Three in One Pedals for Fuzz, OD, Distortion

[CASUAL_SIGHT]

Are there any known pedals that have Fuzz, Overdrive, and Distortion in one?

[Surgo]

It's not a production pedal (you have to build it yourself), but GuitarPCB sells some triple-combos like that.

[BertKoor]

Maybe get one of those Zoom multi-fx pedals

[pekbro]

Not analog, but Zoia has them as well. Trying to recall if I have any analog pedals that can do that, possibly.

[zerocrossing]

If you want analog, there’s the Elektron Analog Drive. If you’re not a slave to analog, a Tonex pedal can model any type of drive pedal.

[DMG68]

Empress Effects Multidrive, if you can find a used one.
The effects run in parallel, you have 2 settings and can adjust which effects are on for each setting with internal dip switches, so you can’t access all 3 separately without physically turning down the volume on at least 1 of them.

[Mister Natural]

I've never understood what the difference between overdrive & distortion is. Fuzz is fuzz but, by the same token dirt is dirt.

[GaryG]

I've never understood what the difference between overdrive & distortion is. Fuzz is fuzz but, by the same token dirt is dirt.

It's very subjective, matter of degrees etc but rule of thumb I've found is overdrive is soft-clipping whereas distortion is hard-clipping. So a roughening of the signal but the character of the sound basically intact as opposed radically changing the character. I think of my old Boss OS-2 where you can sweep from OD to distortion, quite a radical difference and not just in the amount of dirt.

[CASUAL_SIGHT]

Really great feedback and discussion here.
I'm busy working on one, so these comments are super cool. Feel free to check it out:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17xj1TjQrQ/

[Uncle E]

I've never understood what the difference between overdrive & distortion is. Fuzz is fuzz but, by the same token dirt is dirt.

Overdrive is supposed to make the amp distort and meld with that sound. Basically a dirty boost. A Tube Screamer isn't all that great going into a clean amp but sounds great pushing a distorting amp.

[YnJ]

Yep, that's how I understand it as well, an overdrive is meant to push the amp, a distortion is supposed to be used with a clean amp. Some of them seems to overlap though, you can find overdrives which sound good with a clean amp and has plenty of gain, and you can of course use a distortion to boost/push a distorted amp, as I used my Boss HM-2 for. It might not be a great distortion pedal, it's a decent booster though. For me, and this is just my perception of it, the distinction is the sound. There's a distinct overdrive sound, fuller and softer, and a distinct distortion sound, thinner and sharper, of course a lot of pedals just fall somewhere inbetween

Is the Big Muff a fuzz or an overdrive btw? According to the internet it's both, it apparently has both fuzz type circuits and overdrive type circuits built in, technically the answer might be in the circuits

[mountainmaster]

Is the Big Muff a fuzz or an overdrive btw? According to the internet it's both, it apparently has both fuzz type circuits and overdrive type circuits built in, technically the answer might be in the circuits

A Big Muff is in between a fuzz and a distortion. It has way too much gain to do overdrive, even at minimum settings.

[Uncle E]

David Gilmour has pretty much always used the Big Muff with clean amps. However, he turns the sustain low and uses a Power Booster overdrive to boost into it. Billy Corgan uses the Big Muff with a JMP-1, and it sounds to me like the JMP-1 is set clean, with distortion mainly coming from the Big Muff.

[mystran]

I've never understood what the difference between overdrive & distortion is. Fuzz is fuzz but, by the same token dirt is dirt.

It's very subjective, matter of degrees etc but rule of thumb I've found is overdrive is soft-clipping whereas distortion is hard-clipping. So a roughening of the signal but the character of the sound basically intact as opposed radically changing the character. I think of my old Boss OS-2 where you can sweep from OD to distortion, quite a radical difference and not just in the amount of dirt.

There is some variation as to what the different terms actually mean (ie. they refer to sound more than specific circuits), but much of the time when it comes to pedals "overdrive" is done with a circuit where you have an opamp with diodes in the feedback loop such that at low signal levels the opamp has a large amount of gain and then as the signal level gets high enough for the diodes to conduct the gain falls down to unity. So this is sort of like soft-clipping a signal with a boost, but then mixing a bit of dry signal back into the signal.

Meanwhile "distortion" is often an arrangement where we have diodes simply shorting the signal to ground once it exceeds the diode threshold, which results in a straight soft-clip with a fairly sharp knee (this is often referred to as "hard clip" in pedals, but it's not truly hard as such). Unlike the "overdrive" circuit, if you drive it hard enough against the clipping threshold, there's no dry signal pass-through so it sounds more aggressive.

In practice both circuits typically do some (perhaps drastic) pre- and post-EQ which is where most of the difference between different pedals tend to come from, although difference choices for clipping diodes and such can have an effect too... but the basic configurations of either diodes in opamp feedback loop (OD) or shorting to ground (DS) are super common.

As far as Boss OS-2 goes it basically split the signal into two paths. One path has your typical OD circuit and the other path has your typical DS circuit. Then you got the "color" knob that simply blends between the two signals... although each of these signals has frequency shaping such that typically this pedal sounds best with the "color" somewhere fairly close to the middle, so even if you can get "pure overdrive" or "pure distortion" by turning the knob all the way to one side, that's probably not going to sound as good as a pedal designed for one or the other specifically.

ps. I do have a Boss OS-2 and I think it's pretty versatile actually, but I'd say it's sort of it's own thing and you need to listen to what it does and find the settings where it sounds good rather than just blindly expecting "standard" overdrive or "standard" distortion by turning the color knob all the way to one side.

[YnJ]

A Big Muff is in between a fuzz and a distortion. It has way too much gain to do overdrive, even at minimum settings.

Not saying you're wrong. What about the Boss Super Overdrive, that has just as much gain as the Big Muff