What is the difference between gain and overdrive

Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Bang on the target Thanks for such accurate answer. Laurence Payne Laurence Payne Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Version labels for answers. Linked Related 6. Hot Network Questions. Accept all cookies Customize settings. Post a Comment. Using Gain, Overdrive, and Distortion can either add or detract from your overall guitar tone, so it's a good idea to know the differences between them.

Technically speaking, there are several definitions to these terms, but we are only going to deal with the audio Aspects, or how it sounds to your ears. Gain is usually defined as an overall boost in your signal without any added tonal coloration.

This is the case no matter what kind of backline the venue has. It kicks performance dynamics and touch-sensitivity brusquely to the curb. Then it stomps on them. For this reason, BOSS offers a few different flavors of distortion. How these two effects work into a live or studio performance can be easy as using overdrive for rhythm-guitar parts and distortion for solos. But there are myriad sonic recipes for either or both distortion or overdrive.

In fact, the only thing holding you back is your imagination. Go for a My Bloody Valentine vibe and run an overdrive into a distortion to dial in all kinds of havoc. A guitar amp can be thought of as a device that has two stages. A relatively weak signal goes from your instrument into the first stage, where it is processed and handed to the second stage, which boosts it into a strong signal-the sound that then comes out of the speakers and rocks the Casbah.

That first stage is the preamp stage. On some amps, you can control the level or strength of the signal sent through this first stage; this control is called "gain" also often labeled as "drive". Gain can be thought of as the input volume to the preamp stage gain adjustments can produce changes in overall volume, which might account for some of the confusion between the terms , although it's more of a tone control than a volume control.

Your gain setting determines how hard you're driving the preamp section of your amp.