A GUIDE TO___ Find the perfect OD Pedal ???

HOW MUCH GAIN ???

It is not rocket science. It is simple knowing what you listening for and the how too.

The rules are the same. I always use the modern dirt-speak to describe Gain. It is confusing to call one thing an Overdrive and another a Distortion as there is not some sharp division with any division. They are all the same thing but simply overload the your ears with either less or more Gain.

 

A very low gain OD is often referred to as 'transparent'. Generally speaking most popular Boost pedals are really low Gain Overdrives. We then get Medium Gain OD's. They have the kind of gain of the early Marshall amps from 60's and much of the 70's. Next we get High Gain OD's like that produced by the early Gourmet Amps. The first being the Soldano.Finally we get what i simply call Metal Gain OD's. they go from very, very High Gain to crossing into a Fuzz.

THE INGEDIENTS

First we all learn very young what Bass and Treble is from your parents radio or whatever, Bass is added to give you low fat frequencies and Treble in contrast some cut and sparkle to the highs. With such a system the Mid range is fixed and is more or less flat and even across all the MIds.

So we have 3 divisions of frequencies. Yes??? No!!! The spectrum of divisions is technically infinite but it is not practical to dived it by extremes. In our case the guitar has limits. Most of its sound is Mid range but we can exagerat the the highs and lows electronically for additional tones.

On many better OD pedals we have Bass, Mids and Treble.These are key to our listening test. in short they need to be listen to separately and ideally boosted on their own or in context with all 3 divisions.

Even so this is not enough. The Bass has 2 divisions to check. Extra lows which tend to be muddy and Lows. The Mids are both low mids that have can create very fat sounds and Upper Mids that give our sound both poke and a singing falsetto quality. Finally highs that can be divided in 2 as well. the very high frequencies can both add sparkle chime but can get very 'ice picky' and screeching.

CHECKING THE BOXES

     WHAT DO WE LIKE ???

First we must pick a how much gain we like. Is it transparent or near Fuzz like or in between. ___Next?

You can see 3 seperate groups of sound frequencies but each is divided in 2 and that is  a  good start is to analyse any pedal we love or even hate that we may own. We can soon find if it it has too much or to little or a 'goldilocks' just right amount of what we want.

     SATURATION OR HEADROOM

Yes another 2 boxes to check. Saturation is compression. It can add sustain but it tends to diminish the dynamics. In short picking harder or softer does not make our sound louder or softer. Headroom is more the opposite. The heavy picking is loud and light picking is soft. With heavy Saturation we can get mush instead of bite and percussiveness when the pick hits the strings. With headroom the sustain may tank.

     OVERTONES & HARMONICS

This is what separates the men from the boys. The pricey pedals that use the best parts and make no shortcuts tend to be most of the winners. The best parts can be NASA spec or even vintage parts that unintentionally make their own dirt. The very best will have an abundant amount of harmonics ringing out that literally sound separated from each other that they seem like you could count them. 

WARNINGS                                                              Cheaper pedals on the whole are muddy as the harmonics smear over each other. There are exceptions. High gain OD's create exaggerate harmonics so a budget pedal sometimes can still sound very rich.

Cheap clones can be a problem if they are trying to clone a pedal that used rare or pricy parts. The more complex the circuit the bigger the problem. The early Fuzz pedals had as little as 7 parts on the board. It is why they can be cloned very well if enough effort and care is put into them.

Very low bass frequencies are muddy by nature. So do not dismiss a pedal outright because of that. Last but not least Rock was founded on if it sounds good it is good. Some pedals are truly crap or at least have noticeable weaknesses just damn well

sound cool. So trust your gut instinct above all my blah, blah.