4558 substitutes which have more gain ?

[Gil]

Which IC's are substitutes for the 4558 but put out much more gain than the standard 4558 ?

[Mark Hammer]

None.

The gain is not an inherent property of the op-amp.  It depends on the values of the components connected to it that are used to set the gain.

All op-amps will have what is referred to as a "gain/bandwidth product", and this is usually illustrated via a graph in the datasheet.  The graph will show how much gain is the most one can push the op-amp to deliver at a given bandwidth.  So, if you need the op-amp to amplify content between 1hz and 100khz, you will not be able to get as much gain out of it as you could if the expectations were only 1hz-1khz or even a mere 10khz bandwidth.

Without wishing to sound condescending, though, it is my experience that when people ask the sort of question you did, they are all too often confusing "distortion" with "gain".  If you consider the clipping threshold of a pair of normal diodes, and the amplitude of the average guitar signal, coming straight from the jack without any volume attenuation, you need to apply somewhere around at least a gain of 50x to hear any appreciable clipping, but you don't need to apply that much more than a gain of 120x or so to hear obvious distortion.  A Tube Screamer, set to max, applies a gain of 118x.

Given that a guitar signal's bandwidth is well under 10khz, the maximum gain/bandwidth product for the chip is miles away.  Certainly it takes gain to push the diodes into clipping, but not nearly as much gain as any normal op-amp is capable of delivering.

[Processaurus]

To add a bit  to Mark's explanation (that changing the opamp won't add gain to a Tube screamer circuit) though the tube screamer circuit limits the maximum gain of the opamp, there is the open loop gain limit for real world opamps (vs an ideal opamp, capable of infinite gain), which in the case of the RC4558 is about 75dB at 1kHz (about 5500x of voltage gain).   Something like the TL082 is rated for a minimum of 94dB, considerably more.  Opamps, even crummy ones like the 4558  , have obscene amounts of gain available.

[Mark Hammer]

Although, just to supplement a little more, one runs into interesting cases like the Rat, which partly achieves its sound by deliberately choosing an op-amp (LM308) with limited gain-bandwidth product and hemming it in even further by means of the compensation cap, then asking it to provide gain which is at the edge or even beyond its capabilities.

I.E., sometimes the sound we savour involves LESS capability for gain rather than more.  After all, when you thnk of it, in a sense, distortion is inherently "failing to deliver" clean gain.

[WGTP]

What effect/affect does using a mosfet rail to rail op amp have?