OK, experts... Please tell me what gain is. I've been playing for almost 50 years and have no clue...

[sleewell]

I think you just want all of the gain and none of the mids idk lol jk

 

[0XI0]

Side note: In all these years, gain is something I've thought of on overdrive pedals... I've used "gain" to mean distortion/overdrive. I never really put that much thought into it. Gain is something on a overdrive pedal !


Here is why I always viewed gain as "drive" or distortion..... Is gain just a boost? Why is a boost different than volume ! I'm so confused !

the answer is kind of in the word itself, over drive. drive the signal over the limit, to deliberately break it, to get it to make lovely rich new harmonics.

gain is raising a voltage of a signal by taking the original and juicing it from the side, makes it louder. if you do that enough, you reach the voltage limit of what the messenger can handle and the original signal starts to distort. they call it clipping because on a scope you see the signal get too big for the "headroom" and the top and bottom gets clipped off. when they talk about headroom it means how much room you have to get louder before distortion. high headroom low headroom. low ceiling distorts earlier.