Real Pedals + Fake Amps = KILLER Tones! (In the Studio With Teisco)

Analog vs digital. Why not use both! In this video, we look at capturing the real-world analog goodness of your favourite guitar pedals. While using all the benefits of a fantastic amp simulator. Specifically, we check out the excellent Overdrive and Delay offerings from Teisco. (With a little help from the team over at Neural DSP!) So are pedals with plugins the way forward? Let's check it out!

Products Featured

Teisco Overdrive Pedal: https://amzn.to/3Oumkzi
Teisco Delay Pedal: https://amzn.to/3OteuWA
Neural DSP Imperial MkII: https://bit.ly/3jZHtTM

​Video Transcript

Howdy friend! You're here in the studio with Luke from GuitarIQ.com. In today's video, I've got something pretty interesting planned. The team over at Teisco recently sent me a number of pedals to check out. And in chatting to them, and in getting a bit of a feel for the brand, I came away with the distinct impression that they were more than on board with me taking this video in whatever creative direction I wanted to explore—I guess as opposed to doing a more standard pedal demo. So, challenge accepted! Today we're talking about something I find really interesting and I think something that will be relevant to you if you've ever tried to record your own guitars at home. We’re going to be talking about using guitar pedals with guitar plugins.

Now, I’m not sure if you've ever been on the internet before… But it turns out, some people have pretty strong opinions when it comes to analog versus digital. Or, real world tube amps versus amp simulators. But the main takeaway I hope you leave this video with (well, there’s two of them actually). The first is, whatever you use, whatever you prefer it's all good. If it helps you make music then it's the right tool for the job. But, secondly, there’s tremendous value to be gleaned, there’s a lot of creative juju to be found, in bringing both of these worlds together. So we're going to look at capturing the analog vibe, tone, sound, and goodness of your favorite guitar pedals. Whilst using all of the benefits that an amp simulator has to offer. In terms of being able to record silently, being able to save and recall your own presets, and also being able to tweak your amp settings after the fact—after you've recorded your guitar tracks.

So we're going to zero in on two fantastic pedals by Teisco, the Overdrive and the Delay. These two pedals, as you will see, really lend themselves to this approach that we're going to cover today. We’re also going to switch in and out a few other bits and pieces as we go for a bit of fun. So if all that sounds interesting, then please click on the like button to let me know and to help tickle the cheeky YouTube algorithm. As we go through the video as well, feel free to leave any questions, thoughts, comments, or feedback you might have in the comments section below. And finally, I warmly invite you to head over to GuitarIQ.com, at your leisure, to check out some of the great books and other learning resources we have waiting for you over there. That’s it from this intro, let's head over to the workbench and check it out!

Okay, so here you're looking at a close-up of my studio pedalboard. Fortunately, the design team over at Teisco have made it very easy to spot which pedals are theirs. Over here we have this beautiful yellow Overdrive. And down here we have the unmistakable aesthetics of their beautiful Delay pedal. So the signal chain today is, my guitar is going straight into the pedal board, obviously. And from the pedalboard we have two separate outputs running into my DAW. I'll explain why that is in a minute but let's head over to Logic Pro and check out how I've got things set up.

So here we have the two channels I just spoke about. One is muted at the moment. The thing I want to focus on is just what's on our main channel. I've just got one plugin engaged here. This is the brand new Tone King Imperial MkII plugin by the team over at Neural DSP. They recently sent this one to me to check out and feature in a few videos. It’s their brand new release. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Imperial MkII amplifier, it’s a lower gain, lower wattage boutique-style amplifier. And it really does make the perfect companion for what we're going to do today. So as a basic starting point I've dialed in a nice pedal platform-style clean sound, and this is what it sounds like:

(Audio example)

Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is come over and engage the Teisco Overdrive. Now, I’m not using this to get more gain and saturation out of the amp, particularly. I'm more using this as an analog tone shaping tool before I hit the front end of my interface. And this Teisco pedal works particularly well in this setting. One, because it's a really nice low gain quote/unquote “transparent” type overdrive that we all like. And, two, because it gives you independent control over the treble and bass frequencies of your signal. So you can see I've got the bass and the gain slightly below 12 o’clock. But I am pumping those treble frequencies slightly, just to give the amp a bit more bite. And this is what it sounds like:

(Audio example)

So you can see, I’m really using this just to shape the amp. To give things a little bit more bite and grit again. This is with it off:

(Audio example)

And on:

(Audio example)

And I really like this approach to recording with an amp simulator. We’ve probably all had that experience of dialing in an amp simulator tone that we were less than thrilled with. And then having to use a complex, convoluted chain of numerous plugins after the fact to try and get things to sit right in the mix. By contrast here, admittedly we are starting with an absolutely fantastic amp simulator to begin with, but I really like the idea of being able to shape things on the front end just like we would with a normal tube amp—to get them sounding how you like them right from the start.

Now, let’s move to the main thing I really wanted to focus on in this video. And that is this Delay pedal down here. The keen-eyed among you will notice the delay's actually been on the entire time. The reason we haven't been hearing it is because, if we move over again to Logic, we have this second channel muted in the DAW. Now, this leads us to one of the really unique things about this particular delay pedal. You'll see on the side here we have our normal mono delay out, but down here we have something labeled ‘Direct Out.’ If we just have the ‘Mono Out’ connected this will output exactly the same as any standard analog delay. Where the level just controls the mix of the delay sound. If we have this ‘Direct Out’ connected, however, this pedal splits the signal into two. And it sends your unaffected direct signal out of this output. And the isolated delay sound out of this output. So that allows us to feed two separate signals into Logic Pro, which is really handy as we'll see in a minute. So let's unmute this and hear what the delay sounds like. Now, there's lots of demos already showcasing how insane this delay can sound in terms of the feedback and the modulation settings. One of my favorite things about this pedal is its ability to really nail that long slapback/short delay type sound. So that's how I've dialed it in. I've just got a little bit of modulation happening to give us a little bit of movement. And this is what it sounds like:

(Audio example)

So, right away you can hear that it's adding a really nice depth to the sound. Now, one of the benefits of this approach is that, because we're capturing the sound of the delay completely independent from our main guitar signal, it allows us to record the real vibe and analog goodness of this delay pedal without printing it to our main track. So we're able to adjust the level of that delay after the fact when it comes to mix our project. But that's only really the tip of the iceberg in terms of how creative we can get with this approach! For example, one of the great things people love about analog delay pedals is the fact that they really get out of the way of your main signal. The analog delay is a very low-fi, ‘analog-y’ type sound. It shaves off some of the bottom end, it rolls off a bunch of the top end, and it really gives you a very distinct tonal profile compared to your main signal. Another way of getting the delay out of the way of your main signal, is by literally moving the delay to a separate space in the mix from your main signal. So if we head over to these faders down here, let’s pan the delay all the way right. And let's pan the dry signal all the way left. And let's see what that sounds like:

(Audio example)

So if you're listening on a laptop or your phone, you might not have been able to hear much difference there. But if you're listening on a pair of headphones or a set of speakers, you’ll hear that this has created a very drastically different sound. Now, this is an age-old mixing trick people use in the studio when you're presented with a single mono guitar track and you're wanting to add a little bit more space, and width, and interest to the sound. But why stop there! Now that we've completely isolated our main signal from our delay signal, we can begin to process both sides completely independently. So, for example, if I come over to the presets in the MkII plugin, I've created this nice little drive preset down here. So I'm sending my dry sound to a more overdriven amp and my delayed sound to the cleaner amp we had before.

Now with my delay sound there's all sorts of things I could do here. I could run that into a phaser, or a flanger, or a fuzz pedal for something really interesting. I could crank up the reverb on the amplifier to use with the delay—to get a more kind of ambient wet sound. But for this example, I'm actually going to engage a secondary delay sound. Now, this is a really interesting way of emulating that old school tape-delay effect you get when you have multiple tape heads hitting at a different time. So this is the sound of both delays:

(Audio example)

Going back to one delay:

(Audio example)

Both:

(Audio example)

And this is what it sounds like all together:

(Audio example)

Now, say for example, I wanted those delays to sound a little more beefy and prominent why not run them through an EQ pedal, for example—beef up that mid-range a bit. And this is what we get:

(Audio example)

Okay, so hopefully you're getting a bit of a vibe for how creative we can get with this approach. When we start combining real-world analog effects with the endless possibilities offered to us by software, we can come up with some really creative and interesting stuff. Now, speaking of creative and interesting stuff, before we go there's just one more thing I wanted to show you. And it's a unique trick that the Teisco delay enables us to do. So to do this, let's set this plugin back to our clean default setting. We’re going to come over here and bring the level up to unity with our dry signal. And we're just going to bring up the wet amp for a minute. Now, the settings we have on the wet side are identical to the settings we have on the dry side. I've just changed the color of the amplifier just to differentiate things a little bit. Moving over to our pedalboard, I’m going to leave the overdrive engaged. I'm going to switch off the EQ and delay. And on the Teisco Delay pedal, I'm actually going to bring the time all the way down to minimum. Now with the delay time at zero on the pedal, and both sliders at unity gain in Logic, we get this really interesting doubling type of effect:

(Audio example)

Because that delay time is so incredibly short now, let’s bring up the depth on that modulation. Now we have this really interesting kind of doubling/analog stereo chorus effect out of a delay pedal:

(Audio example)

So a really interesting sound, which is probably something you can't get out of many analog delay pedals. But while we're at it, let’s get a little more extreme. We have the wet amp here. Let’s come over to this tremolo section and let's dial this almost, you know, 75% of the way. And then on what was the dry amp, let's head over to the pedalboard and let's engage this TC June 60 pedal. So now we have this nice modulated sound on the left, mixed with this vibey amp tremolo on the right. And this what it sounds like:

(Audio example)

So to me that sounds glorious! That might not be the exact kind of modulated craziness you go for in your own playing with whatever style and genre you use. But I hope that what you're taking away from this is really the spirit of the video. Which is, there's no way I'd be coming up with these interesting and crazy effect combinations if i didn't have my pedalboard right in front of me. Where I'm able to get hands on with the pedals, and switch things in and out, and change knobs and settings, and just see what happens. So I think we'll leave it there. That's it for this rather non-conventional pedal demo of me mucking around and having fun in the studio with some great pedals by Teisco.

​Well, that’s it for this video. I really hope that you found it helpful. A big thanks again to Teisco for sending out these pedals to check out. And also to Neural DSP for helping to make this video happen. I'll link to all of those products in the description, if you'd like to check them out. To clarify, these products were sent to me to feature in some video content. But this wasn't a paid promotion or a sponsored advertisement. No money changed hands. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. If you did like this video and you want more content like this, then I encourage you to subscribe to the channel and click that bell icon to be notified of future uploads. And finally, just another reminder to head over to GuitarIQ.com when you get a chance, to check out some of the great learning resources over there. We cover everything from fretboard memorization, to chord theory, to scales, and warm-ups and workouts, and a whole lot more! So check it out, GuitarIQ.com. That’s it from me. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video!