Tone 201 - Dirt And Boost

Ah - time for a little dirt.  Good!

“Dirt” is a midway point between a clean and distorted tone. It provides all the grit you need to sound big and chunky, but not go full-on face melting. 

You’ll get increase sustain and sensitivity, but not an overwhelming amount of bleed or saturation that you get with heavy distortion. This makes for great rhythm and lead sounds, and is a very common sound for guitarists of all genres. 

Now “boosting” is akin to playing with dirt or “overdrive” because you are keeping the same sound but adding just a little fuel to the fire for leads. This is accomplished with either a boost pedal or backing down on your guitar volume during rhythm parts and jumping up the volume during lead parts. 

This is commonly referred to as “leaving headroom.”

The main difference between these two approaches is that boosting pushes the existing sound from the guitar, where adjusting the volume on the guitar actually cleans up the tone a bit when you bring down the volume. 

Either way, have fun messing around with some dirt!