Overdrive and Distortion: What's the difference?

Switch

I've just realised i have no clue about the differences between these two terms. Can someone care to explain?

Pearl Jam and toast

I wouldn't be able to explain it technically as well as others here so I'll leave that to them...

but generally:

Distortion = crunch

OD = Gain and maybe a little crunch.

So an overdrive is much milder, more subtle. I build my tone with OD (tubescreamer hell yeah :cool: ) and use dist. when nessecary.

lucylespian

JUst different degrees of the same thing.
When a signal is amplified, the primary note is mainly heard. As you amplify louder and louder, you hear more and more of the harmonic notes, making the sound more and more complex. This can occur at either the pre-amp stage or the power amp stage, usually a combination of both.

There is no hard point at which OD becomes crunch which becomes distortion. It a continuum.

ianvomsaal

"Effectively none.
Overdriving an amplifier creates distortion, so really it's the same thing for the most part.
The guitar world has simply adopted the word overdrive to describe a soft distortion or to
describe a pre-amp that "overdrives" the input of your main amp, which in turn causes more
distortion in your main amp, which brings us back to them being the same thing again.

"Overdrive" started as what you got when you put too large a signal into the input of an amp,
causing the signal to be distorted at the speaker. You were "overdriving" the inputs.
"Distortion" is the more generic term, and started when folks noticed that you could get a distorted
sound from a little solid state amp that was VERY nonlinear. The terms have been used so
interchangeably that there is no real difference.

Boss and Ibanez seemed to define this difference with their pedals. The Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
and Ibanez TS-9 Tube screamer "overdrives" are a smoother, less harsh sound than say the
DS-1, MT-2, and SD-9 distortions. The distortion pedals add more crunchy, gritty sound, whereas
the overdrives add more smoothness and not as much distorted crunch."
Hope this helps clear it up a little bit - but probably not.

- Ian C.T. vom Saal

Switch

That does pretty much clear it up.

So essentially, they are the same thing in technical terms, but are used to describe the two 'extremes' of the distorted sound. Overdrive for the lower and distortion for the higher.

armanHammer

od, dist, fuzz, in that order

Pearl Jam and toast

armanHammer wrote:

od, dist, fuzz, in that order

And if you're looking to buy I suggest skipping distortion pedals. They usually sound very generic and processed and generally shitty (to me at least). I use OD and Fuzz. :cool: Can't go wrong.

lucylespian

Skip pedals altogether.

Tube amps overdrive/distortion relies on tube driven pre-amps. With the exception of tube-driven pedals, pedals are solid state or digital, which to me is a step backwards in the tone game.
Give me all tube tone any day !!

Pearl Jam and toast

lucylespian wrote:

Skip pedals altogether.

Tube amps overdrive/distortion relies on tube driven pre-amps. With the exception of tube-driven pedals, pedals are solid state or digital, which to me is a step backwards in the tone game.
Give me all tube tone any day !!

Love tube amps but pedals are wonderful things to have to broaden your sound. No amp in the world is gonna give me what I get from the Fender Blender for example (nor any other pedal really ). But certainly a great tone starts with the amp.