Signal Clipping pt2: Distortion

So a little bit of overdrive just isn’t doing it for you, eh? You want more, you want to chug your way to heaven and have your solos leap out from the fretboard like your fingers were bringing the wrath of the lord.

Welcome to the world of distortion. Brother-sister to Overdrive and Fuzz, I like to think of Distortion as the more refined and less messy version of fuzz, keeping more note definition but still raging.

As mentioned before, there’s often overlap between the 3 types of clipping. For instance, the Boss DS-1 Distortion is, as the name implies, marketed as a distortion but did you know it shares some similarities with the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff? The Big Muff is definitely a fuzz.

Like with Overdrive, you should expect anywhere up from the Two-Knob volume and gain controls. Increasingly common for distortion pedals is the addition of a noise gate (which cuts the signal between played notes to prevent feedback and keep your playing tight) or a semi-parametric EQ (allowing you to fine tune the frequency of your midrange).

You may find quite a few more distortions than overdrives take advantage of more comprehensive EQ controls, eschewing the tradition “tone” knob with a separate Bass/Mid/Treble knobs as well as other features.

Look at the Wampler Triple Wreck, which takes inspiration from the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier amps. Its got Volume, Gain AND a 3-Band EQ section as well as a Clipping switch for Hard or Brutal clipping as well as a separate boost circuit. That’s a lot of options to get you where you need to be.

We cant really talk about distortion without mentioning the ProCo Rat. Following the classic 3 knob layout, with the Tone control being marked “filter” and working backwards to a regular tone control: cutting treble as you turn it up, this has been the go-to distortion for many many players since its release in 1978 and its actually pretty versatile, with many players loving both the low gain and high gain sounds. When Line 6 model this pedal on their POD/Gearbox/M-series pedals, its simply called the Classic Distortion.

On one side of things, Boss offer the aforementioned Distortion DS-1 and on the other they offer the Metal Zone MT-2 and the Metal Core ML-2. The Metal Zone and recently released Waza Craft MT-2w will give you the most tweakability and as you can probably guess, are marketed to a certain type of genre.

You’re probably starting to see how broad a field distortion is. From classic rock stalwarts like MXR Distortion +, Proco Rat, the grungy Boss DS-1 to the heavy Wampler Triple Wreck, there may be a distortion for you out there.