Overdrive pedal vs. overdriven amp

[tjcurtin1]

As someone completely new to pedals, can someone clarify this for me?

What does an overdrive-type pedal do that an amp won't/can't on its own? If you have a high gain input, or a gain control knob, or if you have amp modeling for crunchy amp styles, what do you gain with the pedal?

 

[marnold]

An overdrive pedal can push your amp to more distortion than the amp can produce alone. Many (most?) overdrive pedals will also color your tone viz the midrange hump with the typical Tube Screamer.

 

[duhvoodooman]

A good OD pedal will generally give you a greater range of tones than an individual amp is capable of. The other factor is that to get a true overdriven tone from a tube amp--i.e. saturating or "overdriving" the power tubes without artifically adding preamp gain--generally requires very substantial volume levels. Players who want to get this kind of tone at home or in a small room may find this virtually impossible without deafening themselves or family/neighbors. Good OD pedals will let you achieve a close simulation of this coveted tone at "bedroom" volume levels.

 

[Fingers]

Hmmm.........understand an overdrive pedal.............does a distortion pedal just add distortion tone, but doesn't overdrive the amp?.......although I know some distortion pedals are marked as 'Distortion/Overdrive'.....so I presume it works by changing the tone via the pedal and then turning up the level then overdrives the amp..............

Phew it is foggy in here................

What I mean is..............an overdrive is a booster that works your amp harder........................a distortion pedal changes the tone of your guitar.....but may also overdrive the amp as well....so you actually get two elements.

Have I answered my own question?

.....off for a lie down.........uke:

 

[duhvoodooman]

In my experience, overdrive and distortion pedals both introduce signal distortion, virtually always by the use of diodes or diode-like devices to "clip" a portion of the signal, i.e. shunt some of the waveform to ground rather than passing it on through the signal chain. Overdrives just do this in a less extreme way than distortion pedals. So it's really more of a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind.