What do you know about distortions ?

[petemoore]

  1 What distortion 'would do' ? [Name an early on favorite tone/song segment that got you started].
  2 Have you gotten to where you like using the distortion which does 1 ?
  3 How close do you feel you are to the 'ultimate' whatever tone you chose ?
  4 What have you learned about getting a certain type of distortion that you didn't know when you first heard it ?

[richon]

Noobs tend to put more distortion than they need, so the say: "ROCK ON", but after a time they become better player/listener and realize that:

LESS GAIN + MORE VOLUME is clearer but heavier for ROCK! 

[petemoore]

1 What distortion 'would do' ? [Name an early on favorite tone/song segment that got you started].
  Midnight Rambler live was a big 'wanna have that' tone for me, but Stones, Cream, Page and Perry [Aerosmith], also Lynerd Skynerd set the [pretty wide assortment of tones there] mark for what I wanted.
  2 Have you gotten to where you like using the distortion which does 1 ?
  Only sometimes...
  3 How close do you feel you are to the 'ultimate' whatever tone you chose ?
  Right there mostly, otherwise pretty close, covering most of tones A-Z.
  4 What have you learned about getting a certain type of distortion that you didn't know when you first heard it ? 
  The only general statement I can make is that I find an 'amalgum' of elements produces the tones that I prefer. Boosting signal voltage hitting [clipping] diodes or a transistor 'parameter' can really use 'help' from other items in the signal chain [includes pickups, speaker, everything inbetween].

[alanlan]

  1 What distortion 'would do' ? [Name an early on favorite tone/song segment that got you started].

Thin Lizzy Jailbreak album followed closely by DC Back In Black.  I also really liked The Sex Pistols tone.

  2 Have you gotten to where you like using the distortion which does 1 ?

I did that is until my gear got stolen - I had a second or third hand '73 Les Paul Deluxe + 1982 JCM800 100W 8X12 stack  (bought brand new on hire purchase!)+ MXR Microamp and occasional MXR Chorus yellow box (I still have it but the R5106 is bust)

  3 How close do you feel you are to the 'ultimate' whatever tone you chose ?

Nailed it then but now I use a 73 Telecaster Custom through a Mesa DC5 with no distortion effect - just a homebrew treble booster and it's great but not quite the same - not worse or anything just different.

  4 What have you learned about getting a certain type of distortion that you didn't know when you first heard it ?

No distortion pedal - just a good valve amp with a certain amount of overdrive from the booster.  The JCM800 didn't do massive overdrive by itself and the deluxe pickups I think were not as high output as the standard Les Paul. 

[sleepybrighteyez]

I recently got a Vox AD50VT 1x12 combo. It's a hybrid amp with an analog tubed pre and a solid state/dsp power amp section. I think I have found my tone with this amp. The first channel is set to either AC15 or AC30 which is really nice. Light strumming puts out a very beautiful and full clean tone, while harder strumming starts to break up and fuzz the tone- lots of dynamics. The second channel is set to USHighGain which I think is modeled after a Marshal head, but I'm not for sure. It's full, gritty, in your face but notes are not lost in the distortion. And it is true- compromise a little gain in place of volume and you get a much bigger sound. Right now I'm not using any of my pedals with this amp. It's so great as it is. But that was very important for me- to find an amp with a great sound as is, that way anything I put in front of it will be extra frosting.

As far as bands that got me into the sound, well, I listen to lots of different bands. I guess it started with classic rock- 60s and 70s stuff. I never got into the arena rock scene of the 80s, but I did love a lot of the punk bands at that time. I was a teen in the 90s so I really loved the grunge sound. Everything since then has been a big pot of gumbo full of lots of different tones. There are a few really great bands that I can use as examples for what I'm into now- Clutch, Mastadon, Sonic Youth, Explosions In The Sky. I listen to a lot of stuff, but those guys have been in heavy rotation lately.

[earthtonesaudio]

For me it all started with Green Day's album Incesticide (remember that song "Brain Stew").  One of the first CD's I bought, and the guitar tone stuck in my head as the first "ideal distortion."  Next came Nirvana's live guitar tone, all midrangey and feedback-laden...
Then came the obsession with the Adam Jones (Tool) guitar tone, so dry and dark, and the subtle and artistic use of effects...

I don't think I've ever been completely satisfied with a distortion, but I've always been able to tweak knobs on whatever gear I'm using at the moment to come up with something that works.  Seems like it doesn't matter what gear I have to work with, I'm always able to get a sound that's "good enough" for the song, even if it's never "perfect."

[petemoore]

  Anyway those were the tones I went after, having their albums certainly contributed to me no including other bands:
  All of them...with a very few exceptions, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly theme up through Hendrix...even newer bands like Offspring and Radiohead have inspiring Elec-guitar tones on record...too many to mention.
  I'm certain the air, confines, cabinets, and the big amps that can power all that up can be used to, or just have big influence on tone, though my aim is to replicate those things which also require massive pressure [or volume] to 'x' scale [smaller, less tension].
  Mostly it seems I've been guided toward not pressing any 1 thing [except maybe the tube amp] really hard, speakers start sounding funny if attempts are made to make it too loud [louder than where it sounds as good], and the same thing seems to ferret out in booster stages etc., iow sometimes it takes two, and although I haven't messed with 18v supplies, the Minibooster seems to do a great job handling pre-boost, all at @9v...
  There's something I don't know about distortions enough to speak of: I don't know what 18volt supplied to booster does for me.

[frank_p]

1)  When I was a kid my dad had Frank Zappa's  Chunga's Revenge album in his collection of vinyls,  I don't know what age I had but I was quite young.  I was listening to the Transylvania Boogie tune on and on, endlessly with the volume of the stereo cranked.  My dad got so much tired of Zappa...  He did not bought other albums   .

2)  Well the trick was a Wah setted halfway.  I used a Rat with it in a Fender Twin.  I guess it was not Zappa's setup but it did the job.

3) I just know when I don't like it.  I don't have a "setup" that I keep on using.  I like what diversity of tones can bring new in my playing.

4) It's fun to try new equipment, there is always some surprise.  I like when everything is not controlled.  I get bored very quickly when I use always the same "sound".

[sleepybrighteyez]

For me it all started with Green Day's album Incesticide (remember that song "Brain Stew").

Brain Stew is a Green Day song, but Incesticide is an early Nirvana album. Actually my favorite Nirvana album. I used to listen to it on tape over and over and over... definitely inspired by Kurt's guitar. Really wish he would have stuck around a bit longer.

[ayayay!]

1)  I keep coming back over and over to Eric Johnson's Ah Via Musicom, probably because of the countless myriad "He did what?" tones on that CD.  Yeah Cliffs of Dover was great, but then to learn years later that he didn't record that song with a strat just blew my mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffs_of_Dover_%28song%29   I learned the songs Trademark, Righteous, East Wes and Song for George because each had such a massive wealth of tones, especially Trademark.

2)  No, I like my own sound.  Sure I try to emulate other guys tones when practicing, but that's just to develop my chops.  I practice stuff like Vai, Satriani, Angus Young, Danny Gatton... but I don't want to sound like any of them.  I'd still like to capture Andy Timmons tone though... 

3)  I'm there.  I'm always pursuing...  make that "eager to discover" better tones, but the tone in my hands... yeah, for me I am there. 

4)  It took I guess about 10 years, but really I was searching for a smooth, rich overdrive all along (aren't we all? Ha!) and not a distortion.  Once I quit trying to get a distortion to do the job and just surrendered to a good OD, it was a sea change for me.  I'm so glad I did. 

[Mark Hammer]

It's always going to depend on context for me.  I think so many of us here shape our sensibilities about distortions when trying them out on our own in the absence of other musicians.  Certainly, a great many of them can sound inspiring to us, but the real questions are whether:

a) The properties that inspire you in the absence of any other musicians can still be heard once you have cymbals crashing and a bass throbbing.
b) The properties of the pedal/tone that inspire you complement the other instruments and vocals.

In an interview with Lindsay Buckingham that I read many years ago, he noted that while he loved the sound of a Telecaster for studio work, he found that it simply did not cut through in a band context, and he felt obliged to use a les Paul on stage because he had to for sonic balance.  I think the same principle is true for distortions: what sounds great on its own may sound like crap in combination.  Ice cream is good.  Caesar salad is good.  Combined.....not so much.

[petemoore]

It's always going to depend on context for me.
  It always changes.
  Change anything else...
  Like to the mostly open, outdoor venue yesterday. We had plenty of PA power, all the channels were claimed by the time I showed up with a mic and cable for guitar micing...
  AC15w, even with two effecient speakers was ok for leads, 'eh' to ok for everything else.
  The big exception is to how I use the pedals, which became as useless as ever before.
  Clean boost being the exception to the exception, FF with guitar rolloff being the other.
  The amp was compressing anyway, so the comp didn't do much, bandpass boosting worked great, allpass boosting or boosting of distortions..instead of causing a nice cut-through-mix situation..had pretty much the opposite effect, the amp was already at high distortion levels for itself [different sound than transistor distortion], adding any full-range-ish boost or distortion just muckmudded things out.
  Though I supplied and Lugged [by myself these two man project moves, thanks for all the help guys, just call me slave now] much of the big power [2x sa1530z], I missed out on the straw pull and coudn't feed my guitar into them.
  ...if I have to buy it and lug it around by myself so you can use it [and I can't]...I'm charging.
  All in all, once I figured out how to work it, it worked out fine, I just learned to not expect any bass/rythm content from my guitar...back up on it until leads and focus on singing.

[m-theory]

1.  Cranked plexi Marshall nails it for me.  Power, girth, great crunch, and clarity throughout.  No pedal comes close. 
2.  Yes
3.  I'm there
4.  Less gain is far more powerful than more.  This took me years to figure out.  Funny thing...those years that I was using far too much gain and thinking I had "the bomb tone," I very rarely heard a compliment on my tone from a stranger or visiting musician friend.  Since learning to rely on a cranked amp for my core tone instead of external gear, I get compliments virtually every time I play out.  Go figure...all I needed all along was a great amp, cranked, with a boost, and/or an overdrive for leads. 

[Baktown]

Speaking of Green Day, the guitar tone on Welcome To Paradise is the sound I'm looking for.  Also, this really cheesy 80's hair metal band called Britny Fox had some really great tones, as did LA Guns.

Rick J

[frank_p]

I have a yamaha DI-100: it was my first distortion stompbox that I buy ed  and I can tell that the sellman that threw this in my package knew that it was a good one.  I don't hear much often about that Yamaha's stompbox.  All I can say is that it is one of my favorites ones (along with the RAT). This pedal is no more in production and I don't know to what to compare it to.  But It's nothing compared to other box I have.  It is conventional and good sounding at the same time.  Sounds good with humbuckers and single coils .  Sounds a bit like a tube screamer on steroids.

I don't understand why Yamaha stopped do make that box.
If any have information on it or like it, post about it.

I make this post because it was my first box and knew, afther buying and making some others that it was "classic".  Well maybe you'll disagree.  But for a first stomp box I couldn't fall better.

Now this is a box, not an amp, and it was at the end of the 80's  .
Anyway, still a "good box in my mind.

F.H.P.

[Steben]

  1 What distortion 'would do' ? [Name an early on favorite tone/song segment that got you started].

Complete album Led Zep II ! (Whola lotta love, leman song, heartbreaker...)  I called it the creamy chainsaw. First I started dreaming about crancked plexis and LP's (I was young and I made the mistake by taking the present for the past). Then there were the tonebenders...
...Later I found out Jimmy used a lot of supro's and 5-watters, crancked with a Rangemaster and even with a Tele.  Well that was a shock!

2 Have you gotten to where you like using the distortion which does 1 ?

yes, ultimately, since I got the Epi Valve JR 5-watt amp!

3 How close do you feel you are to the 'ultimate' whatever tone you chose ?

very, since it was a bit of creating a spectrum rather than one stuck tone.

4 What have you learned about getting a certain type of distortion that you didn't know when you first heard it ?

Don't stick to "less gain", even "less watts" gets you there! PA or a bigger amp will give volume. A small amp will give you tone.
But allways use big speakers. >10"

Other than that: get a good tube amp that doesn't excel in gain and knobs, but in overdrive and tone . Pedals do the rest.

[remmelt]

  1 What distortion 'would do' ? [Name an early on favorite tone/song segment that got you started].

Daryll-Ann's guitarist Anne Soldaat wonderful tone on "Sheila" from their Seaborne West album.
Nels Cline's amazing, gut punching tone on Wilco's last two tours, especially when playing Handshake Drugs. I am not too proud to say that it brought tears to my eyes.
Live Zappa, for example The Torture Never Stops from You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 1, cd2. Wait for the solo to kick in, you'll see what I mean.

  2 Have you gotten to where you like using the distortion which does 1 ?

Cline and Soldaat: ballpark. Zappa: no way.

  3 How close do you feel you are to the 'ultimate' whatever tone you chose ?

Story. I bought a used Marshall Bluesbreaker RI (the amp, not the pedal) from a little shop in Antwerp. Turned out to be a cat in the bag, someone tried to turn it into a high gain amp and that someone was not too good with amps. Or with soldering. The original owner bought an Engl, instead, just to illustrate the tone he was after. Anyway, I didn't know this at the time, the amp worked so I took it home. It had problems, I got it biased and retubed and fixed and it still had problems. After a while, it started crackling through the speakers, never a good sign. Around that time, we were in the practice space setting up. I hooked up my TS-10 as a booster, with the gain all the way down. The amp was set pretty loud, but nowhere near cranked (it's LOUD!)
The tone I got was amazing. I'm not a very good player and I believe the fingers are a huge part of the tone, but that was one of the only times that the amp, the pedal and the guitar sounded and felt electric. Electrified. It felt like it was more than just the three parts, like finally hitting a tone that's exactly what I wanted. I didn't even know it was possible.
The week after that, the amp broke down and it's been dead ever since. It needs an injection of money and time.

  4 What have you learned about getting a certain type of distortion that you didn't know when you first heard it ?

Less gain, as said above. Different frequencies are apparent at different volumes, and tubes sound really really nice. Power amp overdrive is the tone I'm looking for, with the dynamics and touch sensitivity. And the unforgiving volume, regrettably.

[Steben]

... I hooked up my TS-10 as a booster, with the gain all the way down. The amp was set pretty loud, but nowhere near cranked (it's LOUD!)...
The week after that, the amp broke down and it's been dead ever since. It needs an injection of money and time.

  4 What have you learned about getting a certain type of distortion that you didn't know when you first heard it ?

Less gain, as said above. Different frequencies are apparent at different volumes, and tubes sound really really nice. Power amp overdrive is the tone I'm looking for, with the dynamics and touch sensitivity. And the unforgiving volume, regrettably.

hey Remmelt, try in the meantime the Valve junior. It's only around 200€, extension cab included. Tube power at only 5 Watts and the thing loves pedals as any decent tube amp should as a matter of fact.