Distortion and chords

Ostrom

Just messing around with my strat playing some AC/DC. I'm currently using a tiny practice amp (not too bad actually, does the job well) through an ME-25 with mild distortion.

The open position chords sound a bit muddy if that makes sense, there isn't great separation or definition between the individual notes. I'm wondering is it just my playing or something that can be taken care of with settings. I'm on the bridge pickup on the strat, with a little bit of distortion and compression.

Any advice welcomed!

Dord

efla wrote: »

Just messing around with my strat playing some AC/DC. I'm currently using a tiny practice amp (not too bad actually, does the job well) through an ME-25 with mild distortion.

The open position chords sound a bit muddy if that makes sense, there isn't great separation or definition between the individual notes. I'm wondering is it just my playing or something that can be taken care of with settings. I'm on the bridge pickup on the strat, with a little bit of distortion and compression.

Any advice welcomed!

Turn down the gain or try stick to powerchords with high gain. It can get quite muddy otherwise.

ball ox

In my experience I find that this generally comes down two things; the guitar and your overdrive/distortion.

When you play an open chord on a bad guitar it will sound off even when played clean. This is generally down to bad intonation/frets/nut etc. Play an open chord note by note into a tuner and see how accurate each note is.

I also find that open chords through a naturally over-driven amp or through an overdrive pedal sound infinitely better than through a distortion pedal. I think a distortion pedal might have a bad effect on all the natural overtones and harmonics that a big open chord can produce and saturates the whole thing making it sound muddy.

bad2dabone

For ACDC I usually play on a clean channel with high-ish gain. They're stuff isn't as distorted as you might think.

Ostrom

ball ox wrote: »

In my experience I find that this generally comes down two things; the guitar and your overdrive/distortion.

When you play an open chord on a bad guitar it will sound off even when played clean. This is generally down to bad intonation/frets/nut etc. Play an open chord note by note into a tuner and see how accurate each note is.

I also find that open chords through a naturally over-driven amp or through an overdrive pedal sound infinitely better than through a distortion pedal. I think a distortion pedal might have a bad effect on all the natural overtones and harmonics that a big open chord can produce and saturates the whole thing making it sound muddy.

Thanks for the advice (everyone)

I think I may need to do some setup, I just got it and I assume its not set in the factory

rcaz

Chords, by nature, distort themselves. The reason distorted power chords are so common (apart from them being easy enough for anyone to figure out) is because people want distortion (obviously, since it rawks), and perfect fifths are the second-least dissonant interval you can play, with a ratio of 2:3 of the frequencies of the root and the fifth. Major thirds are the next-least dissonant, with frequency ratio 4:5. Octaves are the least dissonant interval, with 1:2, but they don't provide much musical 'meat'.

The more notes you put into your chord, the more 'muddy' it will get. The notes distort and intermodulate enough on their own without all the extra dissonance you're putting with distortion's overtones.

So if you're playing a full open chord, say E major, with root, fifth, octave, third, a compound fifth and a compound octave, and none of those notes being perfectly in tune (by nature of the instrument), there's going to be a whole lot of dissonance going on without distortion!

I wouldn't agree with ball ox though, it doesn't have anything to do with the source of the distortion, it's just the physics of it

-Chris-

Make sure you're using overdrive instead of distortion on the ME25, use the amp clean.

As bad2dabone says, they actually play quite clean so make sure you're not putting too much overdrive on.

ball ox

El Pr0n wrote: »

I wouldn't agree with ball ox though, it doesn't have anything to do with the source of the distortion, it's just the physics of it

??
I was always under the impression that a distortion pedal distorts your signal while an overdrive pedal just drives it hard causing it to break up.
Surely distorting an complex grouping of overtones and harmonics is going to deliver a muddy signal to your amp.

I stand to be corrected of course.

rcaz

ball ox wrote: »

??
I was always under the impression that a distortion pedal distorts your signal while an overdrive pedal just drives it hard causing it to break up.

Well from my understanding of it, all distortion is volume boosting. The frequencies you can already hear when the guitar's clean get boosted so far that they clip, and the frequencies that are almost inaudible get boosted up to louder levels, that's where all the harmonic content comes from. Apart from bit crushing, downsampling, and ring/frequency modulation (which aren't really distortion, but can pass for distorted tones) I can't think of any other way of distorting it...

I can't really figure out how to draw a line between my SD-1, RAT and Big Muff any more than I could figure out how to draw a line between an SD-1 and a Tubescreamer, or a Big Muff and a Fuzz Face or whatever. It's all a question of electronic components and configuration.

Since a RAT can so convincingly do a light crunchy OD, a standard (lovely!) distortion, and almost touch on a proper fuzz, I always figured overdrive, distortion and fuzz were just different orders or magnitude of the same idea...

ball ox wrote: »

Surely distorting an complex grouping of overtones and harmonics is going to deliver a muddy signal to your amp.

Yep! I wasn't disagreeing here, in case it seemed that way!