Distortions

[Todd Madson <crash@waste.org>]

Well, Michael Tuminello was looking for distortion.

He NEEDS an MXR Blue Box.  In one mode it's distorted, octave divided
ring modulated hell.  In the other, it's a really unusual synthetic 
sounding fuzz with sort of a clear high-endy sound..  Try one.

The Blue box is especially effective looped, and especially if the
loop is also sent through a Boss OC-2 octave divider and then into
a Lexicon Vortex.

As far as the RAT pedal, be wary that the current models are not the
same as the old units and, in fact, the old units are in demand.
They even came out with a "Classic Rat" which is similar to, but not
identical to the old units.  Another unit to look out for is the R2DU,
which is two RAT pedals in a 19" rackmount which can be ganged together
for super ultra saturated noise.

Try before you buy.  Your mileage may vary.

There are a lot of possible distortion devices you could try out
there.

You might want to visit a music store and try a bunch of different 
fuzz pedals and try and describe the sound you want to them.

Pedals to stay away from if you don't like warm, classic distortion:
Ibanez Tube Screamer, Boss Blues Driver, TC Electronic Booster Line
Driver, Chandler Tube Driver, etc.

Twisted, weirdo pedals:
DOD Gonkulator Modulator (distortion + ring modulation), DOD Buzz
Box (Blue Box clone before MXR reissued that box), Electro-Harmonix
Frequency Analyzer (twisted, weirdo ring modulation and other squishy
strangeness), nearly anything by Zachary Vex, Boss Digital Metalizer,
Penguin Love Game (really rare), Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer
(weirdo distortions + octave below + above with weird filtration), 
Boss Digital Harmonist, Boss DD-3 and DD-5 (loopers on a budget) delays,
etc.

He also mentioned that he wanted to go after a sort of Duran Duran
sound, NiN,among others - some of these bands used TONs of chorus on
the guitar, and compression too.  So did Jamie-West Oram of the Fixx.
I think DOD makes an "Ice Box" chorus for an especially penetrating
high-end sound.  Another good chorus is the TC electronic unit, as
it has especially good fidelity and doesn't  cut out any high-end.

And don't forget computer based SFX - the weird premiere plug-in by
bias called "SFX machine" has all sorts of weirdo stuff in it.  I
have a demo version and it's really weird.

Todd Madson
Musician, Mountain Biker, Stunt Kite Flyer, BeOS/MacOS/Linux/WinNt user.
http://www.waste.org/~crash/index.html