Can anyone suggest a distortion stompbox?

[Bitflipper]

Looking to add outboard distortion to my Kronos, mainly for organ and EP patches.

Being designed for guitars, most such units sound out of place with keyboards. I've got plenty of options in my DAW, but this would be for live performance (no laptop onstage atm)

Should I be looking at amp sims rather than distortion stompboxes?

[GregC]

I suppose pre-programmed distortion devices might be a good short cut.

Managing distortion FX on Kronos is tricky, IMO. I am just now starting to figure out how to back it off and edit it to include amp modeling, chorus, limiter, etc etc.

IMO, its not just Distortion FX by itself. It gets interesting when you dial it back and work in other FX.

Then again, it sounds like you are gigging. Cover songs ?

[jerrythek]

It depends on just how much "hair" you want to put on the sound. A lot of people like the Lounsberry pedals for adding some tasteful grit to keyboard sounds:

https://www.lounsberrypedals.com/keyboardplayer

Jerry

[Bitflipper]

Thanks, Jerry. I'd forgotten all about those Lounsberry pedals. Might be just the ticket. Watched a video that had the Lounsberry Tall & Fat going into a Ventilator, which sounded nice. I like the Vent's rotary effect but always wished it could get a bit more gritty.

Yeh, Greg, I'm looking specifically for live performance applications. It's not that the built-in Kronos distortion options are bad, they're actually pretty decent for many things.

But programming them is a PIA because you don't know how they're going to work in context until you're live, and the middle of a song isn't the time to start fiddling with parameters. Dedicated boxes with real knobs better lend themselves better to real-time tweaks.

[GregC]

I hear you. Distortion is tricky to control as it is.

Then in a live performance , with a variety of room acoustic plus mixing it up with other band members makes it more tricky

[aron]

They look like mono pedals. You would need two for stereo. Anyway, all you have to do modify the input and output capacitors at most on any simple op amp based pedal. The Ge diodes are easy to put in as well - but the Si diodes are probably fine in something like a tube screamer etc....

One of the most simplest pedals is something like a distortion+. A couple of mods away from a "keyboard" overdrive.

Or just use the built in overdrive of the Kronos. The key to good "overdrive" is EQ before and after overdrive effect. You will want to do a high pass roll off after the overdrive to mellow out the harsh highs. If you have an analog overdrive like a fuzz, you will want to do a low pass rolloff to control the buzziness of the transistor distortion.

[Bitflipper]

You're right, they are mono pedals.

Not a problem for me, as I go mono out of the Kronos anyway and let the Ventilator make it stereo. After all, a real B3 is a mono instrument; it's the Leslie that makes it stereo.