It's hard to imagine rock music without guitar distortion: Jimi Hendrix's albums would be unthinkable. Punk rock couldn't have happened. Metallica might have wound up sounding like Barry Manilow.

Guitarists will do just about anything to get just the right sound out of their setup, including purposely introducing all manner of distortion into the signal. It seems counter-intuitive, but it ...

Before Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were squealing and grinding their way through the minor pentatonic scale, Buddy Guy was discovering entirely new sounds on the guitar, like feedback and distortion ...

A cost-effective way to buy into the V-Guitar world, with a useful range of distortion textures and a synth sound thrown in. Full potential is not reached if you're using a conventional guitar. Best ...

If you're playing rock guitar, chances are that at some point you're going to want to use overdrive or distortion effects. Saturated, gnarly guitar tones are synonymous with rock music, and every ...

The rock music of the 1990s has been raging back in recent months, and with it, new acts are cropping up that seem to be drawn to the era's frayed noise and hooky, guitar-driven melodies. Among the ...

A look at the evolution of the technologies that give rock its signature sound Fifty years ago, a faulty connection in a mixing board gave birth to fuzz, which is a term of art. Although it came to ...

Music making is increasingly digitized here in 2020, but some analog audio effects are still very difficult to reproduce in this way. One of those effects is the kind of screeching guitar distortion ...

On Tuesday at Boston University, guitarist Giacomo Baldelli will perform a recital of modern works for the electric guitar, including Tristan Murail’s singular 1984 piece “Vampyr!” Murail first ...

The first new Social Distortion record in fifteen years almost never came to be, as midway through recording, Mike Ness was ...

You could say that I stumbled into distortion when I was 14. Since then, I never let go.” González is on the April 27 episode of our 'BV Interviews' podcast.

We all know what distortion sounds like. We’ve heard it in heavy metal tunes, cheap iPod docks and the crummy speakers at Taco Bell drive-thrus. And we’ve all read distortion specs on things like ...