Difference between Pedal Boost, Overdrive Pedals and Distortion
Overdrive Pedals – The terms distortion, gain, and drive are often overlapped so it is sometimes confusing for novice guitarists. Technically, distortion is a type of gain that generally gain pedals can be divided into 4 types, namely: boost, overdrive, distortion, and fuzz. Then how big is the difference in character? Which pedal should you have first? Or, what are the characteristics of each pedal? Hopefully, at the end of this article, you can have a better understanding of the type of pedals used.
In order to understand which type of pedal is suitable for you, information about how distortion works is a must. The principle is quite simple when You strum the guitar, the string vibrations are captured as waveforms by pickups which are then sent to your amplifier. However, when the signal exceeds the maximum input limit of an amplifier (or so-called headroom) then, the crest of this wave will be compressed which is then how this signal is compressed which affects the sound of your guitar to be distorted.
Simply put, if you want to produce a clean guitar sound that becomes naturally distorted, just turn the amp’s volume knob beyond the reasonable limit.
Meanwhile, the circuit used in the gain pedal usually consists of two types, namely soft clipping and hard clipping which refers to how much compression occurs which will affect the distortion caused. In general, overdrive pedals use soft clipping for dynamic, responsive distortion; while the distortion pedal mostly uses loud clipping for a more aggressive sound.
Boost Pedals
This pedal has no clipping feature or functions as a trimmer. As the name suggests, it only increases the volume of the guitar going into the amplifier. But when used with a tube amp or gain pedal it produces a much cooler sound. When combined with a tube amp, the sound will be more attractive and tend to increase the volume and produce a classic, crunchy rock sound. Just try using this pedal when you need extra volume When playing solo.
When combined with other types of pedals, the impact will result in different levels of gain, which is known as gain stacking. Adding a booster pedal before other gain pedals, such as overdrive or distortion, will result in more gain, whereas if you keep the gain pedal, it will produce more volume.
Overdrive Pedals
Overdrive pedals come in all shapes and sizes. In general, the overdrive characteristic aims to sound like an amplifier that is naturally overdriving, i.e. it produces less gain and sounds less aggressive than a distortion pedal or fuzz pedal. Most overdrive pedals are used in music, such as blues and rock. Usually (but not always), this character of the effect is achieved by using a soft-clipping circuit, which mimics the characteristics of an amplifier with little overdrive. There are many different types of overdrive pedals and some of the most popular is the Tube Screamer, Bluesbreaker, and Clone.
Distortion Pedals
Some overdrive pedals are often called transparent, meaning that while the original tone remains intact, the distortion pedal fundamentally alters the sound to achieve the ideal harmonics and sustain that is heard in heavy metal songs. Distortion pedals add more level (volume) to the signal and generally use a hard-clipping type that has no dynamics or overdrive. So, if you want to bring heavy riffs like Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Metallica, this pedal is the solution. Since the 1970s, there have been many popular pedals from well-known manufacturers such as the MXR+, BOSS DS-1, and RAT Proco.
