Triacs

[boyersdad]

Has anyone ever tried a triac or diac in or as a clipping stage?

As far as I understand, a triac is turned on and off by means of a gate voltage being applied. Does that mean that it's binary? Either full on or full off? Can the amount of current let through be controlled by the gate bias? If it could, that could be used to adjust the amount of clipping to some degre right?

Are there other uses for these things in the stompbox world?

I found a few inside of an energy efficient lightbulb (full of caps, resistors, inductors and triacs)! Very cool