A lot of people can get confused when talking about distortion pedals. Hopefully this will help clear up the confusion and send you happily on your way to the land of fuzz...



Roger Lavallee
Patchbay
roger@curtainsociety.com

A lot of manufacturers blur the lines between the definititions, so take this with a grain of salt....



An overdrive in the most basic fashion is nothing more than a straight booster/preamp that you might use to goose the input of a tube amp to drive it harder. These don't necessarily add distortion of their own, but their gain is enough to drive the input of an amp into distortion. These are least likely to "color" your tone. Examples of these pedals are things like the Electro-Harmonix LPB-1, the Z-Vex Super Hard-On, the Fulltone Fat Boost, the MXR Micro-Amp, etc.



Next up is what most of us might consider the "classic" overdrive pedal. These are boosters with some clipping circuitry, but for the most part they are only meant for "mild" distortion. Most of us would be familiar with the Ibanez Tube Screamer and the 1200 variants on this circuit (including the Boss SD-1) These often sound bad (to me at least) through a solid state amp, but combining their mild clipping with the boost that they give you, they tend to be just what the doctor ordered when pushing a tube amp's input. Other examples here are the Fulltone Fulldrive, Vox Valvetone, Nobels Overdrive, Many of the yellow Boss pedals including the OD-3.



Next in the line would be higher gain pedals which would be considered more Distortion than overdrive. These are often not capable of the low gain stuff that something like a Tube Screamer would do, but some can get down to that range. The difference is that they have way more clipping capabilities and get a much heavier distortion. Examples of these are the Proco Rat, the Boss DS-1, the MXR Distortion +/DOD Overdrive 250 (see how the lines get blurry? It's really a clipping distortion, but DOD calls it an overdrive. It's the same circuit for the most part, with the MXR Distortion +....so one company's Distortion is another's Overdrive...) , E-H Big Muff, etc. There are pedals with insane amounts of gain, and some EQing capabilities to simulate a decked metal amp, but I'd still consider them Distortion, and these would be pedals like the Boss Heavy Metal and Metal Zone, and the Danelectro Fabtone, etc.


Then there's my favorite category: fuzz. Generally fuzz pedals are not meant to simulate an overdriven or distorted amp. They are spitty, splatty and totally over the top and do not sound "natural." There are a wide variety of pedals in this category from the harsh and bright Maestro Fuzztone (think the Stone's "Satisfaction") to the smooth and fat Fuzz Face (and the many variants, including the Fulltone '69 Pedal) to the "octave fuzz" which adds an upper octave ring to the tone, including the Octavia, Foxx Tone Machine, Univox Superfuzz, Danelectro French Toast, etc. To hear what these sound like, listen to the second half of the solo in "Purple Haze."


If you're looking for a pedal that doesn't "color" the tone much, you owe it to yourself to check out some of the higher-end pedals from companies like Menatone and Crowther. My Menatone Top Boost in a Can sounds better than any other overdrive I've tried through an AC 30. It feels like part of the amp, and not like a pedal.

--Roger Lavallee