Drive that Distortion into Fuzz and let'em know your name!

Attention all you grit, crunch, and sustain hungry tone addicts. Analog War Cry is doing an Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz hunt this month. We're going to be featuring some of the best sounding dirt boxes available today and what we found for you cats you are gonna go bananas over. Some you may not know, some are old time favorites, but all of them are gonna rock your amps into heavenly overdrive bliss. We all know how many of them are floating around out there today and how confusing it can get to to pick the right one for the job. Well the next few articles and reviews will help you get an idea of what's out there so you can get started on building that sound that has been swimming around inside your head since day one. These are the pedals we can't do without, the balls of our sound, and the most important in the bunch. For me this is the one effect pedal I can't get enough of, the one I can always make some room for on my pedalboard, and the one sound I use the most of when I'm recording in the studio. A good selection of OD, Dist, and Fuzz can make your sessions sound huge, give your tunes some meat, and bring your rhythm tracks to life. The backbone of a memorable rock tune always starts with some killer sounding overdrive, I layer anywhere from 4-5 sounds on a song and use as many as I can get my hands on throughout my records. But the mission isn't just to see how crazy and loud we can get our songs to sound, the goal is to create a solid foundation for the rest of the tones to lie in. Having a little patience and a good ear can get you your own signature voice, a sound you can carry throughout your entire career that'll be yours, and yours only. Just like Jimi's banshee fuzz tone, Gilmore's smooth'n'creamy solo distortion, Neil Young's famous gritty drive, Eric Johnson's beautiful violin like overdrive, or Jeff Beck's psychedelic bee buzz sound. The list of famous tones goes on and on, and these cats didn't just fall onto these tones by mistake, no sir. Those special tones comes from our hearts and souls, they are the blood that pumps through our guitars, the breathing of our amps. To have access to such gold we must be willing to pay some dues, do some major tweaking and experimenting, and most important have an open mind. We searched all corners of the earth so we could bring you the tip-top dogs on the scene, so stay tuned and make sure to get hands on some of these diamonds.