volume boost

[frosty55]

Are there any pedals on the market that give the guitar a volume boost?
I tend to favour a Metallica type sound with my single channel 50 watt head.
Rather than buy a second amp and use a switchblade, I want to keep using my old faithful.
I recently bought an MXR MC402 in the hope it might do the trick...it doesnt work. Unless you have a clean-ish sound to boost. I dont want a clean-ish sound.
Would a good volume pedal do the trick? I have heard that the active ones are best, as the dont lose the top end as you back off the volume.
Any ideas chaps?
Thanks.

[Jag]

If you're putting the pedal in front of the amp, and already have a lot of gain, you won't really notice much difference in the level. Using a volume pedal may work for you but, as you back off the pedal, the sound will begin to clean up.

If there is an effects loop in your amp, you might have more luck putting the volume pedal or boost there. The pedals may not work very well in the loop depending on it's design, however.

With a single channel amp, your options will be limited. In this situation I usually run an "almost clean" signal on the amp and do the rest with pedals. A simple chain would be, Guitar>Distortion Pedal>Clean Boost>Amp. Set the distortion pedal up for lots of gain, but don't push the level too hard, and set the boost for the level you want. If you find the boost only distorts the signal further, without any real boost, set the amp for a cleaner bypassed tone.

[Mark Hammer]

This question crops up regularly. The thing to keep in mind is that a volume hike on the input signal is not entirely identical to simply turning up the volume or master knob on the amp.

First, the impact of goosing the level of the input signal will depend on how much clean headroom is left in the amp at its current setting. If preamp gain is set to max, as was pointed out, more input signal will not change loudness. It will simply result in a more distorted output.

Second, the qualitative aspects of the tone produced when the input signal is goosed will depend on the tone of the input signal. In many instances, players who keep their levels close to breakup and use a boost to gear-shift into breakup will want to tame the highs down a bit so as to elicit smoother breakup from the amp. This is why pedals like the Klon Centaur and the recently released Visual Sound Truetone include tone controls geared to taming the highs of the boosted signal.