What's the difference between overdrive, distortion and fuzz pedals?The threads only cover overdrive properly — fuzz and distortion aren't defined there. Overdrive — the amp breaking up gently Alan Ratcliffe describes the classic blues overdrive as a valve amp pushed "to the verge of overdrive" — play hard and it crunches, roll the guitar's volume back and it cleans up 3. He stresses that blues uses less gain than beginners expect: "most beginning players use far too much distortion", so overdrive should sit in that mild-crunch zone 3. Distortion and fuzz — thin on the ground The threads given don't actually spell out the difference between distortion and fuzz — the dedicated fuzz thread is mostly players swapping favourites (Fuzz Faces, Tone Benders, boutique builds) rather than definitions 1. One practical nugget from an amp thread: on lower-gain amps the built-in distortion channel often isn't up to much, and "a decent distortion pedal is a must" alongside a noise gate 6. Rule of thumb to take away Overdrive = amp-like breakup that reacts to your picking and volume knob; distortion = harder, sustained clipping; fuzz = the sputtery, vintage-flavoured extreme end — but the forum only backs up the first of those in detail. If you want the full fuzz-vs-distortion breakdown, start a thread or dig into "The ultimate fuzz thread" — plenty of fuzz fanatics there who'll happily explain it 1. From these forum threadsThe ultimate fuzz thread (2010): Fuzz Face, Tone Bender and boutique fuzz talk from SA playersHow to get that blues sound out of my roland cube 30 (2008): Alan's take on classic overdrive and why less gain winsLooking for a new amp (2009): Why a decent distortion pedal beats amp distortion channels
