Distortion adds a consistent crunch or grit to what you're playing. Whereas an overdrive takes your original tone and pushes it harder, a distortion pedal changes the sound completely and saturates the signal. Fuzz alters the waveform into a square wave and can almost makes your amp sound like it's broken.
You only need more pedals if you want more pedals. Realistically, you can cover whatever ground you need with a RAT. If you want more of an overdrive and less of a distortion sound, then just turn the gain down a bit and turn the level up to push the front end of your amp a bit harder.
Many rock guitarists use overdrive and distortion pedals to boost the guitar's signal and provide more power to the front end of the amp. Famously, many metal guitarists will use an overdrive pedal with the level turned all the way up and the gain turned all the way down.
An overdriven tube amp creates distortion, but in the world of effects pedals, distortion stompboxes tend to be a bit more intense than overdrive stompboxes. Fuzz is a special type of distortion where harmonic overtones dominate the overall sound.
To get maximum boost to your guitar tone with a tube screamer you want to get the pedals in the right order with the correct settings. Now, this is personal preference but you cannot go wrong by having the tube screamer last in the chain (before the noise gate), and having the overdrive setting set to almost zero.
Every so often its creator, Mike Fuller, introduces a newer version, and despite all the tweaking, many guitarists still consider the OCD one of the finest overdrive/distortion stompboxes. And for good reason; it's one of the few drive pedals that nails the sound and response of an overdriven tube amp convincingly.
The Fuzz tone basically is a heavily saturated guitar signal, altering the sound to a plain square wave with amazing sustain . It's using two, three or even more transistors to amplify the signal to a point where it starts to sound distorted, fuzzy with very long sustain.
Dynamics (compressors), filters (wah), pitch shifters, and Volume pedals typically go at the beginning of the signal chain. Gain based effects such as and overdrive/distortion pedals come next. Modulation effects such as chorus, flangers, phasers typically come next in the chain.
Yes the fuzz factory should be first in the chain, it will give you a lot more tonal variety in how it responds to your volume and tone pot. It will work after the buffer but you lose some of the character that makes it such a great pedal, it will feel more like a run of the mill fuzz.
The best fuzz pedals you can buy today
- Electro-Harmonix Op-Amp Big Muff Reissue. The best fuzz pedal for Smashing Pumpkins fans.
- Z.
- Way Huge Swollen Pickle.
- Electro-Harmonix Nano Big Muff.
- Jim Dunlop Mini Germanium Fuzz Face.
- Death by Audio Supersonic Fuzz Gun.
- Old Blood Noise Endeavors Haunt.
- Walrus Audio Janus.
Germanium WarfareFans of the earliest vintage fuzz pedals swear by the sonic properties of germanium transistors, which tend to be a little softer sounding and more compressed than the silicon transistors that proliferated by the late '60s.
The Fuzz Face is an effects pedal for electric guitar, used also by some electric bass players. It is designed to produce a distorted sound referred to as "fuzz," originally achieved through accident such as broken electrical components or damaged speakers.
Chorus is a modulation effect, and as such, it should be placed fairly late in your pedal chain. It should come after a wah pedal, compression pedal, overdrive pedal, and distortion pedal, but before your delay pedal, tremolo pedal, or reverb pedal.
As we discussed earlier, reverb—and sometimes delay, depending on the space—is the last thing that happens before the sound reaches your ears in a physical space, so these go last. Delaying reverb can sound muddy, so it's usually better to have the reverb after the delay.
Where does a noise gate go in your signal chain? In some ways, this is subjective. Naturally, you'll want to place the noise gate wherever the noise is, for example after your fuzz pedal. It's most common, however, to put it at the end of your chain but before any ambient pedals such as delay and reverb.
As with most modulation effects, Phaser traditionally sits towards the back end of your pedal chain, after everything except ambient effects like reverb and delay.
Analog pedals still pass signal through them when not powered and not active. Digital pedals will not do this. Take any power supply out of the pedal, make sure the pedal is off, and if you still have signal you've got an analog pedal.
