[Anorexorcist]

Playing for about a year. I have a squire strat and a small crate amp.

I was using the amp overdrive for distortion, but a friend told me I could get better
sound from a pedal. I bought a Digitech Death Metal distortion pedal. I use it with
the amps clean channel. When I try to use it on the o/d channel, there is a ton of noise.
When using a distortion pedal (or any other effects pedal), am I only supposed to use
the clean channel? Or, Do I get a lot of noise thru o/d because my crappy amp?

I was thinking about getting a new amp. reviews of amps talk alot about the o/d of the amp. If I'm using a pedal, do I care about o/d at all?

Is o/d and distortion the same thing?

What are the pros and cons of having a bunch of individual effects pedals to having a Digitech GNX Workstation?

[fly135]

O/D and distortion, fuzz, crunch are all similar. You want to use the clean channel. O/D effects differ according to how much distortion they introduce. Sometimes you can run one into another and get good results. But in the case of your amp and Death Metal pedal, not. Multi Fx stations give more effects for the dollar. The drawback is how accessible the controls are to get to. You can get lost in the settings. I have a Digitech RP300 and plan to acquire individual pedals as I figure out the sound I like best.

[Cedric01]

Put your pedal through the effects loop. This will bypass the preamp section. Plug your guitar into the distortion pedal and then plug your distortion pedal into the guitar amp FX return jack.

[Rockerbob]

Overdrive into overdrive is usually noisy. Overdrive, and most plain old distortion devices add massive compression as well as distortion. All this compression will amplify the noise that is always there.