The Overdrive Paradox #guitar #overdrive #timpierce

[ryndanriley]

I find that when youre pushing for more distortion, often what you actually want is more compression, a bump somewhere in the eq, and/or a volume boost.

[Ottophil]

I don’t even turn OD off when i go clean. I just pick lighter to compensate

[Nonameneeded]

I’m in my 40s started playing in my teen years in the 90s everything was distorted then but not as much as I thought and now I love just some dirty overdrive with high end for note recognition good video bro

[nickgjenkins]

Something I've run into is that I "need" more distortion at bedroom levels or through headphones. But I played a live show last month and was shocked at how much volume created the sound I was looking for. Had to dial back my overdrive a lot.

[DownUFO]

One thing lost to time is how common it was to have a dense, mid-heavy bass tone in classic recordings like this. Guitars in Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath recordings could be much more thin and moderate with their gain, because they were pairing with these dense earthy bass sounds and creating a massive presence from their combined tones. But modern treatment of bass tends to be centered around just bringing out more pure lows and mixing it much lower overall, so a similar guitar tone suddenly can’t carry a song like it used to. Bass and guitar need to compliment each other more, and play off each other to fill that sonic space with minimal ingredients.

[JonFrumTheFirst]

People think of Zeppelin because of Whole Lotta Love. I always though of that as the start of metal/dirt in rock. The solo is much cleaner, but it does have ut up when he pushes it.

[DenKulesteSomFins]

Also there is a lot of variability of the same guitarists using different amounts of gain. Angus Young used a lot of gain on Shoot to Thrill and Thunderstruck, with Malcolm dialing it back. They were more even in the 70s. Same thing with Guns n Roses, with slash often diming the gain and Izzy keeping it back. This generally gets the "biggest" total sound IMO

[donross]

Yes, Led Zeppelin and also early Heart albums were devotees of this. Roger Fischer had sustain for days from a fender twin turned all the way up. Listen to how clean the guitars are on “Cook with Fire” from Dog and Butterfly, or “Devil Delight” off the Magazine record. Hot glass in the amp, and that’s it. Slaughter was a heavy band that made a point of using lower gain and less pre-amp distortion, too. Can you say, “Nirvana?”Ultimately, even Days of the New managed to sound heavy AF…on mic’d acoustics.

[hambone]

we often mistake sustain, delay, reverb and decay for distortion

[AdamLevyGuitar]

Yes! "Underdrive" is the way.

[IndianNuclear]

AC/DC were kings of this. Loud but really quite clean guitar

[timothymcgovern]

IMHO, the best OD is a tube amp set for mild power amp breakup. Then you control the OD with your volume and playing dynamics. Bluesy stuff, drive that lets chords ring.

Throw in a boost or mild OD pedal for a more metal sound and Sanatana-like sustain.

[Subieghost]

Nirvana: Just turn all the dials all the way up.

[camillaquelladegliaggettiv]

The other big lesson is that, in a mix, bass is your enemy and mids are your friend. If you have bass behind you, you can afford to sound incredibly thin when it comes to bass and put all your stock into mids and a bit of highs. It's why people swear by Tube screamers and Klons and hate Big muffs in a mix, and why a tube screamer/SD1 into a big muff fixes everything wrong in the Big muff itself

[Willd-kiix]

I learned this playing live you really don't need that much Distortion if you play at a certain level of expertise

[fredsystra]

Oasis comes to mind with this… volume way up and slight overdrive and delay and it’s massive

[JawnCoffee]

I still say you want it so you can play light on the strings and maybe with the volume rolled back on your guitar just a little bit you can also hit the strings hard and get good distortion. Dynamics are key

[CryptToneMusic]

Danzig's twist of cain comes to mind for me on this one. It's not super distorted but its just a Super lead cranked up with a PRS

[googlespynetwork]

I learned this by realizing Angus Young actually doesn't use that much.

[CasualDegenerate-]

True story. Less compression let's you cut through the mix.