Originally Posted By: Bass Thumper
Originally Posted By: Gordon Scott

It may be that your desire for a "clean" sound is a bit at odds with your desire for "full, fat and fabulous".

Thanks for your perspective. But I’m not sure if we share the exact vocabulary. I distinguish distortion from harmonics.


You're not wrong to distinguish between them, but they're far closer related than perhaps you realise. The sound you get from plucking a string contains many harmonics. They're caused in part by the fact of the pluck being a non-linear stimulation that results in predominantly even-order harmonics that tend to sound pleasant to us. There are also sympathetic vibrations in other strings and in the body of the instrument. All those sounds also tend to decay at different rates. So far we're agreed, I think, though I would argue that the very fact of that pluck is strictly a distortion.

I think we'd also agree that clipping is a distortion and can be quite unwanted.

Where you perhaps don't agree is that, for example, a valve amplifier, even when well below the clipping level will introduce other sounds that are not a part of the basic sound of the instrument. Valves tend to give a slight distortion almost whatever level one runs them at, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Assuming the instrument's sound can be heard, then the various electrodes in the valve vibrate sympathetically, typically at some overtone (subtle difference from harmonic), which adds colour and hopefully richness. The same sound will also feed a small percentage back into the instrument also adding a small amount or colour.

The thing is, all of those colourations are strictly distortions ... they're not part of the pure sound that comes out of the instrument. Often that pure sound is pretty flat and boring. It needs some of those colourations to get 'life'.

What I'm saying, then, is don't fear all of those colourations. Even with a subjectively nice clean sound, there will be some present.

All simple distortion of a sound contains purely harmonically-related components, essentially by definition. The most natural sounds of most instruments also contain overtones that are almost harmonically related, but not quite.

For good, rich, sounds, you typically need a little of each.

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
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