You know it's kinda funny but...

[RDV]

...as long as I've been messing with this stuff it just dawned on me that the Distortion+, Rat, Boss DS-1, Peavey Hotfoot, DOD OD250,  and a bunch of others are essentially the same circuit.

Duh.

RDV

[WGTP]

I had that moment too, awhile back.  There are really only a few basic designs (gross over simplification) and everthing else is variations. Some of the variations are pretty extreme.   

Fuzz Face
Dist +
Tube Screamer
Single transistor boosters (I guess you could lump in multiple stages, like Joe Davidson's stuff and the amp sim's)
BMP
Mu-Amps
What eles?

[Roobin]

Blues breaker. The way the pot control gain of both 1st and 2nd stage, reducing one/increasing other.

Wow, sudden idea: If you got a pot with two tracks, but one knob (is this a dual ganged?) then you could increase gain of both, by reverse wiring the 2nd stage.

[Mark Hammer]

S'okay.  Can you count how many people took years until they realized that most blues songs were either E / A /B or A / D / E ?

That's why I have binders of schems on hand constantly.  You have to look at a lot of them often enough to start to see the patterns.

Then there's the stuff you just never realize because you've stared at it TOO long.  A shopping centre I've frequented in town since maybe 1960 is called "Carlingwood".  It took our young son to draw it to my attention 45 years later that the mall was at the corner of "Carling" and "Woodroffe", hence "Carling/wood".     Sheesh!!

[Doug_H]

Then there's the stuff you just never realize because you've stared at it TOO long.  A shopping centre I've frequented in town since maybe 1960 is called "Carlingwood".  It took our young son to draw it to my attention 45 years later that the mall was at the corner of "Carling" and "Woodroffe", hence "Carling/wood".     Sheesh!!

Then there's home decor...

I'll say, "Wow I really like that picture!" and my wife will tell me it's been hanging there for 5 years. Last night we had a quiz at the dinner table about what was hanging on what wall or sitting on a piece of furniture in a particular room (not the one we were sitting in). I failed miserably...

Doug

[RDV]

That's nothing, my wife calls me furniture. I come in from work and sit at my desk/lab until bedtime, says she. You can imagine how thrilled she was this weekend when I said "honey, listen to my new fuzzbox, the Dr. Boogey!" *plays loud highly distorted chug chug guitar*. Oh how she loves me.

RDV

[Paul Marossy]

Oh how she loves me.

She must! 

[nelson]

Being derivative is a plague of the human condition.

Your either part of the 2% or your not.

[RDV]

Being derivative is a plague of the human condition.

Your either part of the 2% or your not.

You've lost me, but that's not hard.

RDV

[Ashurbanipal]

Then there's the stuff you just never realize because you've stared at it TOO long.

I was 22 when I finally realized "The Beatles" is a pun and that the insect is spelled "beetle".

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

i wouldn't even consider the BMP an original piece of work... it seems like any ordinary single tranny with diodes clipper, but multiple staged. its only real claim to fame is the double clipping...

no mention of CMOS?  

[WGTP]

Yes, CMOS should be added.  I thought about the BMP being different, but I guess it is similar to an op amp feedback loop clipper, like the TS.   

I watched the "Wizard of Oz" forever before I realized the 3 farm hands were the Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man.   

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Didn't someone here do a box that had switches you could flip to select between the various 'brands' of distortion boxes?

Here's (one) of my most embarassing moments: when I realised (after years) that "Ikeanteena Turner" was actually TWO people, not one.

[petemoore]

  Well now you can be non-plussed [indifferent, unimpressed] by all these little nomenclatures and word builds...like the rest of us have been since we found out !!!

[Toney]

 
Hah, yep.

Hows this for slow to twig on?

Even after the "I want to break free" video (Freddy in pink mini skirt with moustache) , the lead singer of a band named QUEEN, for god's sake, I still didn't twig that he was gay

Well it was the eighties... Twisted sister, Dude looks like a lady etc...

[nooneknows]

First time I've been in France I was amazed about the people having breakfast: a lot of them (really a lot) was asking the barman for a particular brand of coffe, the "Cafè Olè!", reading in spanish way. Wow! More famous than Coke this brand!
It's been a pair of weeks later that, reading the ingredients of a french milk based biscuits pack, I asked my girlfriend: "how do you spell Au lait?"." Ouh Leh". (Lait=milk)