How To Get A Good Distortion Sound On Your Guitar Amp

Easy Distortion settings
It is fairly easy to achieve a distorted sound from most guitar amplifiers. If your amplifier has separate gain and volume controls, it should be quite simple. Make sure your guitar is plugged into the amp and the volume on the guitar is at 100%. Turn the volume control on the amp all the way down, turn the gain control up to 75%, then turn the volume control up until you achieve the desired volume level. fenderblender.jpg The tone of the guitar should be distorted. If your amp has tone controls you can turn up the mid to hear the distortion more clearly, or if your amp only had bass and treble controls, you can turn both of those down a little to hear more distortion. Adjusting the gain control will give you more or less distortion. Your guitar volume knob will also give you some control over the sound of the distortion, as will the pickup selector switches and tone controls.
Types of Distortion
Depending on the sound of the distortion, you may classify it as Overdrive, Distortion, Fuzz, Crunch, Clipping etc. The style of music is also used to describe the sound, especially by manufacturers of effect pedals..Blues, Grunge, Metal, etc. It is all the same thing applied in various degrees.
Multi Channel Amps
Many amps have separate channels to facilitate an easy switch from clean to distorted playing. Some have two or more completely independent channels with their own controls to set for different tones. Then you can just switch between the channels as desired. Other amps just have a distortion button which kicks in a high gain circuit instantly. It basically achieves the same thing with less fine control.
Distortion Pedals
If your amp has neither the dual channels, the distortion switch nor the separate gain knob, or if you are not pleased with the tone achieved by setting up the gain structure for an over-driven sound, you will need to use a distortion pedal. There are literally hundreds of choices. There are warm blues pedals, death metal pedals, Jimi Hendrix fuzz face pedals, pedals with real tubes in them. The most popular is probably the Boss DS1, but it is not the best by any means. You really have to try them our for yourself to find the tone you are trying to achieve. That is why we recommend trying to achieve it from your guitar amplifier first. Popular pedals include the Fender Blender, MXR +, ProCo Rat, Danelectro T-bone, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Boss Metal and Super Overdrive, Rocktron, Marshall Bluesbreaker, Arbiter FuzzFace and others.
Why Overdrive Happens
Overdrive or Distortion happens because a guitar amplifier really has 2 stages of amplification. A preamp stage and a power amp stage. By turning the volume of the preamp stage all the way up, we are overloading the input of the power amp stage and causing it to distort. The effects of this are not always desirable and the tone or timbre of the distortion achieved may or may not be the type you are looking for. The volumes that we set in each stage of amplification is altogether called the "gain structure". There are many different sounding distortions that can be achieved by overloading the amplifiers in different ways, with different types of components.
Early guitar amp tech
In the beginning, all amplifiers use vacuum tubes in their circuits. They were not designed to be overdriven, but many guitar players accidentally found out that if they set up the gain structure in different ways, they could get a cool new sound. Sometimes it was a crunchy tone that seemed to swell up and growl just when they played hard. Sometimes it was a constant warm fuzz that bathed every note in glorious sax-like harmonics. Sometimes it was a clear, bell-like sound that had subtle pleasant overtones not existing in the original guitar's timbre. These tubes, which were the heart of the amplification process, had a way of pleasantly surprising you when you tried to turn the volume up too loud or force an already loud signal through them.
Today's Technology and Guitar Amps
Today, virtually all electronics that need to amplify sound, from car stereos to televisions and ipods, do not use tube technology to do it. They use newer technology like transistors and microchips. But many guitar amps still use tubes because of the pleasant overdrive and harmonic overtones generated by them. Less expensive amps use the transistor technology and overdrive is still achievable with these amps, but the tone is better from tube amps by far. So much so that many digital amplifiers emulate different tube overdrive sounds. Some guitar pedals have real tubes in them and some such as the Behringer V-tone use digital circuits that emulate tube distortion. The classic amplifier distortion sounds that everyone tries to emulate are the Fender (6V6 tubes, crunches when played hard, dirty when fully overdriven, warm harmonic overtones when clean), Marshall (EL34 tubes, sweeter lead overdrive tone at loud levels, good bass response and crunch even when driven hard), Vox (Heavily biased tubes, similar to Marshall but sweeter overtones and more mellow distortion). Many computer recording programs also have distortion and amplifier emulation algorithms but it is recommended to get the desired sound from the guitar and amp before recording.
Distortion and Playing Technique and the Power Chord
When playing a guitar with distortion, it is important to know how distortion affects the sound of single notes compared to chords. Single notes will be heard clearly and the pitch of the note played should be accurate to the instrument itself. However, chords played through distortion will contain inter-modulated notes which may or may not sound good. An intermodulated note is another tone that is created by the distortion in addition to the notes that you played. The amount or type of distortion will determine the volume of these inter-modulated notes. They may not be in tune with the chords played and the more notes played in the chord, the more inter-modulated notes there will be. This often sounds very cool, especially when chords are kept to a maximum of 2 or 3 notes. When chords of 6 notes are played however, the results are usually muddy and undesirable. This is what gave rise to the infamous "Power Chord". Rock bands started playing two note chords that were an interval of a perfect 5th. I.E. a G and a D, or an E and a B. These 2-note chords, when distorted, produce an intermodulatory note that is pleasantly in tune with the chord. So it doesn't wash out the other instruments in the band and muddy up the song or throw off the singer's pitch, or make the audience feel like they're hearing a jet plane take off in the background. Of course multi-note chords and distortion can be super cool at times, but you have to pay attention to the sound coming out of the amp and you need to keep your distortion settings in check so you can duplicate the sound later. otherwise that chord progression for the song you wrote in the garage with the Marshall Stack may not translate as well to your blues combo in your bedroom the next day.
For single notes and solos, use the distortion to your advantage. You should have more sustain to hold notes longer and really milk them with vibrato and bends. Distortion will really accentuate the harmonics that you make when you attack the strings with your pick at different angles. there is a certain compression that happens with most types of distortion that will also accentuate sounds such as fret noise and finger or pick tapping on the body of the guitar or pickups.
Tone and Distortion
Distortion affects different audio frequencies in different ways. Guitars have a fairly limited frequency range compared to many instruments. Most of the sound of the guitar happens in what we call the "mid" frequency range. Similar the range of a human voice. Not too much bass and the upper range doesn't get to high. Most types of distortion, especially the kind you achieve by overdriving the power amplifier stage of your guitar amp, accentuates the mid range. The bass often becomes muddy or flat anf the highs get a little dull. Distortion pedals usually overcome this with some sort of tone circuit and most amps have tone controls that you can use to mitigate this. Be aware that you are changing th tonality of the guitar when you overdrive the amp and use the tone controls to get the sound you desire.