Why distortion pedals?

[P-Ride]

Sorry, I'm sure I've posted about this before, but I still don't get it.

Dirty tones come from an overdriven amp.

Tube amps, especially, produce great dirty tones.

You can use a boost pedal to push the signal so it's hotter, resulting in a more saturated tone.

Why do distortion pedals exist?

Possibly I can see someone with a clean amp might want a way of getting it dirty. But I cannot think of a single reason to place a distortion pedal in front of my Peavey 6505+.

Boost, yes; distortion, no.

What am I missing?

 

[noUser01]

Because pushing a solid state amp with an overdrive sounds pretty gross. Tubes sound good when pushed, but solid state amps don't have tubes, so you aren't going to get that sound. Another reason is because good sounding distorted amps aren't cheap. You could buy a 6505, or run a Metal Muff into your cheap amp for way cheaper. Not the same thing, not going to sound as good, but for the price it's a great option. On top of that, an overdrive pedal doesn't do you much good if you've got, say, a Blues Junior and want to play hard rock. Your TS9 won't do you much good on it's own there. But hey, maybe you can get enough drive out of the amp and an overdrive, but switching to a clean channel ain't easy in that scenario. Having a distortion pedal fixes that issue. Maybe you have a nice high gain amp, but you want an additional distorted channel. Or maybe you have enough channels on the amp, but you want a different flavour of distortion every now and then, but don't wanna buy a whole new amp. They can also be good if you want some level of consistency night after night for a series of gigs where things are backlined and you can't bring your amp (or don't want to).

Lots of reasons to use one, but it's not very common for people with nice high gain heads to use distortion pedals for their main sound.

 

[endmysuffering]

Unique sound, listen to Ddevil by sytem of a down. That was a triple rec with boss hm 2. Simply brilliant tone. You can halfway the gain where you like it on your amp and add a pedal to give you your unique tone.

 

[laxu]

The only differences between a boost, overdrive and distortion are the amount of gain on tap, voicing and controls which all vary from pedal to pedal. Nothing wrong with using a distortion pedal you like as an overdrive or boost with the gain turned down.

They are originally meant for giving a different distorted sound to a clean amp from a time when high gain amps just didn't exist. So no wonder you don't find much use for one with an amp that already does high gain.

There is a silly amount of pedals available nowadays so for people into that it offers a bit cheaper way to have lots of different units that sound different. Some of the shops in Japan for example are a veritable candyland for pedal enthusiasts.

 

[narad]

You're missing people on a budget.

 

[Spinedriver]

I'd say flavor and budget are two of the biggest reasons. What if one day you're using your 6505+ and think to yourself, 'I wished this sounded more like a Marshall or Mesa Rectifier'. If that were the case, you'd either have to sell your amp and buy a new one or spend however many hundred (if not a thousand) to buy the other one.

However, since there are a multitude of distortion pedals out there, you can get one for a LOT less than a new amp and have an entirely different tone with the push of a button, rather than having to have a 2nd or even 3rd amp. Also, as others have mentioned, there are a lot of people that have amps that don't have a high gain channel but may want to use some once in a while. Getting a distortion pedal is the perfect solution because it allows them to keep the amp they really like and be able to use distortion without having to buy a whole new amp just for something they'd be using sparingly.

 

[budda]

Because options are nice.

 

[op1e]

Running a Blackstar HT Dual into my Ultra 120 or 5150 was a pretty cool hybrid British thing. Another thing I do is run OD808/Crunchbox clone into my clean channel and can cop a kinda Orange tone. My other guitarist when I joined my band had a Sovtek Mig 100. He couldn't get tight and saturated out of it. So he ran lower gain tubes and half boosted it with a Metal Zone. That was a sick tone looking back on it.

 

[bhakan]

In addition to what everyone else has said, I use them because for certain stuff, tube distortion sounds too "good." The fact that tubes clip in a smoother, more responsive way is great most of the time, but sometimes you just want a really gritty, gnarly distortion.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Unique sound, listen to Ddevil by sytem of a down. That was a triple rec with boss hm 2. Simply brilliant tone. You can halfway the gain where you like it on your amp and add a pedal to give you your unique tone.

I own a Boss HM2 clone, and trust me, even through a Dual Rec, it doesn't sound that good. SOAD's self-titled album was pure Dual Recto. He only used the HM-2 to practice at home.

Also, nowadays there's some really good distortion pedals out there.

And distortion pedals seem to be favored by guys who do a lot of soloing or shreddy stuff. I'm guessing it's to do with dirt pedals having the right amout of compression?

 

[endmysuffering]

I own a Boss HM2 clone, and trust me, even through a Dual Rec, it doesn't sound that good. SOAD's self-titled album was pure Dual Recto. He only used the HM-2 to practice at home.

Also, nowadays there's some really good distortion pedals out there.

And distortion pedals seem to be favored by guys who do a lot of soloing or shreddy stuff. I'm guessing it's to do with dirt pedals having the right amout of compression?

Thanks for clearing that up then.

 

[cwhitey2]

I use one to add a flavor.


My approach to tone with my current rig is 'start your tone as clean as you can and build onto it'. I'm running a sig:x right now which is awesome for this approach. The amp has a built in boost switch which kicks in another gain stage for each channel. I usually use the rhythm channel with the boost in and a ts9 or boost off with my mojomojo pedal. Right there can get 5 tones on 1 channel...

 

[wakjob]

I know people who gig in bands that play blues/classic rock bar band type music.

They don't need a 'metal' amp... but near the midnight hour when everyones drunk someone yells out "Metallica!" or "Slayer!" or whatever.

Time to break out the distortion pedal because they showed up to the gig with a Fender Twin and a tubescreamer. <--- which covers their bread and butter sets in spades.

Personally, I've found some distortion boxes to be better than many tube amp drive channels...
yeah, it happens. Tubes amps aren't the end all be all. Sorry.

 

[Wolfhorsky]

I have and had quite a few tube amps. Most of them seem to have nice and soft treble but with spongy/saggy bass. Some tube amps, when set right, can sound awesome with a good distortion. I don't think that distortion pedals are cheaper alternative. You can buy cheap and really expensive ones (JHS, Strymon, AmpTweaker, Friedman). The same goes with amps.
Distortion pedals are to get good tone at different loudness levels (it is not always possible with tube amps). Distrortion pedals are nice if you want to achieve different sounds and flavours of distorted sound on one amp.

 

[budda]

Also, tube amps react to tube life and other conditions (say mis-match a cab).

A distortion pedal sounds the same, all the time. Consistency is key for most of us on the road.

 

[Dawn of the Shred]

Because pushing a solid state amp with an overdrive sounds pretty gross. Tubes sound good when pushed, but solid state amps don't have tubes, so you aren't going to get that sound. Another reason is because good sounding distorted amps aren't cheap. You could buy a 6505, or run a Metal Muff into your cheap amp for way cheaper. Not the same thing, not going to sound as good, but for the price it's a great option. On top of that, an overdrive pedal doesn't do you much good if you've got, say, a Blues Junior and want to play hard rock. Your TS9 won't do you much good on it's own there. But hey, maybe you can get enough drive out of the amp and an overdrive, but switching to a clean channel ain't easy in that scenario. Having a distortion pedal fixes that issue. Maybe you have a nice high gain amp, but you want an additional distorted channel. Or maybe you have enough channels on the amp, but you want a different flavour of distortion every now and then, but don't wanna buy a whole new amp. They can also be good if you want some level of consistency night after night for a series of gigs where things are backlined and you can't bring your amp (or don't want to).

Lots of reasons to use one, but it's not very common for people with nice high gain heads to use distortion pedals for their main sound.

Disagree on the part that Tube Screamer or OD Pedals don't sound good with solid state amps. They tighten the bass and make the highs smother. Now i'm not saying it's the same as boosting a tube amp but it definitely makes a difference in a good way on SS amps as well.

 

[crankyrayhanky]

I agree with OP
Consistency, budget, variety- whatever- they all sound like inferior crap

 

[RobPhoboS]

Bunch of trolls.

 

[narad]

I agree with OP
Consistency, budget, variety- whatever- they all sound like inferior crap

Pfft, I'd take a Bogner ecstasy pedal and any decent tube power amp over basically any < $1k tube amp. I'm pretty convinced that with some post-processing it'd be basically impossible to tell the difference between that and a real ecstasy. In the room it's different, but that's a $2-3k price difference.

The Burnley pedal is sick too.

 

[bostjan]

The only differences between a boost, overdrive and distortion are the amount of gain on tap, voicing and controls which all vary from pedal to pedal. Nothing wrong with using a distortion pedal you like as an overdrive or boost with the gain turned down.

They are originally meant for giving a different distorted sound to a clean amp from a time when high gain amps just didn't exist. So no wonder you don't find much use for one with an amp that already does high gain.

There is a silly amount of pedals available nowadays so for people into that it offers a bit cheaper way to have lots of different units that sound different. Some of the shops in Japan for example are a veritable candyland for pedal enthusiasts.

Naw, that's oversimplifying to the point where it's no longer true.

A boost/OD pedal increases the front end gain to overdrive the amp.
A distortion pedal uses a different circuit with clipping diodes to create the distortion sound itself.

So one gives you organic distortion from your own preamp, and the other makes it's own artificial distortion.

The earliest distortion pedals were fuzz pedals. Distortion pedals can sound good or bad, depending on your taste and the quality of the pedal, but I, personally, think that a distortion pedal really has no place in metal music, unless you are on a budget.

But then, I am a bit of a purist. I own a few dozen pedals, but I never take them on tour, because A) I don't want to break them, B) I want to keep the number of technical issues to a minimum, and C) I honestly don't see the point in dragging out a dozen pedals that I will use for 1-2 minutes each.

I see these young guys on tour with their Line 6 set to "extreme" and their DOD "Death Metal" pedals or Boss "Metal Zone" or whatever. Bass 10 Mid 0 Treble 5, Gain 10. Then the band is playing and I can't make out a damn thing going on with the guitar. It ends up sounding like an electric chainsaw cutting through a beehive no matter what notes they are playing. The sad thing to me is that it seems like maybe these guys can really play, but no one will ever hear it through the rest of the band. It's widespread - as in 1/4 to 1/3 of the heavy bands I come across. Often times, their distortion pedals will .... the bed on them during sound check, and then they'll take my 9V batteries so they can "fix it" (and very rarely ever offer a "thanks"), which usually doesn't work, because the issue is that their tone is too harsh. And I never get my 9V back, even after it's determined that it was never the issue.