Best Distortion/Fuzz pedal

[Brian Johnston]

I suspect this has been addressed (I have seen best for the least amount of money), but regardless of cost, what is the best distortion pedal you have used?

There are many I have not tried, and so I will provide my comments based on what I have used, obviously.

One preference is the Empress Effects Multidrive. The distortion is good, but it also includes a fuzz and overdrive component, and it includes an EQ and the ability to alter the mid frequency, distortion type (crunch, mild, lead), etc. A very versatile pedal for those looking for very mild effect to hard rocking (not metal).

When it comes to getting that deep, dark full-bodied sound, I like DrNo-Effects' MadFly. When it comes to pure Fuzz, it's the DrNo-Effects' Kafuzz!!. Both are not quite so diverse as the Multidrive, but the sound and effect of what it produces is more pronounced (geared toward doom metal or Black Sabbath type genres).

Give your imput and explain why. Look forward to hearing the feedback.

[tunghaichuan***]

The best distortion pedal I have personally used is the MI Audio Tube Zone. I have the older version 2 with three knobs and the three way switches. It does OD, boost and the high gain Dual Recto thing. Very versatile. It can also be run on 9v-25v. At 25v, it has a lot of headroom and sounds very amp like.

My second favorite pedal is the Boss DS-1, the pedal players love to hate. Mine is a current production model and sounds very good with my amps and guitar. I don't care what the haters say, I like it.

For my tastes, I just never liked fuzz. Nothing wrong with fuzztones, I could just never warm up to the sound.

[Ch0jin]

I would bet everyone has a different answer for this question, but for me at least, the best fuzz sound comes from a 2N1305 equipped Fuzz Face and the best distortion from an OCD. At least from the pedals I've tried so far.

[Duffy]

The natural tube distortion I get out of my Peavey 6505+ 112 combo surpasses the best distortion pedals I have tried. It is a very nice sounding utra high gain sound that you can lighten up on if you want to.

Some of the distortions in the HD500 sound great thru a clean channel.

As far as fuzz goes, all of the ones I have tried have a lot of hum and buzz, which I guess you have to like or get used to. I hear people talking about how they really like that vintage sixty cycle hum from strats and teles. I would like to find a great but quiet fuzz tone.

I have a Boss OD3 which is mild as well as a Bad Monkey which is also mild but both are smooth and give a good overdrive or push the tube preamp well sometimes; other times the tube amp does better without a pedal.

I want to try an OCD.

[Brian Johnston]

I use the Kafuzz!! fuzz, and I get very little noise out of it... very little... but I had to do something, which may be true of all fuzz pedals. Noise occurs only when I turn up the fuzz pot, and so when it's up full tilt you can get noise. However, I keep the 'volume' pot at about 9-10 o-clock at most (just below where noise starts to happen), and then keep other aspects cranked (e.g., amp, Line6 Pod, etc.).

[Duffy]

Thanks for the fuzz quieting tip. I'll try that maybe today at the music shop with that Seymour Duncan fuzz pedal they have.

I also read where people turn up the level on their overdrive pedals and keep the drive minimized and get a good tone that way, very quiet but adds some depth to the sound. I tried it with my Bad Monkey and it worked good that way, but no heavy overdrive, just a nice filling out of the sound and then add some reverb for a personally pleasing tone.

I'm messing with my HD500 since I did the firmware and driver updates and it has some totally great overdrive, distortion, and combined tones on some of the presets. The amp models are really good and I'm sure almost anyone could find a several amp models on it that they find real good and actually a lot like a tube amp. Plus you can do a lot of editing on the effects in the modeled chain, plus the amps and cabs to get a resultant sound that is the sum of all the parts, so you can get some great distortion and fuzz sounds that way and could probably spend a hundred years tweaking it unless it broke first. It's still different from using individual, hand chosen stompboxes though. There are so many different approaches to a great distortion sound. Tubes in there seem to warm it up a lot, plus cranking the volume, I like a lot.

[sunvalleylaw]

My favorite distortion is the DVM built Rabid Rodent. It is by far the most versatile I have tried. As far as fuzz, the Rodent can get a fuzzy sort of sound dialed in, but I have a EH Little Big Muff for that.

[duhvoodooman***]

My favorite distortion is the DVM built Rabid Rodent. It is by far the most versatile I have tried.

[Ch0jin]

@Duffy Oh I thought we were talking just about pedals, if we are including amps as well then I agree with you. My Peavey Ultra "Crunch" channel is the best distortion in my arsenal if I'm able to use some volume.

Regarding pedals and noise, if you'll indulge me, I'll try and drop some knowledge on that topic.

You have your "Hum", either 50Hz or 60Hz depending on your power supply frequency. This is probably the most common type of noise, as it can infect your signal in so many ways. Poorly filtered pedal power supplies (cheap 'wall wart' style power) will do it, under rated power supplies will do it too (say a power supply rated at 200mA with 500mA worth of pedals attached).

Simple, just use good power or batteries right? Not exactly. I'll leave out things like ground loops for now and focus on a single pedal-amp setup. Lets say you've got your fuzz pedal running on a battery so you have no hum, but wait! You crank up the volume and there's still hum! WTH!

You could be "picking up" power hum from any number of devices in your home or venue. Some electrical devices will radiate "hum" like a radio transmitter. Fluorescent lighting, industrial motors (refrigeration, air conditioning, etc etc) all pump out electrical noise. Add to that the dense cloud of radio waves we all live in, and there's plenty of sources for noise.

So to make sure our guitar rigs don't operate like radio receivers, (and there are plenty of cases of people using high gain amps/pedals that receive radio broadcasts) we use hum bucking pickups, cover the cavities of our guitars with foil and use good quality cables and STILL some pedals sound noisy.

That's when it comes down to the effects of gain, and that's what your experiencing by adjusting the volume and fuzz controls.

Lets take a Fuzz Face, one of the simplest, but still a personal favourite.

The "volume" control is basically a tap. The circuitry before the volume control defines the maximum level and gain of the circuit and all the volume control does is throttle that maximum level down to a usable level. Exactly like a tap. Therefore adjusting the volume through it's range shouldn't really effect the amount of noise your hear. Or to be a little technical, the ratio of signal to noise should remain the same.

The "Fuzz" control however is a gain control. Adjusting it alters the gain of the circuit which is essentially taking little sounds and making them much, much bigger. Great for your guitar signal, not so great if you have "noise" mixed into the signal. As you increase gain, you increase noise too. The higher the gain, the greater likelihood of 'picking up' noise from thin air too.

A gain pedal of any description shouldn't -generate- noise (we have modulation pedals with leaky LFO's to do that), the more gain they have though, the more likelihood they will amplify the ambient noise picked up by your guitar, your body and your cables, and feed it to your amp, resulting in "noise" when you increase gain past a certain point.

Bit of a disjointed explanation but I'm supposed to be working