differences?

[sbguitman]

OK...I was wondering what the difference between a few pedals are.

What is the difference between...

...overdrive and distortion?

...flanger and phaser?

And, what do filters and delays do?

I know it's a lot of questions to ask, but I'm kind of confused...

[smfulla]

here is a very 'basic' explanation of those effects:

distortion actually clips the very highs and very lows to make a sound wave that looks more like a hill with a flat top and a vally with a flat bottom other than a hill with a round top and a valley with a round bottom.

overdrive is something like the clean signals volume is being increased so that the channel can't handle it and ends up overdriving (something like that). Sorry that wasn't much of an explanation, but I guess it just doesn't clip the highs and lows of a signal

a flanger is like a chorus, but with a little bit different parameters (I think) And the soundwave is different.

a phaser is as far as I know totally different from a flanger, I thought the phaser was like a rotary speaker

anyway, to help you out, go to http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/effects-explained.html

[ESP_Viper]

Overdrive is just a volume boost to drive your input stage into distortion. Distortion is just a distortion effect. Though some overdrive pedals are just distortion pedals, just called overdrive. Generally distortion will give you a higher gain sound. Overdrives are generally used for a 10 or so db boost for soloing.