Distortion
How hard the pedal pushes your guitar into grit and fizz.
- Turn up More crunch, sustain, and aggressive clipped tone.
- Turn down Cleaner attack — closer to your dry guitar with just a hint of edge.
Pedals / Hard-clipping orange distortion
Crazy Tone
Hard-clipping orange distortion · play-tested
seth — fish
seth@ninevolt:~$
Knobs
In the TUI each knob runs from low (left / 0%) to high (right / 100%). Start near noon, then nudge while you play.
Tone
Balances dark body versus bright fizz.
- Turn up Brighter, thinner, and more cutting in a mix.
- Turn down Darker and thicker, with less high-end bite.
Level
Overall output loudness after the effect.
- Turn up Louder — can push the next pedal or amp harder.
- Turn down Quieter — useful to match your bypassed volume.
Inspired by
Boss DS-1 Distortion (1978–present) — two-stage gain (transistor booster + op-amp), hard-clipping diodes to ground, Big Muff–style scooped tone stack. Kurt Cobain Nevermind; appears in Ninevolt profiles (nirvana-nevermind, nirvana-chorus, misfits-danzig-era, etc.).
Signal path
| Step | What it does |
|---|---|
| Input HPF ~60 Hz | Blocks DC / sub rumble (maps C1 coupling). |
| Transistor booster | Q2 soft asymmetric pre-clip (~35 dB equivalent) — even harmonics. |
| Op-amp gain | Distortion → up to ~22.3× (1 + distortion^1.04 × 21.3). |
| Pre-clip HPF ~72 Hz | C8/R13 — bass distorts less at high gain. |
| Pre-clip LP ~7.2 kHz | R14/C10 mellows grain when diodes idle. |
| Hard diode clip ~0.7 V | D4/D5 shunt to virtual ground — fizzy hard knee. |
| Tone LP / HP blend | Tone blends 234 Hz LP vs 1063 Hz HP — scoop ~500 Hz at noon. |
| Level + clamp | Restores tone-stack loss; output trim. |
How we modeled it
Full DS-1 chain: booster asym soft clip → variable op-amp gain → pre-clip filters → hard diode clip → Big Muff tone blend → Level.
Simplifications
- Single combined gain stage vs separate Q2 + op-amp math (character preserved via booster + op gain split) - One-pole tone filters vs −6 dB/oct passive stacks - Mono only; no battery sag or buffer stages