Distortion or Overdrive?

[51501984]

You`ll have to excuse my knowledge but what`s the difference of a Overdrive tone or Distortion tone? On the early Van Halen albums is Ed getting Overdrive or Distortion. I`m just a little confused , I know Zakk Wylde uses an OD pedal and Randy Rhoads used a Dist. pedal yet both of their tones are pretty damn heavy!

[Quencho092]

Re: Distortion or Overdrive?

overdrive is like a gain booster. It most often retains the character of your guitar/amp and uses it to produce more gain. distortion creates its own gain character or color to build on.
personally, i like distortion at room volumes because i dont need to crank my amp to get smooth power tube distortion to work with my overdrive.
the best tone i can get is with my TS9 overdrive pushing my peavey classic at master volume-10 channel volume-4, passive eq knobs all at full. the overdrive pushes into the power tube distortion and sounds many times better than a distortion pedal at low volume.

[drew_half_empty]

Re: Distortion or Overdrive?

think of it this way

tubescreamers - overdrive

marshalls & mesas - distortion

[Dills]

Re: Distortion or Overdrive?

Overdrive is the sound of your tube amp breaking up after its clean channel is pushed.
Distortion is a more compressed sound with more gain, and often more shhhh to the tone. But can sound good at low volumes (especially if you have a pedal to do it), to get a real nice sounding overdrive you really need to have your tubes cranking and the volume up. But if you prefer using overdrive at lower volumes u either need a good overdrive pedal which emulates the sound for you or a good lead channel on your amp which can also give a good overdrive.