Fuzz vs Overdrive vs Distortion Explained
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- Here I explain the differences between Fuzz, Overdrive, Solid State Distortion and Tube Distortion using an Oscilloscope and Spectrum analyser.
I also demonstrate hard clipping and a square wave form.
While often all of these effects are quite similar in some respects there are differences and hopefully in this video I highlight the differences so there is less confusion about what each effect does.
The pedals used in the demonstration are as follows:
DIY Fuzz Pedal (Fuzz Face Based Circuit)
Maxon OD808
Boss DS-1
DIY Tube Distortion Pedal with 2 x 12AX7EH
Hope this video is helpful.
All the best
Paul
7 years old but still explains it clearly. this is relevant.
YES!!! I wonder how many of us fuzz-nuts have been trying to explain the differences we hear between fuzz, distortion and overdrive to our fuzz-innocent buddies - this straight-forward video does the very best job of explaining this that I have yet seen, and I feel like I have the tools to kind of helpfully explain it a bit now. Thank you so much for this video.
It’s almost a truism that every guitarist who has a Fuzzface loves the way that circuit behaves as the guitar’s volume is rolled back, and it's so fun to see it on the oscilloscope and the spectrum analyzer. Any guitar player who has one is going to watch that section and jump up and down, "I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT!!!" - and you see the pattern in the harmonics with the gain cranked (five and then a space, then five and another space, or counted another way, no sixth harmonic at all, no twelvth harmonic, and so on), and how it changes (the others drop but the sixth and twelvth come in!) - just really exciting!!!!
Definitely one of the most fun guitar-related videos I’ve seen in ages. And it’s been out there since 2014, imagine that.
I need an oscilloscope - I'm certain my playing will look better than it sounds!
The Guitar Geek me too! Mine disappeared when we moved into my current house. It was a nice scope with its own roller stand. Someone helped themselves to it during the move. My wife and I took in her parents as they were both failing in health. I did inherit some cool,stuff though, so I guess it isn’t all bad. But I need that scope!
Man that tube distortion really changes the original waveform. The asymmetric clipping is something I didn’t expect. Is the schematic for that available?
I don't need an oscilloscope to demonstrate that my playing looks better than it sounds. Well, actually, it doesn't look so great, so you can see where I'm setting the bar.
One of the funniest comments I’ve ever read! 😝
use corrscope
Dude i've been studying electric engineering and I must say you taught me much more than my teachers!
Really thanks for explaining these fxs
Hi, mate, so i study civil engineering and it's unrelated do most of the things i've learnt. But i just got curious, do you study how pedals influence the soundwave of your signal? I bet there are more aplications in your field, but it seems a really cool subject! Greetins from a brazilian random dude who comments on random posts hahaha :)
If this were an EE course, you would be expected to compute the FFT, Bode plot response of the circuit, calculate its transfer characteristics H(s) including stability analysis, phase and gain margin, calculation of all poles and zeros. Actually, a pretty good exercise come to think of it.
@@brucesmith9144 The depends on the design, bode plots and phase shifts are pretty normal, but stability analysis and gain,phase margins are only applicable to feedback systems.
The distortion wave looks very similar to when you put a capacitor in a circuit
I'm an electrical engineer and I agree! Congrats from Brazil! 👏🏽
I have been serching for a video like this literally for years! and I have to say this one is just perfect, as an engeneer I really love this video!
Thanks Ruben. I have had a number of people from electronic engineering backgrounds leave comments similar to yours and I really do appreciate it.
It is reassuring to know this video is doing exactly what it was intended to do.
This vid might be "boring and low production value" to some but it explained the EXACT differences a thousand times better than any other flashy vid I've seen. The scope and graphs REALLY do the trick. I saw it once and will never forget the differences between these effects now. Thank you so much for posting this! I learned more in just a few minutes, than hours with other vids.
9 year old video that explains the differences between fuzz, overdrive and distoration better than any other video I've watched. The oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer really nail the differences in the three "distoration" effects. Thanks for a great video.
Now I can actually see the difference between overdrive and distortion. Thanks for this very interesting video.
It is great to hear I helped you out.
One of the most valuable piece of electronic stuff I've seen on this "mojo" subject !
Sir, you nailed it, first class ! 🤩
Cheers from France.
Extremely high quality video. The spectrum analyses were fascinating!
I'm finding this video years later, it's aged very well, thanks for the excellent explanation 😁👍
It might be interesting to do exactly the same type of comparison between silicon vs. germanium.
Here’s a good one: ruclips.net/video/juUNYl05w-8/видео.html
@@Willam_J cheers for the link!
@@Willam_J I was expecting germanium vs. silicon transistors, not diodes. Plus the Klon circuit is fairly unusual in the way it uses diodes.
@@chipsterb4946 Whiney bstrd
Now I know how valve (vacuum tube) preamp gives warm-sound. It skews signal. At 12:24 clearly seen that rising a little bit slower than falling. Valve's conductance-increasing sinks faster than its plate's resistor can pull it up again. This phenomenon can achieve in high-voltage low-current condition.
Now i know how, thank's to your effort. Your share makes people getting more smart.
Cheers from Indonesia.
This is one of the best videos I have seen on the subject. I love the lab scope analysis with the signal. Thanks for the great video!
the most complete clipping analysis i've seen until now, and is also in real time.
As many others have said, this is exactly what I've been looking for! A clear description of these effects with a scope to illustrate. I'm studying electrical engineering and have been getting into pedal design so this is gold.
I'm just a pathetic amateur in effects building and your video gave me an overall idea of how the waveform is altered by different types of devices, really nice!
Thanks.
Everyone has to start somewhere and everyone is on a learning curve.
It cool to hear I have helped you out.
GREAT Video. The best comparison between the different distortion characteristics I have seen so far!
I wish that I would have found this video years ago!!! So incredibly insightful! I almost fell off my chair when I saw the wave form of the fuzz and the distortion. So many lights went on!
That tube box sounds killer!!!
Great video. Love the use of the oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer to show the effects.
Great stuff, great to see the oscilloscope and harmonics. Always wanted to know more about the differences between those approaches to overdrive/distortion!
Thanks for this. Learned more in 19 minutes than the last 4 decades.
As a physicist and fuzz pedal enthusiast, I really appreciate this video
Great video. This really puts things into perspective a lot better than I have ever seen
I liked seeing both the waveform and the harmonic graph for each. It made for an intriguing approach to explaining how the signal is being affected for each scenario. And, it was an excellent refresher for myself. \m/
Loved the content bro.
Make more videos like this, may be like a Flanger, Phaser or Wah.
Cheers.
Flanger, phaser and wah are basically (modulated) filters (in case of flanger and phaser, their frequency response it driven by an LFO - low frequency oscillator - in case of wah, the frequency response is driven by the pedal movement and in case of auto-wah, the frequency response is driven by the envelope of the signal - basically a rectified and low-pass filtered version of the signal - itself), so for a sine wave (which is the "purest" form of wave, consisting of only a single frequency) they would just cause the amplitude to go up and down. To see what these actually do, the best thing would be to feed white noise into them (because that has all frequencies in it) and then look at the spectrum analysis. A look with an oscilloscope (and sinosoidal input) actually doesn't reveal a lot about what these effects do. You need a wideband signal and a view of the spectrum to see what's actually going on.
Thanks man , I like how you break it down for us !! Plus the spectrum analysis is extremely helpful !!
Great demo. This also shows why hard clipping of an audio system can blow speakers. Speakers take more time physically to move than a signal like that is telling them to. Depending on the frequency they can stack common signals before they can return to a lower position in the wave and they start to ride up and will destroy themselves. The hard clip is just way too much fast dynamic for them to deal with in the acoustic world. Pushing your speakers beyond their rated wattage is much easier on them than pushing your amps final output stage (causing hard clipping at high watts) beyond its rated output.
I know to keep my subs a sin wave and now I know why! Thanks for connecting the dots!
Good stuff! Content like this is much needed today!
Nothing better than visual representations of all this audio voodoo.Thank you.
Brilliant video. This explains a lot about both pedals and amps...and even why some "clean" channels sound good and others boring...and yes...it's the harmonic distortion in the "clean" channel.
Great analysis ! You just reminded me back this from University. I liked this signals modulation analysis, and now it has been very helpful to distinguish between pedals before buying. Thanks to you and Fourier !!!
Thank you this video is timeless 🎊🤯 I was looking for something that went into detail just like this a proper tutorial looking forward to watching the rest of your videos
This video is bizarely exactly what i was looking for. Ty 💪🥰
Exactly what I'm looking for! Thank you for explaining!
Glad to see there's vids about that tube distortion box. Heading there now 👍🎸
this is perfect in every technical, musical and didactical aspect. great work. THX
I built a two-valve pre-amp (Marshall circuit) and overdrove it with a Germanium transistor booster fifty years ago. Still use it, or an incarnation of it.
Awesome fat distorion tone.
The thing is......... the biggest difference occurs when the note dies away.
The pedals for fuzz/distortion etc seems to me to have a clear and definite point where the fuzzy sound ceases whereas the valve distortion just smoothly transitions into a clean tone.
It's good to see someone put up some oscilloscope traces and show people what's actually going on with a waveform as it distorts.
The unit I built starts by rounding off the bottom of the waveform in a very pronounced way - the bottom peak gets rounder and rounder and the top peak just keeps climbing until it all starts to bend and morph into a waveform almost identical to your own valve unit.
Excellent video. Thanks mate! Odd order harmonics, particularly the 5th and 7th are much further from equal temperament tuning than the even order harmonics. I'm guessing that's why devices that accentuate the odd order harmonics sound harsher in mixes, and vice versa. Well that's just my theory anyway... Paul, what is your spectrum analysis software? Cheers.
This was a very detailed and thorough introduction to distortion! The only thing that can be improved is the sound (of both you and the wave forms). Thanks!
Love your tube distortion! Nice. Great demo.
you just gave me some good ideas in order to calculate the behavior of the pedals.
keep on buddy
Perfect video. You should win an award for this. Thx
Great explanation Paul. Thank you for taking the time to put this together 🙏
Such a great video! It answered a lot of questions that i have. Thanks a lot man!
Great vid, super informative and, finally, a graphic illustration of terms that people throw around with no idea of their meaning. Thx for sharing "the oil" - Jamie the Pom
A ton of thankyous, helped me solve multiple issues with one video.
That's great. Thanks for watching.
I really enjoyed this video! Thanks for posting this, the explanations were quite straight forward and it was great to see everything on the oscilloscope.
absolutely fascinating. this needs to be done for all pedals. start a website tomorrow, please.
This video is badass. Thanks so much for the serious in depth analysis!
What a brilliantly made video!
Awesome video! Nice explained
What Oscilloscope and Spectrum analyser do you use to take your measurements .
Really good video man! This is the first video I see that has an electronic analysis of the signals. Could you make a video where you combine distortion and overdrive pedals?
Great job man. Good to know what is going on with the signal from an instruments. So nice to look on the scope :)
dear paul: your contents are great, I find them very usefull and well written. as a small youtuber, tho, I see you are not using your gear at the top: for a better quality of your videos I suggest you stay closer to the camera (whe you are talking on a blue background) so the audio will be better, also you could add some wrintings on the screen with any video editor so that everything is more clear and easy to follow. also try to use the tools youtube gives you to make people jump from one of your videos to another (annotations and such). also you may wanna use screen recorders like OBS or atubecatcher for a better quality overall. sorry if I made some mistakes while writing but I kinda suck at english.thanks fot your great videos, I hope this will help you make them even better! see you :)
Beyond the Record Thanks. I will have a look at taking on your suggestions.All the best.
Hi Paul! Great video, thanks for sharing! I would love to see the pedals used in conjunction (eg. fuzz into tube overdrive, ss overdrive, etc.) and see how tha wave is affected and to underestand why its souds the way it does. Maybe you already did that.
Thanks again!
Thanks for the video, Paul! Interesting stuff.
This was fantastic. I eat this kind of stuff up. Well done mate!
Exactly what I wanted to learn. Thanks!
excellent comparative analysis
For a good sound the ratio of the harmonics are important!
+René Merz Absolutely.
Great demo. Very useful. Thanks!
That was a great sounding fuzz you had there !
O melhor vídeo que encontrei mostrando a forma de onda dos diversos tipos de pedais. Obrigado!
Excelente conteúdo.
Great video, thanks for putting it together.
Thanks. Its good to know I helped you out.
Cheers.
Very informative and educative video! I do hope you're planning for some more effects to be explained like this :) Thank you!
Wow, what an informative video about how different components clip in our favorite amps and pedals. I must say I am very surprised by the frequency response of the Maxon OD808 and the shape of the sine signal. It was to my eyes the 'softest' clipping waveform of all the waveforms including the tube pedal - and yet contrary to popular belief where a 'soft' clipping waveform has more even order harmonics - that had all odd order harmonics without a trace of any even - and that's the all time favorite overdrive pedal in history. So I guess this shatters two widely held beliefs, one - that soft clipping creates even order harmonics and two- we don't like odd order harmonics, everyone - or nearly everyone loves the Maxon OD808. Would have loved to have seen a boss SD-1 being analyzed with it's slightly different arrangement of 3 clipping asymmetric clipping. Another funny observation, the maxon od808 has always been described as a 'smoother' breakup where as the boss sd-1 asymmetric overdrive has always been described as more 'rough' - but i bet it has more even order harmonics while the od808 has none.
Cool video man. I would be interested to see what the sound waves look like when combining different distortions, for example if you were to put an overdrive pedal in front of the fuzz (which is something that I often do).
Nice vid. What is this software - is it a pc based scope you're using? Can you recommend it? Some of them are very appealing prices compared with "real" scopes.
Gracias por el vídeo, muy completa la explicación, las imágenes del osciloscopio son de gran ayuda para diseñar los circuitos, Felicitaciones, saludos desde Colombia.
Pretty much why after 30+ years of playing I have instinctively gravitated towards natural tube overdrive by either pushing the head room of an amp or using undersized speakers. The oscilloscope analysis just confirms what my ears are hearing. Though one of the metal sounds I got was my mid 80s solid state Princeton amp mic'd off my 60w Peavy tube amp. With a hot rails bridge pup installed on my 83 Telecaster. That is something this video didn't analyze is layered soundscapes
Good explanation! Thanx!
Paul, are interesting in building analog synth. circuits?
This was really cool! I'd love to see the oscilloscope and how the guitar sound looks-because of course each note is more complex than the simple tone generator to start, so it's hard to imagine how the peaks will look. Is there a way to do that?
This kicks ass, thanks so much for making it!
Paul, I read somewhere that Class A tube circuits clip asymmetrically ( which you show in your video) and that Class AB circuits clip symmetrically. Is this true regarding Class AB circuits?
It's sort of true. Class AB circuits basically cut out symmetric halves of the waveform, amplify them separately, and then combine them. As a result, all asymmetry is lost. This, however, is true only of an ideal class AB design. Real circuits may not separate the two halves perfectly (and this may even be done intentionally) so that asymmetric clipping is still possible in class AB. There's also some crossover distortion which is like the scar from cutting and stitching the waveform back together.
You may be confusing a push-pull circuit with “class AB”. There’s a lot of mistaken mumbo jumbo about “class A” on the internet. It has to do with how the tube is biased and the circuit construct, but you can have single-ended class AB and push-pull Class A (at least theoretically).
Paul, would Class AB power tube distortion produce a similar wave form and frequency response similar to your 12AX7 distortion device?
Absolutely wonderful video. Thank you!
this is golden, thanks!
Nice video, a great waveform reference, thanks.
I would love to see this same type of analysis done to compare the wave shapes of a Blues Breaker style, Klon style, and Tube Screamer style overdrive pedals; as well as a clean boost/transparent overdrive to see how clean the signal really stays and how increasing the input affects that as well.
Also a video of waveforms when "gain-stacking" comparing overdrive-into-distortion vs distortion-into-overdrive, as well as stacking fuzz before those to see how all combinations change the output waveform.
Also, another addition, kind of building on my first suggestion, placing a boost before the overdrive/distortion pedals/combos affects the waveform vs after.
So if you push the overdrive (which looked pretty square-leaning) effect by alot, like stacking multiple pedals for example, do you eventually end up with the square of a fuzz? How would that translate in term of harmonics? Would even harmonics gradually fade and make room for odd harmonics?
I have previously heard that overdrive and fuzz are quite similar circuits, whilst distortion is somewhat different. Is this true? It seems counterintuitive. From the tone and these waveforms I would expect distortion and fuzz to be the most similar, with overdrive the odd one out.
Muy, muy bueno!
Very, very good job Paul Graham!
Really cool video 😎 a lot of insight why these effects sound like they do :D
what oscilloscope hardware module/software and spectrum analyser software did you use?
Sound Card Scope.
Thanks Pauk
This is great! I'm going to do it by myself too ! Thanks!!
Sublime video mate. Thanks!
Very good video. Do you have one discussing the tube distortion pedal that you built?
This is what I've been looking for. What software are you using for wave generation and spec analysis?
I would really love to see a demo that includes the way it affects the bass guitar too. An old studio trick is to add just a slight bit of Fuzz with a clean bass guitar signal to make it sound better in the mix.
great video! what are you using for your osciliscope and for your frequency analyzer? Thanks!
freaksarise Thanks.I am using a PC with a program called scope.
Fantastic demo. Thanks.
Hello Paul, what is the frequency analysis program that you're using? Thanks for taking the time with the video by the way!
+jrcenina85 Its called sound card scope.
Check it out.
Cheers.
This video was so helpful, great teacher. Is there any chance you can link the fuzz face based circuit? Greetings from Mexico.
i would love to see the wave form of a zvex "machine" pedal -- he claims that the machine distorts not the peaks of the waves but the sides of the waves.
i'd also love to learn more about how waves change over the duration of a note, from attack through decay, how sustain and compression interact; what "saturation" really means, and how all of the above differs with more than one note played at once verses single notes.
ya know, just... everything 😅
Are you using an Oscilloscope and Spectrum Analyser on your computer, or are they hardware? If they are software, where can I download them?
+Ruaraidh Macfarlane Just search for sound card scope.
It will do everything you need.
Very cool explanation! Thanks.
This was awesome thanks! Do most overdrive pedals just have primarily odd order harmonics or do they vary and some have even order?