Overdrive and Distortion: What’s the Difference? What’s the difference between overdrive and distortion? Learn the difference and how to get great tone with either stompbox. As guitar players, what are we all after? What do we struggle to describe, work to attain, but always know when we hear it? And what is all that gear [...]
BOSS Distortion – The Orange Ones A distortion pedal usually goes beyond the amount of gain and harmonic crunching typical of an overdrive. They tend to get more distorted, are usually (but not always) louder than typical overdrives, and often have multiple gain stages for abnormal amounts of sustain. The BOSS MT-2, probably the best selling [...]
BOSS Overdrive – The Yellow Ones There are two good ways to get tone from an overdrive. One is to use the overdrive in conjunction with your amp; that is, use the overdrive pedal to augment your amp’s inherent tone. Here’s how this works:
What makes BOSS guitar stompboxes the world’s best-selling effects pedals? When the original BOSS overdrive stompbox, the OD-1, was first released way back in 1977, it looked very different from any other stompbox of the day. Where others were simple squared-off aluminum boxes crudely screwed together, the OD-1 was a smooth cast-metal body. It had [...]
Let’s Connect Our Pedals Together As discussed in Part 1, the first rule in connecting guitar effects: there are no rules. There are, however, some good ideas. Plugging In Using our basic guidelines, let’s connect our pedalboard together:
Rule Number 1 — There are No Rules Free BOSS mobile phone wallpaper—choose from 10. So you decided to play electric guitar. Once you get a guitar and an amp, the next step is to explore effects. Effects pedals can be separated into groups based on their functions. Understanding the different pedal groups is the key [...]
From Randy Rhoads to Rudy Sarzo, This CUBE-40 Amp Has a History Most guitarists know that Randy Rhoads used stack amps on stage. However, he also used a very special combo amp. What was it? Bassist Rudy Sarzo revealed that amp on the set during an in-depth interview with Gary Lenaire at the Roland Studio [...]
Billy Duffy is one of the founding members of the extremely influential band The Cult. He and singer Ian Astbury have been in the band since 1983. Billy discusses the early days of the band and how he discovered his signature sound. According to him, BOSS pedals have been part of his sound for over 30 years. Find out [...]
Mike Scaccia of Ministry discusses how he we went from cranking his guitar amps to full blast in his Punk Rock/ Metal days to bringing it down a few notches under the guidance of Al Jourgensen to find his tone. Related links and articles: Billy Duffy Herman Li of DragonForce Play an Entire Live Set with Just the GT-100
