Enough distortions? Time to give it a rest?

[pinkjimiphoton]

word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mark Hammer]

Don't get me wrong.  I like overdrive.  I like distortion.  I like fuzz.  I like it glitchy.  I like it searing.  I like it smooth.  I like it scooped.  I like it throaty.  I have dozens of the stupid things.  But dammit, don't you think that after some 10-20 thousand variations and products, it's enough already?  Do we NEED yet another one?

No one here needs to defend use of distortion.  Like I started saying at the outset, I love the stuff.  What they might need to defend, however, is how whatever they've made, or seen an ad for, or tried out in a music store, or watched a Youtube demo for, is somehow justified in its existence by how different it is from the thousands that are already out there.  It's a bit like somebody thinking they've "invented" sex, or making toast, or hot water, or drums.  If it's something that hasn't been made in a long time, and is very hard to find and pricey to purchase due to rarity, fine; I can accept that as an excuse to produce it, so long as nobody claims it to be "different".  If you've adapted some pre-existing thing for yourself, with some additional tweaks that suit your specific needs, fine.  That's not any different than leaving the bread in the toaster for a little longer or a little less time, because you like it that way.  No one would make a big deal and launch a new product line of darker toast, and they certainly wouldn't pitch it as anything novel.

And that's the thing about the place of drive/clipping pedals in the current market: there are so effing MANY of them, few of which dare to compare themselves directly against what else is in production, either in reviews or ad copy, that people have no way of assessing the redundancy out there.

When I was 15, I had the pleasure of briefly chatting with communications/technology prophet Marshall McLuhan.  One of his beliefs was that it was unwise to press ahead with new technology until one had assessed what existing technology might be doing to us.  While certainly not as profound a change in the technological environment as the printing press, automobile, television, or smartphones, I think we can probably afford to say "Time out.  Let's see what we can do with what we have, and if we feel there is anything lacking, given all that's out there, then we'll figure out something new."

[garcho]

EDIT: Mark, you beat me to it! Usually the forum warns me of a new post, hope you don't mind what I said.

Yeah, sometimes you need dirt, just like sometimes you need a compressor or wah or tremolo or filter or chorus or flanger or delay or reverb or bit crusher or aliaser or eq or vibrato or octave or pitch shift or... Maybe if dirt is the main thing for you, it's because of the style of music you like, not some eternal universal truth? Or maybe not! Maybe dirt is that special and I'm an outlier.

Speaking to Mark's OP, maybe it's just the word "new" that gets under his skin? Not trying to speak for Mark, just that his OP really struck a chord with me, pun intended.

Part of what makes me roll my eyes at a lot of the "new" dirt pedals coming out, is the snake oil salesmanship, akin to hifi world. Obviously, it's not that bad but still annoying. Changing that cap value radically changed that pedal enough that you call it your design? You didn't have the right transistor, so you used what you had and now it's totally different, eh? I mean, around here, that's cool! I dig it. But to act like it's a unique boutique pedal design? Please. Sorry to be such a hater, it's just my tolerance for BS, bloviation and self-aggrandizement has bottomed out. Maybe it's just the demos that bug me. Jimi makes great demos, for instance. Because besides leaving out the pretentious wannabe EE talk, he can also actually play the damn guitar! Why would anyone care what a talentless inexperienced amateur thinks about the subtleties of tone? Imagine someone who has never cooked a meal for anyone else in their life, making videos about how to make the best vichyssoise. Y tho?

There's also the issue of real world vs theory. The cranky old man in me thinks "sure dude, you'll have your long lost magic tone, buried under your drummer's cymbals, coming out of a 57, a behringer PA and the cheapest speakers the club owner could find in a completely square room with zero baffling, except for the dozen people who showed up. All that subtlety will really shine through once you lay that track down and it gets mixed with a 1000 plug ins, compressed to hell, then mastered with $1,000,000 of gear, then squished all over again on the radio or in an mp3." It just seems like people blowing smoke up their asses to feel sophisticated instead of relying on impressing people with the content of the music they make.

It's also somewhat irksome that what distinguishes 99% of those pedals from each other is only the graphic design. The market is beyond flooded, mostly with rip offs and people selling pedals based on the artwork, the creative naming of controls, etc. I hope it's helping the "true" boutique builders by generating interest in pedals, and not crowding them out with needless clones. At least it's made ordering parts cheaper 

I just want to make this point, after my rant: I love this place, and I love the 1,000,000 dirt pedals y'all have created. Hell, I presented my own weird take on a Escobedo fuzz pedal here. I love my Harmonic Percolator (thanks George!). I'm not directing these comments to anyone here specifically. I also love folk music, and what I mean by that, is non-professionals making music for the love. That's exactly what the human experience is all about. It's great to have Paganinis and Charlie Parkers and Eddie Van Halens but it's the folk musicians who make music with a 1-on-1 relationship with the audience, and that's incredibly special. When the folk musicians veer off into pretension, or do it to be cool, instead of for the love, is when I get irritated. Hope I'm not a prick of misery, just my morning thoughts.

[Steben]

Don't get me wrong.  I like overdrive.  I like distortion.  I like fuzz.  I like it glitchy.  I like it searing.  I like it smooth.  I like it scooped.  I like it throaty.  I have dozens of the stupid things.  But dammit, don't you think that after some 10-20 thousand variations and products, it's enough already?  Do we NEED yet another one?

No one here needs to defend use of distortion.  Like I started saying at the outset, I love the stuff.  What they might need to defend, however, is how whatever they've made, or seen an ad for, or tried out in a music store, or watched a Youtube demo for, is somehow justified in its existence by how different it is from the thousands that are already out there.  It's a bit like somebody thinking they've "invented" sex, or making toast, or hot water, or drums.  If it's something that hasn't been made in a long time, and is very hard to find and pricey to purchase due to rarity, fine; I can accept that as an excuse to produce it, so long as nobody claims it to be "different".  If you've adapted some pre-existing thing for yourself, with some additional tweaks that suit your specific needs, fine.  That's not any different than leaving the bread in the toaster for a little longer or a little less time, because you like it that way.  No one would make a big deal and launch a new product line of darker toast, and they certainly wouldn't pitch it as anything novel.

And that's the thing about the place of drive/clipping pedals in the current market: there are so effing MANY of them, few of which dare to compare themselves directly against what else is in production, either in reviews or ad copy, that people have no way of assessing the redundancy out there.

When I was 15, I had the pleasure of briefly chatting with communications/technology prophet Marshall McLuhan.  One of his beliefs was that it was unwise to press ahead with new technology until one had assessed what existing technology might be doing to us.  While certainly not as profound a change in the technological environment as the printing press, automobile, television, or smartphones, I think we can probably afford to say "Time out.  Let's see what we can do with what we have, and if we feel there is anything lacking, given all that's out there, then we'll figure out something new."

I keep referring to a car. Most brands actually do not claim to re invent the car. They just want to advertise how good theirs is. "And this year we switched the way the door opens"....
They keep selling. Pedals do age. And brands want to refurbish a product that is in essence good and people want a fresh piece.

[vigilante397]

"And this year we switched the way the door opens"....

Last year I made a PCB mistake and the gain pot went backwards, so this year I changed which way the gain pot turns. Boom, new distortion model

[pinkjimiphoton]

i @#$%ing love you guys. i DO totally "get it". seems there's a boot tweaker on every damn corner these days, behind every blade of grass. we've ALL made shit that was like somebody else's shit a thousand times.
there's only so many ways to hook up a transistor.

i've seen 20,000 @#$%ing toob skreemers now, all "different" even tho there's no where near 20,000 @#$%in' parts in the circuit.

there's more fuzz faces out there than is warranted. including my own 

but the discovery of these things is important to support tho, cuz the newbs that come like my tardfounded ass get the joy and wonder i think we're too jaded to see these days.

i mean, is this guy's tagboardeffects layout based pedal better than that guys?

its true. people care more about how shit looks than how it sounds.

and if you're dumb enough to let "end users" crowd source "what they want", they're never happy.... they always want more.

99 44/100ths of the hype machine crap seems to be driven by 12 year olds still with daddy's credit card.

the crazy shit peeps come up with that's actually usually innovative flies right under the radar, cuz ERMAGERD, THIS NEW TOOB SKREEMER USES GENUINE JVC 4558'S DUG FROM A GARBAGE DUMP BELOW FUKOJIMA, SO THAT JUSTIFIES THE 450.00 PRICE TAG FOR THIS HERE TAGBOARD LAYOUT I WORKED ON SO HARD DEVELOPING FOR LIKE, HOWEVER LONG IT TOOK TO COPY IT... LOL

but do we really wanna discourage this? isn't this the very wonder that led us all to this horrible addiction i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy that i've invested countless dollars and thousands of wasted hours on craft? kept us exploring? tried to lead to a better fuzzbox?

we're all guilty, thank god. and i think this activity is ridiculously unhealthy for us normal folks. it lets us believe that maybe that next circuit will be so freekin cool it justifies, well, everything <like the 40 lbs or so of pcb's i've accumulated of other people's projects i doubt i'll live long enough to build>

the music should come first. effects are like spice. they should inspire and augment and improve the base product, sure.

but who are we to assume that there ISN't some cool-ass innovation we'd never even thought about that's gonna maybe come round the bend up ahead? i've learned some crazy shit, and i don't even really know what i'm doing. i understand the basics of input/output and powering stuff, but that's half the fun of it, the reward... how many ways can you reinvent the wheel? from what i see, quite a few... they all may do the same basic thing, but does that invalidate them? some may be better suited to some purposes than others... so its good to have a plethora of options ultimately available, as it sucks when ya need ONE SPECIFIC WHEEL for something, and it just doesn't exist... there's this one, there's that one, but there's no RIGHT one....

and i think, sometimes, even that one component change may actually have a valid effect for the tinkerer in question... cuz why?

cuz, ultimately, THEIR FINGERS. their touch. their soul. their style, their emotion, cycle of the moon, mojo, whatever. we're all different. odds are if i invited everyone on this forum to my dungeon, and handed you my guitar thru some kind of fuzz on my breadboard, every single one would sound different. how your personal chops affect the components in question DO have an affect. thats why we all will sound different, even tho logic would dictate that its the same @#$%in' components, so it should all sound the same.

but that dismisses the human element completely. and that, my friends, is the most important part of the circuit... the hysteresis of the end user provoking how that flow of electrons affects the way the components react.

to me, that validates dang near any stupid thing.
we used to say the only rule is, that which sounds good is. lol

i understand the points and agree with them... in principle... but in practice, anything goes, and the more of it there is, if used right, the better.

[vigilante397]

effects are like spice. they should inspire and augment and improve the base product

I like this analogy, because my taste in effects is basically the equivalent of dumping garlic on everything. Looking for a different sound? How about MORE GARLIC. Doesn't sound quite right still? Have you tried a little MORE GARLIC!!!!

[Steben]

Even simplest of things like adding a parallel input cap (think of 0.1 or 0.068) with series pot 100k to a fuzz face input cap are so cool.
Range Face!

[LightSoundGeometry]

i @#$%ing love you guys. i DO totally "get it". seems there's a boot tweaker on every damn corner these days, behind every blade of grass. we've ALL made shit that was like somebody else's shit a thousand times.
there's only so many ways to hook up a transistor.

i've seen 20,000 @#$%ing toob skreemers now, all "different" even tho there's no where near 20,000 @#$%in' parts in the circuit.

there's more fuzz faces out there than is warranted. including my own 

but the discovery of these things is important to support tho, cuz the newbs that come like my tardfounded ass get the joy and wonder i think we're too jaded to see these days.

i mean, is this guy's tagboardeffects layout based pedal better than that guys?

its true. people care more about how shit looks than how it sounds.

and if you're dumb enough to let "end users" crowd source "what they want", they're never happy.... they always want more.

99 44/100ths of the hype machine crap seems to be driven by 12 year olds still with daddy's credit card.

the crazy shit peeps come up with that's actually usually innovative flies right under the radar, cuz ERMAGERD, THIS NEW TOOB SKREEMER USES GENUINE JVC 4558'S DUG FROM A GARBAGE DUMP BELOW FUKOJIMA, SO THAT JUSTIFIES THE 450.00 PRICE TAG FOR THIS HERE TAGBOARD LAYOUT I WORKED ON SO HARD DEVELOPING FOR LIKE, HOWEVER LONG IT TOOK TO COPY IT... LOL

but do we really wanna discourage this? isn't this the very wonder that led us all to this horrible addiction i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy that i've invested countless dollars and thousands of wasted hours on craft? kept us exploring? tried to lead to a better fuzzbox?

we're all guilty, thank god. and i think this activity is ridiculously unhealthy for us normal folks. it lets us believe that maybe that next circuit will be so freekin cool it justifies, well, everything <like the 40 lbs or so of pcb's i've accumulated of other people's projects i doubt i'll live long enough to build>

the music should come first. effects are like spice. they should inspire and augment and improve the base product, sure.

but who are we to assume that there ISN't some cool-ass innovation we'd never even thought about that's gonna maybe come round the bend up ahead? i've learned some crazy shit, and i don't even really know what i'm doing. i understand the basics of input/output and powering stuff, but that's half the fun of it, the reward... how many ways can you reinvent the wheel? from what i see, quite a few... they all may do the same basic thing, but does that invalidate them? some may be better suited to some purposes than others... so its good to have a plethora of options ultimately available, as it sucks when ya need ONE SPECIFIC WHEEL for something, and it just doesn't exist... there's this one, there's that one, but there's no RIGHT one....

and i think, sometimes, even that one component change may actually have a valid effect for the tinkerer in question... cuz why?

cuz, ultimately, THEIR FINGERS. their touch. their soul. their style, their emotion, cycle of the moon, mojo, whatever. we're all different. odds are if i invited everyone on this forum to my dungeon, and handed you my guitar thru some kind of fuzz on my breadboard, every single one would sound different. how your personal chops affect the components in question DO have an affect. thats why we all will sound different, even tho logic would dictate that its the same @#$%in' components, so it should all sound the same.

but that dismisses the human element completely. and that, my friends, is the most important part of the circuit... the hysteresis of the end user provoking how that flow of electrons affects the way the components react.

to me, that validates dang near any stupid thing.
we used to say the only rule is, that which sounds good is. lol

i understand the points and agree with them... in principle... but in practice, anything goes, and the more of it there is, if used right, the better.

not many out there 450 bucks ..only thing going in that range are the real tonebenders and that cornish guy who seems to get like 2500 dollars

https://reverb.com/p/pete-cornish-p-2-2011

there better be some fairy dust, green skunk nuggets and hookers inside that case ..has anyone un-gunked a ornish board and took a picture or doc'd values to find out what he is doing?

[matmosphere]

i @#$%ing love you guys. i DO totally "get it". seems there's a boot tweaker on every damn corner these days, behind every blade of grass. we've ALL made shit that was like somebody else's shit a thousand times.
there's only so many ways to hook up a transistor.

i've seen 20,000 @#$%ing toob skreemers now, all "different" even tho there's no where near 20,000 @#$%in' parts in the circuit.

there's more fuzz faces out there than is warranted. including my own 

but the discovery of these things is important to support tho, cuz the newbs that come like my tardfounded ass get the joy and wonder i think we're too jaded to see these days.

i mean, is this guy's tagboardeffects layout based pedal better than that guys?

its true. people care more about how shit looks than how it sounds.

and if you're dumb enough to let "end users" crowd source "what they want", they're never happy.... they always want more.

99 44/100ths of the hype machine crap seems to be driven by 12 year olds still with daddy's credit card.

the crazy shit peeps come up with that's actually usually innovative flies right under the radar, cuz ERMAGERD, THIS NEW TOOB SKREEMER USES GENUINE JVC 4558'S DUG FROM A GARBAGE DUMP BELOW FUKOJIMA, SO THAT JUSTIFIES THE 450.00 PRICE TAG FOR THIS HERE TAGBOARD LAYOUT I WORKED ON SO HARD DEVELOPING FOR LIKE, HOWEVER LONG IT TOOK TO COPY IT... LOL

but do we really wanna discourage this? isn't this the very wonder that led us all to this horrible addiction i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy that i've invested countless dollars and thousands of wasted hours on craft? kept us exploring? tried to lead to a better fuzzbox?

we're all guilty, thank god. and i think this activity is ridiculously unhealthy for us normal folks. it lets us believe that maybe that next circuit will be so freekin cool it justifies, well, everything <like the 40 lbs or so of pcb's i've accumulated of other people's projects i doubt i'll live long enough to build>

the music should come first. effects are like spice. they should inspire and augment and improve the base product, sure.

but who are we to assume that there ISN't some cool-ass innovation we'd never even thought about that's gonna maybe come round the bend up ahead? i've learned some crazy shit, and i don't even really know what i'm doing. i understand the basics of input/output and powering stuff, but that's half the fun of it, the reward... how many ways can you reinvent the wheel? from what i see, quite a few... they all may do the same basic thing, but does that invalidate them? some may be better suited to some purposes than others... so its good to have a plethora of options ultimately available, as it sucks when ya need ONE SPECIFIC WHEEL for something, and it just doesn't exist... there's this one, there's that one, but there's no RIGHT one....

and i think, sometimes, even that one component change may actually have a valid effect for the tinkerer in question... cuz why?

cuz, ultimately, THEIR FINGERS. their touch. their soul. their style, their emotion, cycle of the moon, mojo, whatever. we're all different. odds are if i invited everyone on this forum to my dungeon, and handed you my guitar thru some kind of fuzz on my breadboard, every single one would sound different. how your personal chops affect the components in question DO have an affect. thats why we all will sound different, even tho logic would dictate that its the same @#$%in' components, so it should all sound the same.

but that dismisses the human element completely. and that, my friends, is the most important part of the circuit... the hysteresis of the end user provoking how that flow of electrons affects the way the components react.

to me, that validates dang near any stupid thing.
we used to say the only rule is, that which sounds good is. lol

i understand the points and agree with them... in principle... but in practice, anything goes, and the more of it there is, if used right, the better.

we're all guilty, thank god. and i think this activity is ridiculously unhealthy for us abnormal folks.

you missed one 


Honestly though, you hit the nail on the head with the part about looks. At the end of the day though, it doesn't matter how cool your gear looks or not, it's about the sound coming out of your amp and into my head that matters.

[Fancy Lime]

...
That's not any different than leaving the bread in the toaster for a little longer or a little less time, because you like it that way.  No one would make a big deal and launch a new product line of darker toast, and they certainly wouldn't pitch it as anything novel.
...

OK, so you missed class when they explained capitalism. Lemme catch you up:

The book adds: "To impress people we don't like."

My local supermarket has two types of cheap disposable plastic razors. One type is blue, the other pink. Otherwise they are completely identical. An 8-pack of the pink ones costs slightly more than a 12-pack of the blue ones. This type of  thing, stuff marketed to women being more expensive than the exact same stuff marketed to men, is so common, it has a name: The Pink Tax. Same basic principle with pedals: Paint it matte black and call it the Mëtäl Skreetçzer and you can sell your tube screamer clone to a new audience for a premium price. I am a huge fan of the dystopian apocalyptic science fiction of Philip K. Dick, Harry Harrison, and the likes. It seems so optimistic and cheerful compared to the actual present...

... I think we can probably afford to say "Time out.  Let's see what we can do with what we have, and if we feel there is anything lacking, given all that's out there, then we'll figure out something new."

Don't know about you guys but that is exactly what brought me into the DIY world and how I still go about designing my pedals. I was looking for a decent bass distortion some 15 years ago, tested everything I could get my hands on and decided that I can make a better one. So I did. If I want a sound that an existing pedal makes and I know about that pedal, I don't bother DIYing, I just buy it. But I have never come across a commercial distortion pedal that I did not think needed improvement. Than again, I build stuff exclusively for myself and strongly suspect that none of my designs would do awfully well commercially if I were to sell them. I have odd tastes, or so I'm told.

Ultimately, the overabundance and overredundance of drive pedals, just like the overabundance and overredundance of lots and lots of other stuff has little to do with pedal makers and more with the economic system we live in. For better and worse. Do we need 27 kinds of strawberry yogurt in the same supermarket? 83 variations of cornflakes? No, but somehow people still by them all. The free market exposes sides of human nature that have always bee baffling to me but since they seem to be rather universal human traits, who am I to judge. The phenomenon is not new either:

Fortunately, the same free market allows me not to buy yet another unnecessary clone but to ma oun thang if I choose to.

Cheers and keep driving (haha),
Andy

p.s. Wow, this thread is on FIRE!

[Digital Larry]

No one would make a big deal and launch a new product line of darker toast, and they certainly wouldn't pitch it as anything novel.

And that's the thing about the place of drive/clipping pedals in the current market: there are so effing MANY of them, few of which dare to compare themselves directly against what else is in production, either in reviews or ad copy, that people have no way of assessing the redundancy out there.

I think that's the tricky part here.  Nobody would do it, so when someone does do it, there's an assumption that something novel did take place.  Also, if you sit down and A/B pedals which are even supposed to be identical, lots of times there are subtle but noticeable differences.  Then you go off into "WELL, which one of these is BETTER?" and the usual answer is that either one of them would probably be perfectly acceptable, and if you were recording a track or playing with a band, you'd probably tweak whatever it was anyway to get a more pleasing blend.  So you can't decide, you could see either one as being valid, so you keep both of them. 

Add to that the fact that UNLESS you A/B things directly, IMO you can't make good comparisons about subtle differences to things in your memory.  So maybe at the store, you try one out and say "whoa that really adds something to my pallette" and when you get home, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. 

But if it has a cool paint job and a marginally offensive punny sort of name, that stuff counts too!

[amptramp]

Who cares about what is necessary?  Aren't we all having fun here?

I don't think anyone would like an effects Kremlin that tells you whether your effects unit is necessary or not.  I started off in electronics basically copying what other people were doing them making my own variations and finally I have designed a universal fuzz and an amplifier that both use original technology that has never been seen anywhere else.  A number of years ago, a car magazine calculated that there were 925 makes and models of car you could buy.  If you have central control in the name of Marxist "efficiency", all you would have is the Trabant and the Lada.  Let the market decide.

I am also in favour of reusing designs from long ago to solve some problems: the magic monitor used on RCA phonograph/radio consoles back in the 1950's makes a better noise gate than modern noise gates.  It uses a reactance tube to cut the high frequency rolloff when the signal level is low.  This is less obtrusive than a gate that shuts off the signal suddenly.

A lot of people would like to see pedal designs with the mistakes and environmental sensitivities removed.  How about a Fuzz Face that was independent of applied voltage or temperature?  You could use the same fuzz control settings in Nome AK and Phoenix AZ.  I have a design in mind - I just have to be motivated to do it.

[Phend]

I am not a designer, so would one of you PLEASE invent a Combo Bundle UNIVERSAL Fuzzy Distorted Distortion Effect. There done.
(For a reasonable price of course)

[bamslam69]

Distortion is fun, and it can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.
I've made more fuzz & distortion than any other effect (still a newbie though).
So IMO, there can never be too much choice.

[pinkjimiphoton]

fuzzy @#$%ing goodness for the masses!!!!!!!!!!!

there! i said it!!!

[11-90-an]

Uhhhh....

My fave fuzz is the bazz fuzz...
Thanks for the idea, Nathan, will try adding some garlic soon...

Somebody should make 100 bazz fuzzes cascaded...

[11-90-an]

Oops.. double posted... 

[cdwillis]

There's a simple equation for this, I figured everyone knew:

N = N + 1

[aron]

Last night, I had an amp sim up in Logic. I was trying out the pedalboard in Logic and some amps - boosting the input. Was trying to get pinch harmonics and some tapping for fun. Then I plugged in my 4049 circuit I made a week or two ago. All of a sudden the tapping was easy, the sustain rich, the harmonics jumping out.

Then I realized, as long as this continues to happen, I will not stop for a long while because it's too much fun!
And finally, SUPER DISTORTION pickup!  It still rocks!