The "Distort and Drive" preset demonstrates this. The overall sound is crunchy, due to the EL34 tube saturation (Nasty Boy) we're using for the second distortion. But there's an additional excitement when you hit the strings hard and clip the first distortion - Ten Inch Spike - a soft clipping algorithm.
Recipe 22: Tube Screamer
Preset: Texas Shot This pedal is a bit of a paradox for a few reasons. - It's legendary, but, well, at least in our humble opinion, isn't that great.14 - It doesn't have any tubes in it. It doesn't even try to sound like tubes. - It doesn't scream. In fact, it sounds pretty muffled as pedals go. But even still, it does have a nice mellow sound and works great as an input/overdrive to tube amps. It's also an interesting design, so we decided to take a shot at it. The circuit itself isn't that different than other pedals, such as the OD-1. It's symmetric soft clipping, with diodes in the feedback loop. What makes the Tube Screamer is the prefiltering and postfiltering. The prefiltering is slanted towards the highs, so that the lows and mids don't get that distorted. Following this boost and corresponding distortion, the postfiltering is pretty aggressive, rolling of the distorted signal starting at a pretty low frequency. In general, this is a common and useful distortion technique - boost the highs with the prefilter, distort, and bring the highs back down with the postfilter. All in all, this gives the Tube Screamer a warm sound, or at least not a "trebly" sound, while providing decent saturation of the highs for those "Cold Shot" leads. Check out the Texas Shot presets for examples.
Recipe 23: Fuzz Face
Preset: Fuzzy Wuzzy While on the topic of legendary pedals, let's take a stab at the Fuzz Face. It's often been said that Jimi Hendrix did for the Fuzz Face what Motley Crue did for hair extensions, and for good reason. The Fuzz Face was a unique sounding effect that became a part of Jimi's sound. What it actually sounds like by itself is a little difficult to figure out, because every pedal sounded different. It used germanium transistors for the fuzz, which have a nice smooth sound but unfortunately terrible manufacturing tolerances. Basically, like snowflakes, no two germanium transistors sound quite alike. On top of that, the design of the power supply was such that as the batteries wore down, or if you
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Stevie Ray Vaughan, however, was really great.
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