Modulation is a pristine effect. It’s subtle, not overly aggressive and best employed when it doesn’t substantially alter your raw tone. Distortion is different. While often loud...

Modulation is a pristine effect. It’s subtle, not overly aggressive and best employed when it doesn’t substantially alter your raw tone. Distortion is different. While often loud and aggressive, distortion warps your signal, completely changing the demeanor of your sound. So the question is this: Can the two get along?

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Modulation is a pristine effect. It’s subtle, not overly aggressive and best employed when it doesn’t substantially alter your raw guitar tone.

Distortion is different.

While often loud and aggressive, distortion warps your signal, completely changing the demeanor of your sound.

So the question is this: Can the two get along?

Specifically, can we use them at the same time without sounding like a chaotic mess? I don’t suppose anyone should say it’s not possible, but what can we do to make it sound palatable?

First, we should define modulation.

In the world of signal processing, modulation is simply the variance of a periodic waveform. In the world of playing guitar, that translates to the following effects:

Chorus/Flanger
Phaser
Tremolo

The wave variance is most evident in the phaser effect, as you can hear the sound move over top of your amp’s raw signal with relative clarity.

In other words, it’s a saturating effect that changes the flavor of your tone. The same can be said of distortion, which is what makes combining them so tricky.

But when done right, it can sound really good, which makes understanding a few best practices worth the effort. So with a working definition of modulation, let’s look at how to best combine these two effects.

1. Govern the sharpness coming out of your amp’s three-band EQ

It’s not always necessary

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