Simplified, Physically-informed Models of Distortion and Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedals

This paper explores a computationally efficient, physically informed approach to design algorithms for emulating guitar distortion circuits. Two iconic effects pedals are studied: the “Distortion” pedal and the “Tube Screamer” or “Overdrive” pedal. The primary distortion mechanism in both pedals is a diode clipper with an embedded low-pass filter, and is shown to follow a nonlinear ordinary differential equation whose solution is computationally expensive for real-time use. In the proposed method, a simplified model, comprising the cascade of a conditioning filter, memoryless nonlinearity and equalization filter, is chosen for its computationally efficient, numerically robust properties. Often, the design of distortion algorithms involves tuning the parameters of this filter-distortion-filter model by ear to match the sound of a prototype circuit. Here, the filter transfer functions and memoryless nonlinearities are derived by analysis of the prototype circuit. Comparisons of the resulting algorithms to actual pedals show good agreement and demonstrate that the efficient algorithms presented reproduce the general character of the modeled pedals.