Transparent overdrive
An overdrive pedal designed to add gain and a little compression while leaving the guitar's own tone and the amplifier's character almost unchanged.
Most overdrive pedals impose a midrange hump and a degree of tone colouring that players either love or fight against. Transparent designs do the opposite: they keep the low end and the top end intact and add a soft clipping that mostly thickens the signal, so the effect is heard as the amplifier being pushed rather than as a pedal being switched on. They are valued as always-on tone sweeteners and as boosts in front of an already distorted amp.
Example: A pedal that makes a clean amplifier sound louder and slightly more compressed without changing its basic voice is a transparent overdrive.
See also
Related
- PageOverdrive pedal
- PageOverdrive
- PageAmp in a box
- Page18-volt operation
- PageAnalogue delay
- PageAuto-wah
- PageAaron Dessner
- PageAce Frehley