Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tony Brown on July 4, 2013 at 5:46am

I have discovered with my builds

Harsh sound     =  Piezo stuck directly to box lid.

Smooth sound  = Piezo Sandwiched in something like Balsa wood, Felt, Thin foam etc then stuck to lid.

Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on July 4, 2013 at 6:21am

most    decent  amps   these  days  come  with an  overdrive switch  ,,   effect  or  level  knob  .

most of the  time , this  is what you  are hearing ,  ..  also    , a simple distorton  or overdrive  pedal  can  do  the   trick.

  magnetic  pickups  will  handle      overdrive  and distortion   better than  a piezo  .

  if you  have a head phone  jack   on  your  amp  .    you  can try   plugging  in  a cord   with  the  other  end  cut  and spliced  to  a  much  smaller   speaker,   ..   then  crank it   up  ..  that   will  give  you a  distorted  sound  .. and  is a cheap  fix  for  what you  got  . 

or   , you coukld  just  crank  your  amp  and  get  volumized distortion  .

then  again  ,  an overdrive    or  distortion  pedal and extra cord    is  cheap  these days  too.

 

 good  luk  ;-)

 

 

Permalink Reply by Blind Lemon Cello on July 4, 2013 at 7:20am

I'm with pick on this. The Danelectro D-1 pedal is a killer, I use one on my hacked tube radio amp & it is nasty!!

Plus cheap.......

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Danelectro-D-1-Fab-Distortion-103375820...

Permalink Reply by terry harris on July 4, 2013 at 1:39pm

To me the best distortion sounds come from when you really start to push tube amps. Nowdays most tube amps have a "gain" knob to push the front end tubes, usually 12AX7 tubes, before you get to the power stage tubes but when you start to push the power tubes too is when it really starts gettin good. By then tho things can get to ear splitting levels. I think most people use pedals as mentioned above or have amps like the Line 6 that "model" amp sounds. These days I'm playin acoustic but still have some electric stuff.

Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on July 5, 2013 at 12:18am

Overdrive is exactly what it says..the signal has too much amplitude (ie it's too big) for the amp to handle cleanly, so it overwhelms the ability of the amp to deal with it, the signal gets clipped, and is driven into that characteristic distorted sound. Some amps react to this better than others, producing a more musical and pleasing sound,  and overdrive pedals are designed to bring out the most pleasing harmonics and overall tone. Valves tend to do this simply because that's how they operate, and modern amps and effects emulate that sound.

A lot of people mistake this "cool sound" as being entirely due to the guitar, when what they are actually hearing is the amp or the effects built into the amp, or an external pedal. Also, anything recorded to the computer will be affected and more than likely distorted by the crappy mic and crappy speakers in most computers, so it is very difficult to get a true evaluation of what it will sound like in real life.

Permalink Reply by Michael Recchione on July 8, 2013 at 9:05am

As others have said, distortion can come from a lot of different sources - basically, it comes from anything that's being driven into a non-linear response to the input signal.  That can be the pickups themselves - different pickups are more or less linear than others.  It can come from really high-output pickups, that overdrive the input stage of whatever they're plugged into.  It can come from an effect in front of the normal pre-amp stage of the amplifier you're using - some of the distortion stomp boxes do that. (Others do things in two stages, i.e. they have their own pre-amp/attenuator circuit that lets you use the effect to add distortion without actually making things louder...).  It can come from a linear pre-amp over-driving the power stage of an amplifier.  Finally, there's output distortion, like the suggestion to overdrive a cheap, low-fidelity speaker from the headphone output.  I probably missed something...

Then - there's how the signal is reproduced non-linearly.  Is it a simple clipping of the waveform?  Or a more gradual distortion of it?  Each of these schemes will give a different sound.  A lot of people say that tube amps give the sweetest distortion, and even more specifically, that they give the sweetest distortion when the power amp tubes (valves) are over-driven. (I've heard they only generate even-harmonics when they're over-driven, and that somehow, that sounds sweeter than the odd-harmonics that solid-state amplifiers generate...)  There's even a contribution from the old tube-diode rectifiers, where they have a delayed response to a sudden increase in input, followed by an overshoot, which gives that characteristic classic tube amp "crunch".  (I love my old Fender Deluxe Reverb for that...)

"Cool sounding" is very subjective.  But the bottom line is that, no, it's not just the pickups.  (Think about it - the same guitar is going to sound pretty different when it's plugged into different rigs...)