to get it all by gaining the crap out of a single stage. Depends on the sound I am after though. If I had an amp i do not like the overdrive of like a HRD, i would use pedals to do the same thing. i tend to think of an overdrive pedal as an extension of the amp's preamp.

Darth Sabbathi wrote:

kdawg2a wrote:My band is looking at covering Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine and I need to get the guitar sound huger than normal. Will this stacking thing work?

For that, you might need a bigger board...

With all that Boss stuff on it you might as well just get a Katana, eh?

Easy shoegaze:
Big clean amp with reverb (twin ideal)
Chorus/flanger
Delay
More reverb
Guitar with wobble stick

Single coil wrote:Easy shoegaze:
Big clean amp with reverb (twin ideal)
Chorus/flanger
Delay
More reverb
Guitar with wobble stick

You're missing a rat going into a big muff!

with the joys of helix

my goto pedal layout has wah, envelope filter, EP Compressor, Klon Centaur, tube screamer, optical trem>
(Litigator or Freidman, or Mesa Lone Star or, Mesa Mark IV)
Tube compressor, phasor, chorus, watkins tape echo, Vintage Digital delay, reverb

stacking the klon and the TS is great...the Klon into a pushed amp is awesome....and of course TS into pushed amp sings...
Cool thing is each amp reacts differently.

I have each amp with clean and driven snapshots...and this changes the way the drives react too.

WellyBlues wrote:

Darth Sabbathi wrote:

kdawg2a wrote:My band is looking at covering Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine and I need to get the guitar sound huger than normal. Will this stacking thing work?

For that, you might need a bigger board...

With all that Boss stuff on it you might as well just get a Katana, eh?

The bigger board is fine, but the midget peering over the edge seems a little OTT.