Why Do I Need a Signal Boost Pedal?

      The Signal boost pedal isn’t one of the more exciting pedals at first look.  I doesn’t have the excitement of swirling modulation of bone crushing distortion but it can be a very important part of your sound.  Here are a couple of great uses for the clean boost.

Driving your signal

 A great way to use a boost is to hit the front end of your amp harder.  This can drive your amp into a slightly “hairy” breakup that really can make your guitar stand out.  If you are using long cables or using a lot of pedals you can lose high end and by putting a clean boost pedal first in line will get your signal back where it needs to be.  Having a tone control on the boost pedal can also help you preserve the high end you may lose by using a lot of pedals.

 Boosting for solos

Another use for a clean boost is to just get louder.  Sometimes we just need a little extra to get your solos out there.  When using the boost for this purpose you would want to put it after your overdrive and distortion pedals this will turn up the volume without adding gain to your distortion.  If you put them before the distortion pedals you will just be adding gain to the distortion or overdrive and that will just make the signal dirtier as opposed to adding volume.  You can also achieve this by putting the signal booster in your effects loop if you amp has one.   A pedal with a tone control can be very important as well, you can adjust the tone to make your lead sounds stand out from your rhythm tones.