How does dieode clipping distortion work?

[chu2]

I'm a newb trying to understand the works of effects so I thought I'd start by asking a simple question.

 

Can anyone explain to me how this works?

 

Thanks.

[varialbender]

I could be wrong, cause I'm a newb, but I believe diodes have a maximum voltage that they'll let through, and your guitar signal, which is voltage from your pickups, will have the tops of the signal cut off. So, a sine wave will have the tips cut off, making it look more square. The diodes used will have a voltage at which this happens, and guitar signal is usually a fair amount less, so the guitar signal is amplified so that it cuts the tops off. The more it's amplified, the more it looks like a square wave. So the gain of a distortion is really the gain of volume before the clipping section. Then there's also a volume knob after it which is just a pot (resistor) that will eat away at your signal, reducing the volume. Check the new DIY section too if not enough comes up here, or www.diystompboxes.com is very good, and there are many articles around. Hopefully I wasn't too wrong, I'm not much into distortion circuits.

[chu2]

bump...

[Narcosynthesis]

Looking at a simple circuit like the bazz fuss.
the transister does the amplification, so signal goes in the front, bigger on the other side. The diode in it puts some of the circuit back into the input, so the boosted signal goes back and boosts even further, distorting it more
What the diode does is control how much gets sent back, different diodes start conducting at different voltages, so a low voltage germanium diode will put signal back to distort it at lower levels - hence more distortion, an led for example has a much higher voltage, so less signal will be sent back and distorting less

make any sense? this is what I figured from a bazz fuss style circuit, though they are probably used differently elsewhere

David