The Dirt on Distortion with Keeley, JHS, Wampler, and Fender

Date:2020/3/3 11:54:28 Hits:

The argument over who was the first to utilize distortion on their guitar is one that will surely rage on indefinitely. But what’s not debatable is the fact that, from the second it engulfed the guitar tones of rock ‘n’ roll, it has remained an essential ingredient in nearly every electric guitarist’s tone arsenal.

Through the years, defining distortion — and how it applies to electric guitar tone — has become an adventure in and of itself. From the early shredded speakers of the Kinks to Hendrix’s volcano eruption of fuzz through Marshalls to the birth of high gain with Van Halen I and the pulverizing tones of modern metal titans like Ola Englund, distortion comes in enough varieties to rival the 31 Flavors at Baskin-Robbins.

Yet interestingly enough, if you trace all these tones back to their genesis, you’ll find most are simply evolutions of a few tonal standbys that guitarists just can’t seem to get enough of. So we started wondering: what were the first pedals that sparked the wildfire of distortion, overdrive, and fuzz pedals that are available today? What is it about this handful of pedals that keeps them selling like hotcakes today? And what’s coming next?

There are plenty of extremely knowledgeable guitarists at Sweetwater who would love to chime in, and we could go on and on about what we think. But we thought we’d put those questions to people who are the undisputed masters of electric guitar pedal design. So we asked Fender’s Stan Cotey, JHS’s Josh Scott, and Wampler’s Brian Wampler to weigh in with their own creative analogies, while Keeley’s Robert Keeley delivers humorous one-liners that cut right to the heart of the matter. We hope this sheds some light on the past, present, and future state of the most iconic and groundbreaking distortion, overdrive, and fuzz pedals ever created.

Stan Cotey
Vice President of Product Innovation
Fender Musical Instruments

Stan first made his mark at Fender by designing signature Tweed combos like the much-lauded Eric Clapton and the Edge. He also had heavy involvement in the Mustang line of digital modeling amplifiers. Fender has chosen Cotey to use his expertise to lead the design of their flagship line of effects pedals.

Josh Scott
Founder/Owner/Designer
JHS Pedals

Josh Scott got his start modding and improving upon existing designs, while building his company into one of the most respected names in electric guitar effects. From the company’s Angry Charlie amp-in-a-box to their revolutionary Colour Box channel strip/fuzz/EQ, JHS strives to offer guitarists top-tier tone while always pushing the sonic envelope.

Brian Wampler
Founder/Owner/Designer
Wampler Pedals

When it comes to the gritty sound of overdrive, distortion, and fuzz, there may be nobody more respected than Brian Wampler. His ability to authentically capture a specific amplifier or player’s tonal magic in a stompbox is unparalleled in the industry.

Robert Keeley
Founder/Owner/Designer
Robert Keeley Engineering

There’s a good chance you have a pedal designed by Robert Keeley on your board. Though he always makes waves with his beloved compressor pedals, Keeley’s legendary Blues Driver mods alone (now available as the Keeley Super Phat Mod pedal) plant him firmly on the Mount Rushmore of gain-pedal designers.

At its core, what do you think are the most fundamental elements of a dirt pedal?
Cotey: Distortion is a nonlinear process, so the most fundamental element, to me, is the part of the circuit that performs the nonlinearity. A typical distortion pedal will have some amount of filtering in the input stage to remove bass energy or push treble energy, the nonlinear element itself, and then filtering after. But there are lots of more complex variations available, including our Pugilist Distortion, which allows layering of two different distorted signals for added complexity.

Scott: To some extent, distortion circuits are essentially broken circuits. They’re purposely breaking the signal. So the most fundamental element of a distortion pedal is how it clips. Some do it with cascaded transistor stages, some do it with clipping diodes, some do it with what’s called “feedback loop clipping” or “hard clipping”; there are all kinds of ways to do it. So the most fundamental element of a distortion pedal is the fact that it creates distortion, and the way that a circuit creates distortion is by clipping the waveform.

Wampler: The lines of overdrive and distortion get blurred quite a bit. What most people call “gain” is usually more of a function of clipping a signal more. Generally a softer clipped signal is considered overdrive, a harder clipped signal is referred to as distortion, and a super-hard clipped signal is called fuzz. Just like on our Triple Wreck pedal, which has the ability to be a tight distortion OR a fuzz, it’s fairly easy to turn a tight distortion into a very loose and gravely fuzz by changing the signal attributes at the input.

Keeley: Besides the color of the box and the graphic on it? I guess the name.

Taking that into account, what makes the great dirt pedals truly great?
Cotey: The things I find important in a great distortion pedal include: how connected I feel like I am to the note; how well it conveys my playing nuances. I think a pedal’s dynamic performance is really important — the ability to translate a broad range of tones and techniques, similar to what a great amp can do. I also like it when pedals have enough range on their tone controls to work with many different amps, when the pedal is reasonably quiet from a noise perspective, and hopefully the circuit is well-behaved so that it can behave consistently.

Scott: I like my distortion pedal to have a lot of midrange. I like it to have a rather odd frequency scoop. For me, a great distortion pedal is one that enhances what my amp and guitar sound like, and it has to stack really well with other pedals. But these kinds of questions are almost impossible to answer because everybody has a personal preference. It’s like when you go on a forum and someone says “Best compressor pedal — go!” It’s not really possible to answer, IMHO.

Wampler: A great distortion pedal is one that inspires a person when they play it. When the sound of it, combined with the feel of it, brings inspiration or happiness in some way, then that’s a good pedal … for that person. I’ll elaborate a bit. There is no best. There’s no best song, there’s no best band, there even is no such thing — arguably — as a best pizza! What there is instead is the “best” for a person, at a particular time, with a particular need.

Keeley:
The amount of gain.
The grain or texture to the distortion.
The frequency response and what frequencies are emphasized.
The dynamics or lack of dynamics.
The controls, or the user interface in which to explore that style or range of tones.
The fit, or how well it fits into a style of music.

Which pedals do you think are the starting points/parents/roots of the distortion family tree?
Cotey: Distorted amps happened before pedals. Historically, the FZ-1, Tone Bender, Fuzz Face, Octavia, Big Muff, Distortion +, and Overdrive II/Tube Screamer all offered something different and fun. All have gone on to be cloned.

Scott: Without a doubt, the fuzz pedal. I was at a soundcheck with Michael McDonald, he uses several of my pedals, and he called every drive pedal a “fuzzbox.” For him, that’s what it is. It’s a fuzzbox because that’s how it started. That is the root of distortion. In the history of pedals, the Maestro Fuzz, the Fuzz Face, the Tone Bender, that whole family — that is the root of distortion. You get into the Big Muff later. In the ’70s and ’80s, you had the BOSS DS-1, things like that. So you evolve, and everything comes from those roots.

Wampler: From a brand point of view, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi, Ross Distortion (or MXR Distortion +), the Fuzz Face and Ibanez Tube Screamer, and probably a Pro Co Rat, in my opinion anyway. Historically I know that’s not accurate, but those seem to be some of the most popular cloned pedals over the years.

Keeley: The Rangemaster, Tone Bender, and Maestro Fuzz tones are the first effectoids out of the Great Pedal Rift Valley.

What is it about these classic circuits and pedals that continues to make them so popular and so often cloned?
Cotey: There is some amount of tribal DNA involved. We’ve all heard these tones so many times that they are imprinted in our musicians’ DNA at this point as “what things should sound like,” much the same as classic amp distortion.

Scott: I think people want to sound like their favorite songs. People play electric guitar because they like the way it sounds. They like the way it sounds because of classic circuits, so it’s kind of a circle that will probably go on forever. People have unique ways of doing takes on those circuits, so it’s still a fun thing.

Wampler: I think it’s just how many of us are wired — to look for some sort of familiarity when faced with something different. Personally, I enjoy designing new things from the ground up, but I also enjoy the classics equally as much. Sometimes when I’m noodling around, I’ll plug into an inexpensive BOSS OD-1 or an SD-1 just for the fun of it, because they do sound good!

Keeley: Commonly used circuits are easy to modify and build. It’s highly likely that the build will distort in some form after initial assembly, so success is almost guaranteed.

Why do you think the different forms of distortion continue to be such an essential ingredient to guitarists’ tone?
Cotey: I think they continue to be essential because they take the guitar well and truly away from its clean roots and can give it a voicing more like a horn. To me, a distorted guitar feels like a different instrument than a clean guitar and can provide a lot of inspiration when you’re playing.

Scott: A guitarist has a clean tone and a distorted tone. That’s the nature of electric guitar. I think that if you are building a house, overdrive and distortion are the foundation, then the effects — things like time-based effects, compressors, all those other things — they kind of make your rooms.

Wampler: I tend to look at overdrive and distortion as the main course of a meal. You know you want chicken, but there’s a thousand ways to make it taste great — or awful. With overdrive and distortion, there is an endless variety of tones, none better than the other, but each one inspiring to the artist and something intangible that just simply feels good under the fingers.

Keeley: The beauty in overdrive and distortion is that they are like clothes. Most players dig at least a little bit of coloration to their tone; some like to go naked. Many consider drive and gain to be essential, because it adds the proper voicing for the music style they play.

Many feel it has all been done in distortion pedal design. Do you agree, and what do you think is the future of distortion?

Cotey: Heck no! I think there is a lot of work still to be done with analog, and I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface on what you can do with digital signal processing (DSP). I can certainly imagine hybrids between those two worlds as well. In the future? We have a large number of ideas in development, and we want to continue to push into new tonal territory.

Scott: Asking, “Has it all been done in distortion pedal design” is kind of like asking “Has it all been done in chicken alfredo design?” I think people have distorted things in almost every imaginable way, but the beauty of it is that guitar players change year to year to year. It’s a lot like how you kind of lose your appetite for a particular dish. Going back to chicken alfredo, maybe you have chicken alfredo all the time and you get tired of it and you become a lasagna person for two years. Then, all of a sudden, you go somewhere and you get chicken alfredo and you’re amazed by how good it is again. I think that’s how it works.

Wampler: Not at all! In fact, I have numerous dirt pedal designs that I’ve created over the years. I just find it fascinating and entertaining to create them. I’m a dirt nerd I guess. As far as the future, that’s a great question. It’s possible, in a VR world, that companies like us will start creating instruments, amps, and effects in that realm, I suppose. In the near future, things will continue to get more technical; then it’ll go back to its roots, just like it has numerous times. Remember in the ’80s when everyone had refrigerator-sized racks? Then the ’90s came and we all got rid of that stuff and went back to the basics. Then DSP started becoming more prevalent and the Fractals, Kempers, and Helix pedals of the world started becoming the go-to. It’ll come around at some point. It’s all cyclical.

Keeley: No, distortions of nature are infinite.

Finally, are there any myths surrounding overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedals you’d like to debunk?

Cotey: My biggest pet peeve is that everything that can be done has been done and all that is left are variations on established themes. I think there is a lot of ground still to cover. Also, music will continue to change and musicians will have new and different desires and needs. Necessity is often at the start of invention, and some amount of newness will be driven by problem-solving, while some will be driven by curiosity and imagination.

Scott: Probably the importance of certain ICs in Tube Screamers, etc.

Wampler: I debunk quite a bit in our YouTube videos, but I’ll make a short list:
— Tubes are not always better, especially in a pedal
— An IC chip does not mean it’s a digital distortion
— A 4558 op-amp inside of a pedal does not mean it’s a Tube Screamer clone.
— Just because a pedal has a noninverting gain stage with diodes that are soft clipping does not mean the pedal is a Tube Screamer clone.
— All true bypass pedals without a buffer in the chain will take a bit of high end from your signal. You want at least one buffer or a pedal that’s buffered bypass. That’ll help keep signal integrity. Just make sure you buffer after most fuzz pedals.
— Not all distortion or overdrive pedals are intended to sound like amp distortion. Rather, they should be treated as a different distorted type of sound, not unlike how we view fuzz in relation to a distorted amp tone.

Keeley: What do you mean?! All stompboxes are mythical.

The Pedals That Started It All
Josh Scott and Brian Wampler were kind enough to give us their personal opinions about some of the most well-known circuits in history.

BOSS DS-1
Scott: The BOSS DS-1 is about as classic as it gets. If you are talking about distortion, it is literally the pedal that says “distortion” on it. I learned a lot from modding those. It’s an essential circuit, as far as the history of pedals.

Wampler: It’s one of my favorite pedals to mod. A couple of capacitor and resistor changes and this inexpensive pedal can sound fantastic.

Pro Co Rat
Scott: Pro Co Rat is one of my favorite pedals. It’s a really cool mix of fuzz and distortion, and as the story goes, it was an accident. American-made and designed. It’s one of my favorites.

Wampler: I love this pedal. A nice overdrive with the gain below 12:00 and a fuzz past 12:00. Nice!

Ibanez Tube Screamer
Scott: There is probably no more “known” pedal than the Tube Screamer. There’s more clones of the Tube Screamer than any other pedal, I would place a bet on that probably.

Wampler: The Godfather of the “boutique” pedal movement. A great-sounding pedal. Paired with Blackface amps it sounds lovely.

BOSS Metal Zone
Scott: The BOSS Metal Zone is one of the most made-fun-of pedals, but still, they have sold, like, 50 billion of them. (Editor’s note: We cannot verify those sales numbers.) People love it, they just won’t admit it. It’s actually amazing, the tone circuit in it is phenomenal, it’s genius, and the pedal sounds great, despite how people joke around with it. Sometimes, I wonder if people have actually played it because it is a really good pedal.

Wampler: While it’s been the butt of many a joke over the years, a few mods can make it fantastic as well. I’ve also put out some videos on YouTube showing how to turn it into an EQ pedal, an overdrive, and just a simple buffer that turns the LED on/off.

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
Scott: I perceive it to be one of the first cultural pedals, almost pop-culture. It’s super influential. Nineties grunge owes a debt to that pedal as a whole — the whole sound of it. And that pedal is almost 50 years old, so it’s one of the older designs. Mike Matthews and the Electro-Harmonix stuff have always been innovative.

Wampler: A wonderful fuzz. My favorite is the transistor version, but the op-amp version is great too. Much fun to be had with this one when modifying as well.

Dallas Arbiter (Dunlop) Fuzz Face
Scott: It’s one of the earliest designs ever. We at JHS refer to that circuit often in engineering and R&D. Our Pollinator is based on it, and it’s one of our favorite broken-circuit designs. Take transistors and go into overload mode. It’s just amazing. I prefer the germanium transistors to silicon transistors.

Wampler: Some of these are wonderful. I think a lot has to do with tolerances and the transistor types and tolerances, but regardless it’s a heckuvalot of fun to play.

Marshall Bluesbreaker
Scott: The [JHS] Morning Glory is based on this one. I used Bluesbreakers for years and years. It’s one of my favorite pedals. It has to be the black box version made in England. It’s a really quiet pedal, it can be noisy, and there’s questionable manufacturing from unit to unit. But it’s one of the best, if not the best, low-gain drives out there.

Wampler: The often copied “transparent overdrive” pedal. It’s a cool little circuit. I like to do high-gain versions of these as well for fun.

EHX LPB-1
Scott: It’s as classic as any of these other ones, although it’s not really talked about because an LPB-1 is actually how an overdrive starts. It’s kind of an essential recipe for a lot of circuit designers. It’s a common emitter boost circuit. You see it all over the place — super common, super stable, and awesome. I think an LPB-1 is still, like, $40 to this day, so it’s a phenomenal boost pedal.

Wampler: Many times I’ll see people talk about a simple NPN boost circuit and call it the LPB-1 clone. It was great in the era it was created, and still good today, but it’s kind of silly to see some build “boutique” $300 versions of these.

Honorable Mentions
You may find yourself wondering why a certain pedal didn’t make the article. Rest assured, we thought of them. But we wanted to primarily focus on the pedals that started a given style, genre, or sound, and that are still being produced today. Here are some of the most iconic pedals that we feel also deserve a tip of the hat.

Klon Centaur
Foxx Tone Machine
Fulltone OCD
BOSS Blues Driver
BOSS SD-1
Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster

What would YOU include as an Honorable Mention?
Cotey: I was always partial to classic British Coloursound products, and one of my all-time favorite fuzzes is the Foxx Tone Machine, which is another pedal design that has been borrowed frequently.

Scott: The Klon, probably. You almost have to put it in there at this point. I can’t think of anything else though, there are tons of great classic pedals.

Wampler: Maybe the Klon. Though it hasn’t been around as long as the others, it will most likely go down in history with just as much legendary status.

Keeley: The ZVex Super Hard On and Fuzz Factory — Excellent use of circuit-bending creativity
Fulltone OCD and Fulldrive — Super-popular pedal at a killer price, universally great distortion
Soul Food — Amazing price on a boutique classic; the Klon
Timmy — Paul Cochrane’s design, killer sounding and often ripped off
BOSS Blues Driver — Duh
MXR Distortion Plus
Analogman King of Tone
Nobels ODR-1
Keeley Oxblood

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The Dirt on Distortion with Keeley, JHS, Wampler, and Fender

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