What circuit-part to which sound?

[kristoffereide]

What is it in a f.ex distortion circuit that makes it distort?
Why are some very thick and colour your sound completely, and some thin and lets the guitartone come trough?

[anchovie]

Recommended reading: http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/richardo/distortion/index.html

[cloudscapes]

look up clipping diodes

[kristoffereide]

thanks! Good reading! Recomended

[MohiZ]

I don't know the answer to this but out of curiosity I looked at how different distortions change the waveform of a signal. The differences are astonishing! For instance, Dr. Boogey creates a really crooked looking wave out of a sine wave, while a BSIAB II creates a nice looking sawtooth. I'm sure that translates to the tone that you hear as well.

Since I just got a used oscilloscope and it's the first for me, I've been playing around with it more than is healthy 

[kristoffereide]

yes, I know why some sound different than others. What I needed to know is what parts in a circuit makes it sound that way. And the link above was good and well written.

[anchovie]

I don't know the answer to this but out of curiosity I looked at how different distortions change the waveform of a signal. The differences are astonishing! For instance, Dr. Boogey creates a really crooked looking wave out of a sine wave, while a BSIAB II creates a nice looking sawtooth. I'm sure that translates to the tone that you hear as well.

Since I just got a used oscilloscope and it's the first for me, I've been playing around with it more than is healthy 

The shaping of the waveforms will be down to filtering, which can occur in the gain stages, between the gain stages and in the tone stack. Seeing as you're having fun with your oscilloscope, see how the waveform changes when you play with the bass/mid/treb/presence knobs on the Dr Boogey.

[R.G.]

What is it in a f.ex distortion circuit that makes it distort?
Why are some very thick and colour your sound completely, and some thin and lets the guitartone come trough?

You've managed to come up with some of those questions which, to the beginner, sound like they should have simple answers, but really don't.

What makes a circuit distort is when *anything* in the signal path makes the signal depart from being a replica of the input. This can be by clipping, by improper biasing, by being overdriven by too big a signal, all kinds of things. In the Golden Age of tubes, even filtering was taken to be "frequency distortion". What makes it distort? Everything and nothing in particular. To answer the simple question, you have to learn a lot of circuits.

Why some are thick and coloring versus thin and tranlucent? The amount and type of distortion (see above) plus how much of the original signal - if any - gets mixed with the distortion, and what kind of filtering is done before and after the distortion.

Go read "The Technology of The Tube Screamer" at GEOFEX (http://www.geofex.com)for more understanding of what I've just said.

In fact, go read all of Geofex. It will answer many of the questions you haven't thought of yet.