Fuzz, overdrive, & distortion?

[MacDaddy]

So what's the difference?

Is there one to do with the technicalities of square or saw tooth waves?

I remember reading the difference between overdrive and distortion, is that with overdrive the amount of distortion is related to how hard you play (hit your strings harder & more distortion) whereas with distortion, it it is not (hit your strings soft or hard, same amount of distortion). 

If this is the case, what about Fuzz? Is it just semantics?

[paul_5]

I read something recently from Brian Wampler of Wampler effects who stated that the difference between distortion and overdrive is that distortion dumps a portion of the signal to ground from the opamp feedback loop, and overdrive doesn’t  - distortion also has a high pass filter before the clipping diodes.

 

Fuzz is a more extreme form of muck, where the signal goes through cascading gain stages, rather like running 3 or 4 distortion pedals in your signal path. 

I’ll see if I can find the link.

[paul_5]

‘‘Twas a video.

 

 

[jposega]

Its all just a matter of scale. Overdrive becomes distortion becomes fuzz as you increase the gain. How this is achieved varies depending on the circuits involved.

[dannybuoy]

There are no hard and fast rules and plenty of overlap where high gain overdrive can sound like distortion or low gain fuzz.

"distortion dumps a portion of the signal to ground from the opamp feedback loop, and overdrive doesn’t" might be true for some circuits, but it isn't a general characteristic of distortion. Not all distortions use op-amps for one!