How do fuzz/overdrive pedals work?

Do they take your guitar signal and boost it so that it overdrives the front end of the amp, or do they actually make the sound distorted before it arrives at the front of the amp, so that the amp is simply amplifying the distorted sound?

Thanks

R.

hi there , the pedal alters the signal from the guitar and sends it to the amp , the amp just amplifies the sound it recieves from the pedal

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B -- make the sound distorted before it arrives at the front of the amp, so that the amp is simply amplifying the distorted sound

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

Actually, there are pedals that do both.

Here's the deal. A fuzz or distortion pedal will color and distort the sound using various electronics before sending it to the amp, that way you can play your amp at lower volume and still get that great sound and different sounds to boot.

An overdrive or boost pedal will just boost the actual signal/tone of your guitar, but hits the preamp side of your amp harder to drive it into clipping and thus your amp and guitar create the distortion you are hearing. If you have a great tube amp this can be all you need.

Brad

A number of overdrive-style effects do not contain tubes (valves), and the effect is simulated by transistors or a computer chip. Distortion created using transistor "clipping" stages behaves far more linearly within their operating regions...when the input voltage falls outside its operating region of the amplifier, the signal is clipped without compression, known as "hard clipping", a sound which has more odd-order harmonics.

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Another thing to remember is that drive pedals are themselves just a species of preamp. In fact, if you have an effects loop on the amplifier you can plug a drive pedal direct into the return to send the signal straight to the amp's power amp, bypassing its own preamp entirely. Works fine.

In other words, when you put a drive pedal in front of an amp you are setting up cascading preamps.

There are also amps, such as Blackstar's HT-5, where the preamp is essentially just one of their own drive/boost pedals placed in front of a power amp:

http://www.blackstaramps.co.uk/products/index.html

It's all just different names for wiring...

Cheers - C