What's the worst distortion you've heard?

Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

Sludgenutz said:
The Big Muff from the 1970's. Noisy/hissy/compressy. Ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag...
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I'll take your 70's big muffs. :D I've got two 3rd gens, IC and transistor, but I need a Rams' Head and a Triangle to complete the collection.

Worst pedal? Boss OS-2. Maybe I'm still pissed I got ripped off on my first pedal purchase in HS. ;)
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

I made the mistake of being sucked into buying a Marshall MG, that was quite awful (distortion and quality in general). Most fender amps have pretty crappy distortion (awesome cleans tho). Worst pedal, probly Boss Metal Zone
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

J Moose said:
Oh man...

I dunno.

There's been soooooo many over the years with various degrees of suckditude... it'd be hard to pick a clear winner, or eh... wiener!

I also try to keep a clear mind that ALL sounds are valid in context, you never know when "bad" tone might be good especially when layering parts buuuut...

Among the winners for almost always sucking are newer solid-state Marshalls & valvestates... solid state Fender amps are pretty bad too. By comparison a PV Bandit is wicked rad. Crates? Sure...

POD's can be heinous...

DOD pedals blow. I bought a hot pink one when I was like 10 or 11... it was...

Interesting.

I think one of the worst ever was maybe in 2000 or 2001... I had a band come into my studio and they owned fairly crappy amps. I had a collection of VHT, Boogies, JCM800 etc...

The one guitarist jumped at the shot to play a Dual Recto... The other one was fairly adamant about playing his DOD pedal into a solid state PV, maybe a Bandit?

Sounded horrible.

I plugged him into a VHT Pitbull but he didn't like it. He liked "his" tone...

Maybe it was just the worst because I had to listen to it for two or three weeks and the other sound was just sooooo much better...

I dunno.

A few days into it I started thinking that kid might've been dropped on his head as baby... lol
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I know the feeling. I was in a band where the other 2 guitarists (one went to bass while I was in the band) liked their Peavey 1x12 and Kustom 1x12 into mini marshall mg 412s better than my Classic 30 into a big behringer 412. I guess my tone was just too natural for them. Probably not scooped enough. I ended up getting kicked out of that band. It was emo anyway, oh well.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

I've played wth a few dudes that have a Zoom 505, that has to be one of the worst. It sounds like an amp and a computer had a baby, then stuck it in the garbage disposal and sampled it for the tone.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

Axl H said:
Fulltone OCD.
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:laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2:




Those Danelectro mini pedals sounded absolutely horrible. I used to call them "Fisher-Price" effects.

The Dano Sitar Swami claimed to be a sitar emulator but in reality it sounded like a broken transistor radio with a crap flanger. Most awful pedal ever built.

The Fulltone Distortion Pro is AWFUL.



As far as stuff on record, I'd have to say that "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog" really sets the standard for lo-fi crappy guitar tones.

The guitarist from The Strokes (the one with a white strat) has horrendously bad lead guitar tones.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

wickenspoet said:
Everyone's always asking about the best distortion, I'm curious...

What's the worst distortion you've heard from a pedal, amp, or band in general?
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Probably a tie between two of my ex-bandmates.

A Fender 100 watt solid state head into a cheapo Marshall MG cab. Not to mention the mismatched impedance.

VS.

A Peavey Bandit or crappier combo into a cheapo Marshall MG cab. This one got the impedance correct I think.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

Fender Squier Strat inot a DS-1 into a POS Peavey PA system lol. Maybe that doesn't count. Most really **** and cheap practice amps that come in packages with guitars. A didn't really like a DS-1 into a line 6 spider clean channel.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

B2D said:
Those Danelectro mini pedals sounded absolutely horrible. I used to call them "Fisher-Price" effects.


The Fulltone Distortion Pro is AWFUL.
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dude "fisher-price," that's friggin priceless. :laugh: it's funny you said that because when i first saw them on musiciansfriend.com, i thought they looked like kids pedals or something.

the other thing is that i'm glad you said that about the distortion pro. if i would have said that, i would probably have been cyber-mobbed by at least 10 forum bros.

i tried that pedal several times and couldn't get a useable tone from it. i thought i just didn't know how to use it, but i guess i'm not the only one who feels that way.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

B2D said:
The Dano Sitar Swami claimed to be a sitar emulator but in reality it sounded like a broken transistor radio with a crap flanger. Most awful pedal ever built.
Click to expand...

Could be.

Probably IS too...

But I wanna try one again.

See if there's an "alternate" use for it.


The guitarist from The Strokes (the one with a white strat) has horrendously bad lead guitar tones.
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I dunno. Couple of you have ragged on the Strokes.

It fits within the context of the band.

What if we said Warren Haynes or Thurston Moore had bad tone.

I'm sure some people would agree...

Others are gonna think it's rad.

IMO ~ If it fits within the music... it's not bad.

"Bad" is strictly a personal judgement.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

barbarianbrute said:
dude "fisher-price," that's friggin priceless. :laugh: it's funny you said that because when i first saw them on musiciansfriend.com, i thought they looked like kids pedals or something.

the other thing is that i'm glad you said that about the distortion pro. if i would have said that, i would probably have been cyber-mobbed by at least 10 forum bros.

i tried that pedal several times and couldn't get a useable tone from it. i thought i just didn't know how to use it, but i guess i'm not the only one who feels that way.
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Ok I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought they looked like toys or something. :D

Every person I've ever heard rejecting the Distortion Pro said the same thing... farty, woofy, no clarity, no harmonic content. This ranged from everywhere to amatuers to pro session players.

J Moose said:
I dunno. Couple of you have ragged on the Strokes.

It fits within the context of the band.

What if we said Warren Haynes or Thurston Moore had bad tone.

I'm sure some people would agree...

Others are gonna think it's rad.

IMO ~ If it fits within the music... it's not bad.

"Bad" is strictly a personal judgement.
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I'm thinking specifically of the "Last Night" solo - thin, screechy, lifeless, no real body at all.

Just my opinion of course, but there are some things you can't change my mind about. Sometimes bad is bad.

Will some people like it? Yeah of course. I agree, it is all subjective. Which is why I laughed my ass off @ Axl for saying he thought the OCD was one of the worst overdrive pedals. Personally I think it's the best one I've ever heard.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

Any distortion from an 80's SS processor, like Digitech DSP, Alesis, Zoom, DOD (Donnie Osmond Distortion), etc.

For amps...
Fender M80
Carvin X100B
Randall SS amps
Fender Red Knob SS amps
Peavey 'silver panel' SS amps with the "Saturation" gain control. LOL
Marshall Valvestate and MOSFET amps.
Behringer anything
Peavey XXL and XXX
L6 Spider
Mesa Studio and Quad preamps
Fender Hot Rod gain channel.
 
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Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

The strokes sound is almost synth like. Listen to 12 51 its not what I would use but it works with there music in case you can't tell there sound isn't exactly clear and sweet they tend to fill the vocals up with a tranisistory distortiony sound too.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

One of those Digitech floorboards. YUCK!

Other than that, probally solid state PV's or Fenders back in the day.
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

B2D said:
I'm thinking specifically of the "Last Night" solo - thin, screechy, lifeless, no real body at all.
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Ahhhh... but see...

It's stuck in your head...

So how "bad" is it really?

Wouldn't that make it "good" on some level?

FWIW ~ I can agree with about 70% of GJ's list above for sucky things...

Boogie Studio & Quad preamps though???
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

J Moose said:
DOD pedals blow. I bought a hot pink one when I was like 10 or 11... it was...
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a DOD FX59 Thrash Master

Had the same one ... horrible horrible distortion. It did have an interesting feedback though
 
Re: What's the worst distortion you've heard?

The Boss XT-2 is pretty excessive when it comes to that typical "grainy" sound of Boss Ddistortions. It can get about as heavy as the Metal Zone, but there is only one setting for this, since its bizarre EQ knobs seem to be wired before the gain knob, rather than after it. When used as a regular rock distortion rather than a heavy distortion, the tones are more usable and variable.
 
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