The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

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sosomething

Seymour Duncan Customer Support
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm genuinely curious about why distortion pedals continue to be so popular with so many players. There are probably enough different models of dirt box out there to equal every other model of every other kind of effect pedal combined, and they sell in similarly lopsided numbers.

I understand why they were invented and became popular. I know how back in the day, all amps were essentially clean amps that you had to turn up to 11 before they'd start breaking up. And even when amp companies realized people wanted that sound, building those tones into an amp was a slow evolution. Meanwhile, effects pedal companies moved swiftly to make relatively inexpensive dirt pedals that people could buy and use to get the overdriven tones they wanted for far less coin than buying a new amp. It makes sense.

But that all really kind of changed in the late '80s / early '90s. You had Mesa Boogie releasing amps like the Mark IIc+ and Dual Rectifier. VHT emerged in 1992. Bogner and Soldano had just gotten started a couple of years prior. And this trend has continued on an upward trajectory ever since.

These days, there are more super mega fire breather overdrive amps out there than almost any other type. Mesa, Marshall, Peavey, Engl, Orange, Fryette, Splawn, Diamond, Rhodes, Bogner, Soldano, Budda, Engnater, Rivera, Friedman, Wizard, Bad Cat, EVH, Fender, Hughes & Kettner, Randall, Blackstar, Diezel, Madison, Jet City, the list goes on and on. And for every one of those amps, there's a $300 Bugera knocking it off for the budget buyer, or a modeler with a themed preset. Amp distortion is no longer difficult or expensive to obtain.

So I ask - why are there still so many people buying distortion pedals? Enough to remain the most popular effect by a ridiculous margin.

And real head-scratcher for me is that the "best" distortion pedals are generally considered to be the ones that are the most "transparent," or "sound just like an overdriven amp." ?????? Just get an amp capable of overdrive! They're everywhere! Why chase that sound with a pedal?

Please note that I'm not making a value statement here - I'm not saying people are wrong or stupid to use distortion pedals. I know lots of people have excellent reasons to use them. I don't even think anybody needs to justify it. I'm just wondering why they're still so incredibly popular, given how the reason they were invented has been all but negated by the emergence of so many high-gain amplifiers.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

1 - They sound different than the amp's gain channel
2 - They serve as a boost to the gain channel.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

3 - You can get the sound you want at a lower volume than on most amps.


For me personally, I use them as preamps going into the computer, and they require much less electricity than using a head as a preamp.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

Probably because so many of those classic sounds people got used an overdrive pedal. I mean, you can probably get close with a deluxe reverb, but to really nail that SRV tone you should probably use a tubescreamer of some sort.

Likewise, there are some sounds that you can only get with a proco rat, and still more sounds that you can only get with a germanium-powered treble booster.

Additionally, it seems like there's something to juicing the front end of the sound before it gets to the amplifier - for some reason a hotter sound going into the preamp feels different than a hot sound coming out the the preamp. It's like having a little "active pickup" box for your passive-equipped guitar. There are subtle and magic things an echoplex booster and dan armstrong orange squeezer can do to a sound, that you can't really replicate with another gain stage in your preamp.

Also, I've heard the best way to get high-gain sounds that retain clarity out of a preamp is to have a lot of mildly overdriven stages, whereas you can get a really good heavy sound with a simple preamp and a distortion pedal slamming the front.

Those are just theories though. I suspect there's something psychological at play as well, that I can't really explain but kind of understand being a pedal head myself.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

Most of my work involves interstate air travel, and I gave up long ago on the inconsistency of hired back line, so stuff needs to be compact but good. I need a very good clean foundation in a small package, and many multi channel amps simply fail at providing that whilst trying to cover all the bases. With three gain stages in pedal form and a clean boost, all of which play nicely with each other, I can conjure up about a dozen permutations of gain from that system. In the course of a 75 minute set, I use all of them. I don't know of any amp that can do that.

Plus, they're colourful and cute.



Cheers.......................................... wahwah
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

Among other reasons, as long as Fender amps are still popular so will dirt pedals.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

A crunch box through a small tube amp is a different flavor than a modeller with a Marshall setting or a real Marshall. Might as well have all 3 types if you like all the sounds. For $50-60 it's not a huge investment. Most of the amps you list are too big or too expensive for what they're worth for a bedroom player like me. My personal ceiling price for an amp is around $400 used.

Having said that I'm not exactly keeping the industry moving with my one used pedal every 5 years approach.
 
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Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

It's an interesting question, for sure. It's a little more philosophical than it might seem; do you vie for the ultimate tone amp with the space to play it at proper RPMs, or do you find a suitable gain stage that'll fit in a lunch bag? Personally, I'm steadily going in the opposite direction; Why do people use amps anymore?

New designs in stompboxes allow for some very good sound coloring now. They've done a good job of extrapolating the major coloration of popular and famous amps and wedged them into 1590b boxes. In conjunction with a cab sim you can get functionally as close to the amp as you need running through a PA speaker. Digital units can do way more than that. There's an argument that the tone is disgustingly lifeless, and that tube amps are the only things that will make a good amp sound, but I disagree with that. Everything can be calculated out and emulated, including the clumsy power that tube amps put out. If you approach the problem in a modular way, the main thing that colors an amp's output is the tube at saturation and the speakers. Emulate the power tube saturation with either an array of passive components or a minitube putting out something like line level, then put that signal into a class D amp and into a guitar speaker like Vox does.

But getting back to the question at hand, I think at least 3/4s of the reason why people buy those low-gain, "transparent" pedals is that they think they need it and they don't particularly like the tone of the amp they spent a lot of money on at room volumes. Either that, or they're like me and like a gain that no amp offers which is either very heavy fuzz or the HM2 Swedish Murder Machine sound. Having said that, the Orange Dark Terror fizzes up pretty good, and Hovercraft amps made a 50 watt amp with a preamp specifically to sound like an HM2...so it's all possible.

There's another interesting question. Are amps emulating pedals now?
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

wahwah said:
Most of my work involves interstate air travel, and I gave up long ago on the inconsistency of hired back line, so stuff needs to be compact but good. I need a very good clean foundation in a small package, and many multi channel amps simply fail at providing that whilst trying to cover all the bases. With three gain stages in pedal form and a clean boost, all of which play nicely with each other, I can conjure up about a dozen permutations of gain from that system. In the course of a 75 minute set, I use all of them. I don't know of any amp that can do that.

Plus, they're colourful and cute.



Cheers.......................................... wahwah
Click to expand...

Even though I dont play the type of gigs that wahwah is talking about here, I have a similar philosophy. I have 3-5 gain pedals + a clean boost on my board and I combine them in many different ways to achieve a huge variety of tones. I love this set up with a single channel amp, its increadibly verastile.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

Matt42 said:
Even though I dont play the type of gigs that wahwah is talking about here, I have a similar philosophy. I have 3-5 gain pedals + a clean boost on my board and I combine them in many different ways to achieve a huge variety of tones. I love this set up with a single channel amp, its increadibly verastile.
Click to expand...

Same here, pretty much. Although one day I would like to get a nice high end amp with a solid clean channel and a great high gain channel, so that I don't always have to rely on pedals. Just not in my budget yet.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

Thanks for all the responses, guys. You're providing me with some great insight here.

I'm personally just not much of a pedal guy. I've tried boosted setups and such, but nothing feels as good to me as pure amp tone.. granted I use a VHT pittbull and Splawn, so my experience is probably atypical of your average player when you factor in all the people who don't gig in a heavy metal band.

This is why I asked!
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

I've never actually played a quality high gain amp, so I can only refer to you tube clips. Many times I can hear more dynamics and clarity with the amps, versus pedals, but there seem to be more and more high gain pedals getting closer, or just sounding badass regardless.

After all the distortion pedals I've been through (I was about to give up), I can't say enough good things about the empress heavy. It's just brutal, with many tonal options, and, as long as the gain not too far past 10:00, it has great dynamics. And tone and responsiveness that sounds real, not like so many high pedals that sound too extreme. Set the gain on 9:00 on the lower gain channel and then run a TS type pedal through and it;s just huge.

Still want a high end amp though. If anything just to compare.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

The only amps I've seen that deliver on both clean and dirt would be

Blackstar Series One 200
Rhodes Colossus 100
Fryette Sig:X
Fortin Meat head

I would say the Bogner Shiva and XTC might be up their but the gain can't get as aggressive as the other 4.

Also maybe the EVH 5153 as well but never really heard a decent demo of the clean channel.


Mind you all these amps need NO type of dirt pedals in front IMO to sound great.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

For me, it's just about different flavors. My Randall RM50 has the XTC module on the lead side, with more gain than I could ever use, but my Green Screamer, or other od pedals into the Blackface module are just other flavors for me to use. I don't really use them except at shows and rehearsals, so for me an od matters more how it boosts the amp, rather than as a stand alone distortion source.

I run my amp's clean side with enough od to crunch when needed, and the lead side so that the od pedal makes for a third channel. The od pedal on the amp's clean side is an alternate lead or crunch voice. That voice is usually kind of low fi comapred to the amp's od, and that is cool for dynamics.
 
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Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

TBH, I don't like the fact that an amp's gain channel is inseparable from the amp, and has been said, only sound right when cranked. I like that I can plug the same dirt box into several amps and sort of take that tone with me wherever I go, and get a combination of the amp tone and the dirt box tone. Even though my Mustang modeler has built in "OD" on top of the model amp gain, I don't want to use the on board OD because suppose I like it, it's still stuck in the amp. I'd rather form attachments with hardware that will at least outlive my cat.

I've noticed that a lot of the new entries on the market are sort of like Sans Amps, claiming to emulate the sound of a tall stack or an old tweed, so there's the reality of dense apartment living being at odds with the loudness of vintage equipment.

Also I think some player's aren't as picky about the character of the gain and can make almost any tone work for them. There are days when I don't care and I can make anything work well enough, but other days, usually when I'm playing alone, then suddenly I'm hyper critical and everything has to sound perfect.

I'm collecting cheap Tube Screamer clones even though I have a Maxon OD808, which is what they are trying to emulate, just because I like the small differences between them. The Biyang and Joyo clones are similar but different enough to be fun, and they have their own character, but I just got an EHX East River Drive, which I'm sad to say sounds so very close to the Maxon that it was a bit of let down in how it didn't bring much unique personality to the table, but it's great if you just want a Maxon OD808 for less than half the price.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

I've played a Laney VH100R. It's high gain but a different flavour, nothing like a mesa boogie or diezel high gain sound, just old school high gain sound. It did have a clean channel. Here in this case it would be cheaper to get a distortion pedal that does some modern high gain sound & use it on the clean channel of the amp. Makes needing another amp & cab or combo and lugging it around a less of a hassle.

These days people tend to use in ear monitors so I've seen most people running just a pedal board with something like a Tech21 character series pedal preamp into other effects & straight into the PA or mfx floorboards into the PA. Doesn't sound bad either.
 
Re: The distortion pedal - why are they still so popular?

I guess I do forget that most people who play electric guitar don't play in a band or gig.

That's just not the world I live in. Literally all the guys I know and hang out with who play are in all the bands that make up our regional scene. A high-wattage tube head and a 4x12 is pretty much standard issue equipment with these guys.

I mean, we all have little stuff we have at home for noodling around and such, but the real rig usually lives next to a drum set.

Now that I think about it, a nice little 22-watt or lower Fender tube combo and a nice OD like a Timmy or something would be really nice to have around the house....
 
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