Boost, Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz: Learn the Difference Once and For All

I remember the first time I tried distortion on my electric guitar… it was magical and I couldn’t get enough of it! I was fascinated by how suddenly my guitar sounded “strong” and “powerful”. Even a simple open chord had a different feeling now, it was massive.

But of course, after trying to use distortion on pretty much all the songs I was learning at that time I realized something was not quite right… The effect still sounded great to me, but I’ve noticed that some songs didn’t require distortion. I mean, the sound of the electric guitar on the song I was learning was “distorted” but it wasn’t as strong and aggressive as what was being produced by my guitar…

It didn’t take me long enough to note that there were levels to this. What I thought was a distorted guitar, was actually an overdriven one. Then I noticed that some players actually used two overdrives together but no distortion pedals. Others had something called a boost pedal at the beginning of their boards to enhance the overall tone and others simply used a boost pedal after their overdrives to put them “in front of the band” for soloing or lead parts.

That led me thinking, what’s the fuzz? Ok, I admit it, that was a bad joke, but I couldn’t resist it :).

Anyway, if you’ve been playing electric for a while I’m sure you can pretty much tell the difference between these pedals, but if you’re new (or curious) you may find the following statement useful for your guitar journey: Boost, Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz are what’s called “Gain Pedals”. Their general purpose is to give more power to your guitar signal so you can get the loved and cherished distorted guitar sound.

With that simple concept in mind, let’s get started.

The Big Picture: How Distortion is Made

I think the best way to understand the difference between these gain pedals is to actually have a proper idea on how distortion is made and what that means. By definition, something is distorted when its original materials or components are somehow altered. In essence, it has been modified.

That’s exactly what’s happening to your guitar signal. You are distorting it by applying more strength to the signal and the shape of it suffers some alterations that produce the distorted sound. So, an overdrive pedal, a distortion pedal, and a fuzz pedal, they all will alter your guitar signal an thus produce “distortion”, but the difference lies in the strength being applied to the signal and the resulting output.

Notice that I didn’t mention the boost pedal. By definition, the function of a boost pedal is not to alter your guitar signal, it just should enhance it or give it more volume, but it does not distort it.

Of course, a picture would clarify better all the concepts explained. Imagine the image below represents a normal guitar signal in the form of a sine wave:

You’ll notice that his wave is contained within an upper limit and a lower limit. These are called thresholds. These thresholds are fixed, like the ceiling and the floor of a room; you cannot change them. So, what happens when you apply more strength to the signal? How that affects the sine wave?

Well, since you cannot change the limits within the signal is contained, your signal has to adapt to the constraints. To do that, the signal has to suffer some alterations or as we mentioned before, it has to get distorted. That’s how signal distortion is made!

To go a little bit further, these alterations are usually called clipping. This means the signal gets chopped in the tops (the peaks) and in the lows (the throughs). In essence, you can have soft-clipping (normally an overdrive), hard-clipping (normally distortion) and… you’ve guessed it, an aggressive-clipping (normally fuzz).

Grady Martin and the Sound We all Love

Before going on into the main differences between gain pedals, a trip down memory lane would be very educative in terms of understanding how distortion was discovered.

The 40’s

It all started during the 40’s where people playing guitar will crank up their amp volume to the max in order to get a compressed and distorted sound. This was caused by the excess of electricity being handled by the vacuum tubes.

The early heroes of distorted sound (more overdrive type of sounds actually) in the mid 40’s where Lester Robert “Junior” Barnard from Bob Bills Boogie and his Texan Playboys, and Goree Carter (who is credited by some as the first to ever record a rock and roll song).

Barnard achieved his overdriven tones with an Epiphone Emperor and a couple of amps. The guitar was equipped with one steel guitar pickup and he used a volume pedal for pushing his signal.

The 50’s

During the 50’s the overdrive/distortion tones where made possible by a series of happy accidents… with some help from the guitar players.

During 1951 on their way to the studio for a recording session, Ike Turner and His Kings of Rythm accidentally dropped their Fender Tweed amp, causing a malfunction on one of the tubes. Willie Kizert, the guitarist, didn’t have a replacement one, so he was forced with the aforementioned piece of gear producing an overdrive/fuzzy type of sound.

I think the rumor of this accidental new type of sound spread over the years and in 1956 a guitarist named Paul Burlison (from John Burnette’s band) did pretty much the same… he dropped his amplifier in order to get the same dirty/fuzzy tone and he was not disappointed.

By 1958 an artist named Link Wray did something unimaginable. He also wanted the distorted type of sound and armed with a pencil, he proceeded to punch holes in his amplifier. The outcome? An overdriven and distorted guitar tone that was featured on his song “Rumble” (which some claim to be the first rock and roll song to feature intentional distortion).

The 60’s

This is THE decade for the distorted guitar tone. The sounds of Jimmy Hendrix, The Stones, and many others were forged during the accidents and inventions of these years. It also paved the way for gain pedals as we know them and all started with a faulty studio pre-amplifier.

In 1961 Grady Martin was playing the bass for the song “Don’t Worry” by Marty Robbins. At the time of recording the solo, something went wrong; whether it was a problem with the pre-amp or bad connection to the mixing desk, it doesn’t matter now, the resulting sound was a weird distortion, more powerful and gritty, it was fuzz!

The band listened to the outcome and after debating for a while, it was decided that no changes were necessary and the song became a super hit.

The bass solo section of the song now became a sought-after tone and recording engineer Glenn T. Snoddy came up with the idea of a stomp box to recreate it. Gibson’s president Maurice Berlin liked what the pedal could do and they marketed the product as the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone. And the rest is history…

Gain Pedals: Here’s the Difference

After a long (but much needed) introduction, it’s time to dive into the actual differences between gain pedals. Just to remember, our participants are named Boost, Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz. Let’s see what they have to offer.

Boost: Adds Volume to Your Signal

As we mentioned before, boost pedals normally do not tend to distort your guitar signal. This is because they do not have a clipping circuit (the sound wave is not altered, only magnified). As the name suggests their main function is to give your signal more volume so you can get a bigger and louder sound. To emphasize this, lots of guitar manufacturers add the term “clean boost” to the pedals.

However, a boost pedal can push a tube amp into overdrive and can push an already overdriven amp into distortion. As you can now understand, this happens because the signal that is hitting the amp is bigger than the limit of its threshold and it has to adapt.  This is very desirable for some players and they use boost pedals to achieve those gain stages.

Boost pedals are very simple and they usually offer a simple knob to control the overall volume being applied to your signal. They sometimes offer additional tonal capabilities (like controls for bass and treble) but in essence, it’s a simple stompbox and I think that’s fine.

The Firsts Boost Pedals

Perhaps the very first boost signal solution in the form of a pedal was the Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster, and no, it wasn’t made in America :).This product was first manufactured in the 60’s by Dallas Musical, a company based in London, England.

As the name suggests, this boost pedal was designed to specifically aim the mids and highs of your amp. This obeys to the fact that British amplifiers (like old VOX’s AC30 and Marshall’s JTM45) produced a darker grittier sound when overdriven and even though players liked that, they quickly realized they also needed more clarity.

 

It is also said that the vintage components of the pedal added some interesting tonal colors to the guitar sound in a similar way to what modern overdrives do. Because this was during the 60’s I think this pedal was really avant-garde.

The Brits may have had the headstart, but it was America’s Electro Harmonix that came up with the first clean booster pedal of the market. It was the LPB-1 Booster and it was introduced in 1968.

In contrast to what the Rangemaster offered, the LPBI didn’t aim to a specific tonal problem. Its goal was simple: to take your guitar signal and just make it louder. The success of this unit led other manufacturers to design similar products and some say this is what somehow paved the way for the pedal industry in the years to come.

Overdrive: Adds Volume and Gain

An Overdrive pedal will add volume to your signal but it will also distort it. Because of this, people often tend to confuse a distortion pedal with an overdrive pedal. The main difference is that while overdrive will distort your signal, it will do it on a “soft” way, maintaining much of the original tonal character of your sound.

The main function of overdrives pedals is to add that “soft clipping” in order to give the distorted sound. The goal is to get a similar sound of an overdriven tube amp; to get that you usually need to crank the amp until it “breaks”, but with an overdrive pedal, you get to that point without going to those lengths. This is because you have a drive knob at your disposal for adding to the necessary amount of gain to the signal in order to achieve that state.

An overdrive pedal will also maintain much of the clarity of the notes being played. You will notice they are distorted but the resulting sound will not be extremely muddy or gritty even if you sometimes play full chords.

Symmetrical Clipping vs. Asymmetrical Clipping

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of these terms browsing for your next overdrive pedal. These concepts are applied to explain the way the overdrive pedal alters the signal.

To understand this more easily, it’s better to recall the picture of the sine wave from the first part of the post. You have a top section of the sinewave and a low section of the sinewave. Symmetrical clipping means that both the tops and lows are being altered or clipped in the same way. This results in a smoother and more sustained overdrive effect.

A classic example of this type of alteration can be found on tube screamer overdrive pedals, like the classic Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-808. Whenever you see a pedal that states is based after a tube screamer chances are you are dealing with symmetrical clipping.

Asymmetrical clipping on the other way, as you can imagine by now, does not apply the same exact clipping on both sides of the wave. They are clipped unevenly. This results on a more aggressive sounding overdrive effect. The Boss SD-1 is a classic example of an asymmetrically clipped overdrive pedal.

Distortion: It Adds Even More Gain

Now we enter into the hi-gain territory. Distortion pedals -like overdrives-, will alter your signal but with more gain, applying to it more clipping, giving you a more powerful and aggressive sound.

Distortion will also have a greater influence on your overall guitar tone. It will make it less clear and muddier; your playing nuances or soft picking will not respond in the same way as an overdrive pedal. This is because of the amount of gain being applied. Remember, the more you clip your signal, the less it resembles the original sine wave.

Usually, players use distortion pedals with cleaner amps. This is kind of logical; the gain applied by the pedal takes all the load of distorting the amp. When you have an already cranked up with some natural distortion on it, it’s better to use an overdrive pedal. But as you can imagine, there are many exceptions to this rule and some players tend to experiment with it to achieve even greater rich-harmonically distortion sounds.

The First Ever Distortion Pedal

Presumably, the first ever distortion pedal was the ProCo Rat. Specifically, we’re talking about the 1978 prototype model, the “Bud Box” Rat. It was pretty much homemade in the company’s basement located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Was never intended to be a mass production product and only twelve of these mice were made.

The following years they came with more versions and I think one of the most famous ones is from the mid 80’s, the Small Box Rat.

It has to be mentioned this pedal won the race just by one year (maybe less) because in 1979 Boss came with the famous DS-1.

This was Boss’s first ever distortion pedal and quickly became a flagship product for the company. This box has been velcroed, kicked, modded, used and abused by guitar players of many generations and is still today the best selling pedal of this manufacturer. By the way, do you have a Boss DS-1? Do you still play with it? I would love to read your comments with your impressions.

Fuzz: It Adds A LOT of Gain

What happens if you add even more gain than distortion to the guitar signal? Well, the sinewave suffers more changes and suddenly it starts to look more like a square wave! Fuzz is the most powerful distortion being applied,  and the whole idea of this type of signal alteration is to imitate or emulate something that is broken or malfunctioning (like a broken amp, remember?).

So, why the sound being produced by a fuzz pedal is so aggressive and different from overdrive and distortion? The main reason is that fuzz uses something called transistors to produce gain (although there are some exceptions); overdrives and distortion pedals use something called op-amp (operational amplifiers). Op-amps produce a more quality signal while transistors produced a more lo-fi, dirtier and broken signal.

There are basically two types of transistors: silicon and germanium. The first one will give you an aggressive and brighter fuzz tone, while the second one is capable of providing a more warmer and smoother sound.

Notable Fuzz Users

Contrary to what people believe, Fuzz was the very first distortion to come in the form of a pedal. As we mentioned before, it was developed during the 60’s and was crucial for the music scene of that era, and needless to say, represented and shaped the sound of rock as we know it. Here are two of the earliest most notable users.

Keith Richards

The Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone was already circulating the rock scene at the beginning of the 60’s but in 1965 something happened. Keith Richards, from The Rolling Stones, used a Maestro FZ-1 to record the classic guitar riff from “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”.

The song was a hit and made this fuzz pedal go viral. Richards later claimed that the riff came to him in a dream; an interesting story to say the least. One more curious fact: the riff was supposed to be played by a horn section… Can you imagine that?

Jimmy Hendrix

Popularity sometimes comes with a price and the Gibson’s Maestro FZ-1 became a very sought after pedal and sometimes a little expensive. I think this also obeyed to the fact that this pedal used germanium transistors and this component started increasing in cost.

Manufactures had to quickly adjust to this and they came up with the idea of using silicon ones instead, and this paved the way to the Arbiter Fuzz Face. His most famous user? Jimmy Hendrix!

This is the pedal that you can hear on the recording of “Purple Haze”. In the following years, he would continue to use this pedal as well as some other newer versions of it.

Do you know any other early or notable Fuzz users? Leave a comment with the name of the player. Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins comes to mind but I’m sure there are many others!

Some Final Thoughts

I had an EHX Little Big Muff for a while and I’ve never heard anything like it. This little pedal was a beast. I even experimented with using my acoustic guitar; it was a little strange but wonderful.

I didn’t understand the differences between different gain pedals back then and honestly, I could not tame the little beast; it just was too raw for the type of music I was accustomed to playing. I ended trading my Muff for a Boss DD-7. It was a trade I didn’t regret but sometimes I wish I could still have my fuzz pedal…

In other words, I couldn’t find a use for this type of effect back then because I didn’t really understand what I was playing with: I needed an overdrive/distortion pedal but because I got the definitions all mixed-up and wrong, I ended with a fuzz stomp-box!

I hope all the info and definitions provided on this post resulted somehow useful. All the best in the pursuit of your preferred distortion sound!

By the way, do you have a favorite gain pedal? Do you normally use boost pedals or overdrives? Do you play more with distortion or fuzz? Leave a comment below with your experience; I’m sure your input will be much appreciated.

Until the next time,

M.M

Credits:

• Image 1: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/c49f779c-3313-42c2-a41b-21bb15d1b09f/dynamic-sine-wave-fsk-psk-qpsk-qam?forum=vbgeneral
• Image 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_(music)#/media/File:Clipping_waveform.svg
• Image 3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonm1965/
• Image 4: https://www.flickr.com/photos/28129755@N03/
• Image 5: https://www.vintageguitar.com/20424/the-dallas-rangemaster/
• Image 6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kuyabic/
• Image 7: https://www.flickr.com/photos/terekhova/
• Image 8: https://www.flickr.com/photos/e-diot/
• Image 9: https://www.ratdistortion.com/topic/about
• Image 10: https://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsideguitars/
• Image 11: By Olavi Kaskisuo / Lehtikuva [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keith-Richards-1965.jpg
• Image 12:
  By A. Vente (Beeld en Geluidwiki – Gallery: Hoepla) [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jimi_Hendrix_1967.png
• Image 13 and Feature Image: Djdaedalus at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FuzzFace_Effect_Pedal.jpg