Tone 101 - Distortion

Distortion.  It’s red hot and it’s awesome. There is hardly an effect more popular than distortion. It’s in most every genre of popular music these days, and for good reason, it’s a killer sound.

Guitarists especially love distortion because it gives us magical sustain.  It can let the guitar really sing, or sound huge in the low end. It’s like steroids for the electric guitar. And it’s a ridiculous amount of fun. 

Distortion goes hand in hand with our previous lesson on power chords.  Fire up some distortion and riff away. It’s pretty hard to beat in terms of having a ball on the guitar. 

So what is distortion?

Distortion is literally the sound of your guitar signal being pushed to the point of distorting the sound. It’s a function of gain (sensitivity). This is achieved by adding a lot of signal gain before the sound is amplified, known as a pre-amp. This is typically done in one of two ways:

1.   Distortion pedal - external pre-amp

2.   Distortion or dirty channel on amplifier (built in distorted pre-amp)

Distortion pedals and channels can be adjusted to you liking in 3 main ways:

• Gain - increase or decrease the sensitivity of the guitar signal. Obviously, more gain yields more sustain and texture, and is typically accompanied by increased volume. 
• Equalizer or tone - EQ settings allow you control what “kind” of distortion sound you get. Do you want the mid’s scooped out like 90’s metal? Do you want the high’s screaming like 80’s hair band? Tinker with it. You’ll find stuff you like. 
• Volume - most pre-amps (pedals or built in) have separate volume controls. This is so you don’t have to kill anyone to get great tone (like you used to have to)

General tips for when using distortion:

1.    Start with all settings neutral, in the middle, or at “12:00.”  Adjust from there to find your desired sound. 

2.    The bridge pickup provides the most bite, while the neck pickup is the smoothest.  When riffing it is most common to use the bridge pickup. Also, the bridge pickup tends to be a little “hotter,” so it is also preferred for getting the maximum cut in your distorted sound. 

3.    Humbucking pickups tend to be most controllable under heavy distortion. While many great singe coil players use heavy distortion, single coil pickups do tend to hum and sound thin, thus the name “humbucker.”  Humbuckers are simply two single coil pickups wired together. They are fatter sounding and feed back less.