Distortion pedal
A pedal that clips the signal deliberately, adding harmonics and compression to turn a clean amplifier sound into an overdriven one.
Designs differ in where the clipping happens and how hard it is: op-amp circuits with diode clipping in the feedback loop give a smooth, sustaining voice, while transistor stages pushed into hard clipping give a harsher, more aggressive one. Controls typically cover gain, level and a tone or filter, and the difference between a distortion and an overdrive is mostly a matter of degree and how much of the pedal's own character replaces the amp's. Many are used in front of a clean amp, some as a preamp into a power amp.
Example: a distortion pedal with the gain low and the level high behaves like a clean boost, pushing an already-breaking amp rather than supplying the sound itself.
See also
Related
- PageDistortion
- PageOverdrive
- PageAuto-wah
- PageBoost
- PageBuffer vs true bypass
- PageAaron Dessner
- PageAce Frehley
- PageAd-Rock