Originally Posted by: MadGuitarest...i need to get my amp a little louder so it stands out more than the bass ...

They are 2 ways to get what you want,
- Mod the pedal
- Get another pedal for clean boost.

Modding pedal:
Switching in a Led or to 2 LEDs in place of the Diode(s) in that pedal's clipping stage will give you what you want. The Led will less compress the sound therefore you'll hear your guitar much louder (try switching in 1 first, and hear if it's good enough to make your bassist compalin of not hearing his own chop!) but here your are likely to alter the amount of drive (just very little). But of course good enough a lead player. But this all works if you know what I'm talking about and it's the simplest and cheapest solution. See my DS-1 Ultimate mod here? The heavy duty boost switch I add just for that purpose, and I even put a trimpot so you can adjust the loudness of your Lead to your liking.



The next option is, get another distortion/overdrive, anything will do actually. Vai uses DS-1 as some kinda clean boost, similar to how SRV uses 2 TSs, 1 to push the other one (but more likely his purpose was to get more gain out of TS rather than more loudness). The settup is like, 1 distortion/overdrive's drive set to '0' (zero) volume to normal or hi (try what's best for you!) and tone to your liking. The second Dist/OD, set them as you always do, but set the Drive a bit lower than u used to.

In my setup I use 2 ODs (Ibanez and Maxon POD1) this is to get a nice gain overdrive, I'd switch on my DS-1 Ultimate Mod that I place in front of those two everytime I need louder Lead.