Distortion vs. Overdrive - what's the difference?

I'm taking a look at the difference between two related effects that have a lot of differences despite their similarities. I'll try to help clarify the difference between the two and we'll then listen to some sound samples using the ModTone MT-OD Dyno Drive Overdrive pedal (http://tinyurl.com/2dnjoyg) and the T-Rex Tonebug Distortion pedal (http://tinyurl.com/2f447jf).

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• distortion
• overdrive
• explained
• modtone
• dyno
• drive
• t-rex
• tonebug

[gbcr09]

Pretty good video! Have some questions though: When you took the overdrive "drive" to the max, you got the heavier sound of this pedal? I mean, by turning the tone and level to the max too? And, if you have only a distortion pedal, can you try to reproduce (not with too much fidelity, of course) the sound of the overdrive pedal(since it is basically a lighter distortion)?

[macdaddymusicstore]

@gbcr09 Turning the tone produces more high end tone which can add some grit to the tone, but may also make it thin and to brittle sounding depending on the guitar/amp setup. You can get some tones similar to OD with lower distortion settings, but they're not identical.

[Caaaiqueee]

What is your amp ?

[macdaddymusicstore]

@Caaaiqueee Mesa Nomad 45 1x12"

[macdaddymusicstore]

@Caaaiqueee Mesa Nomad 45 1x12"

[nmssis]

what if you use the them in series? like both on at the same time?

[macdaddymusicstore]

@nmssis that's been discussed a bit in the comments here already. Essentially you'd end up with a more saturated distortion tone. A lot of it would depend on the individual pedal settings and which order you ran the pedals in, but that's basically what you'd get.

[darkcovery]

what chord do you play ? it sounds cool :) !

[Chapin10fc]

hey those birds i heard are the same i hear every morning at my house ;| ,guess its the same everywhere huh.. haha

[Csharpguitarist]

awesome vid, you sound like Raymond from everyone likes Raymond jaja

[theonlyschmidty]

tubescreamers are awesome. I never tried two in series because one always works great. In fact, I've found it to be better than any other Boss stombox or many other brands I've tried. The old green tubescreamers that is. They are by far the, "Best of the bunch! "

[TheDancingSaxophone]

@nmssis Stevie Ray Vaughan used two tubescreamers (overdrives) in series. :) I tried that with two overdrives the other day when I was playing through my friend's setup, and I really loved it. It also gives you a lot of tonal variety because you can change the level, tone, amount of gain, etc. of each, giving you many tonal possibilities.

[gbcr09]

@macdaddymusicstore Ok man, thank you so much!

[Caaaiqueee]

@macdaddymusicstore Thank you!