Every overdrive pedal is an amp

There are probably more overdrive pedals on the market than any other kind of pedal. And what the vast majority of us are chasing is a sound we heard as children — or from before we were alive. So what made that sound? Not a pedal. Every overdrive pedal is based on a few amps being driven to the absolute point of destruction. The valves red hot and singing. The speaker borderline caving in on itself. That's where those sounds come from. Pedals come a bit later, with the Maestro Fuzz-Tone — which is what Keith Richards used on Satisfaction. Not the first use, but the most famous. And that's a fuzz, not an overdrive.

So when somebody names a record, I'll listen once. Then I'll go and do a bit of research: who produced it, what amps were they using, were there pedals — which in the fifties there wouldn't have been. Then I'll play it again with that in mind and see what I can hear. Is it an AC30 keeling over? A Deluxe Reverb, which has decent headroom — you can get it to six or seven before it starts to break up naturally? Into the seventies, is it a Hiwatt, where you can crank it most of the way before anything distorts? Fifty years ago the answer was simple: to get that sound, you need this amp, and you turn it right up.

Us mere mortals can't do that. I couldn't put an AC30 in this room and use it without complaints from ten doors down in every direction. So if I want that driven-AC30 sound — the classic British blues invasion sound — how do I get it at volumes that aren't going to get me arrested? An amp with this and this and this, and a pedal that does that. Fine. But at the end of the day you still have to feed that signal. So what feeds it? The guitar does. That's how my brain works when you hand me a record: back from the amp to what the guitar has to put into it.