i picked up a overdrive pedal (was only 10 bucks on sale) so why not but what does it do?

A Basic one, which im assuming you got, since 10 dollars.. Should only effect the Gain and Tone

plug it in and find out

it's a tone shaping device. creates clipping in your signal

Let me break this down for you.

You and 1 other guitarist are both playing a song loud. Both playing the same thing, both pretty much evenly matched sound wise.

You get a solo - you press the overdrive - your guitar gets just fractionally louder, and stands out over the other guitarists playing.

Overdrive is only necessary for solos, and even then it is not required practise lol

you seem to know alot about guitar and music and such

I know more about long hair and diablo xD

what is diablo's name?;)

that's sort of a closed minded perspective on how to use any effect. you can use overdrive wherever you want, and it's not exactly necessary to use it at any point. when I play, my amp is always running a bit hot, and I have my fuzz face on. There are other ways to get your solos to cut through. I think the Kirk Hammett approach was to boost mids because James Hetfield's tone scooped them. You basically just have to compliment each other's tone to get one part to stand out in a mix.

Derkaderk is absolutely right - I wasn't being close minded, I was being simple. For me, it's not necessary to have it on at any time other than solo'ing. Thats me, i'm glad you find better uses than me!

No.
what youre saying is that if you'd play something without an overdrive box, then play it again WITH an overdrive box but would turn the volume knob on your amp down, the sound would be the same?




sort of, but you two make it sound like all overdrive does is make it louder which is only partially true, what it really does is that it makes the output signal stronger which as you said in your previous post, causes clipping (and more volume, yes)