Fuzz bass

Overdriving a bass signal significantly changes the timbre, adds higher overtones (harmonics), increases the sustain, and, if the gain is turned up high enough, creates a "breaking up" sound characterized by a growling, buzzy tone.

In the 1960s and early 1970s fuzz bass was associated with the psychedelic music (e.g., Edgar Broughton Band), progressive rock (e.g., Genesis), and psychedelic soul/funk (e.g., Sly and the Family Stone) styles, and it tended to be a "warmer", "smoother", and "softer" overdrive-type sound caused by soft, symmetrical clipping of the audio signal that "round[ed] off the signal peaks rather than razor-slicing"[3] them and filtered out the harsher high harmonics.

This is achieved by hard clipping of the bass signal, which leaves in "harsher high harmonics that can result in sounds that are heard as jagged and spiky.

In the context of electric guitars, the terms "distortion", "overdrive" and "fuzz" are often used interchangeably, but they have subtle differences in meaning.

In practice, when a bass amp is "cranked" to its maximum volume, the fuzz tone will also include some power amplifier clipping.

The downside of using a pedal designed for the electric guitar is that the lower-end bass tone is mostly lost when the signal is heavily clipped.

Clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is overdriven and attempts to deliver an output voltage or current beyond its maximum capability.

"Hard clipping" flattens peaks abruptly, resulting in harsh-sounding, high amplitude odd harmonics.

More complex pedals have different distortion effects (e.g., overdrive and fuzz), gates to trigger the volume at which sounds will get overdriven, mixers to mix the natural and fuzzed sound in the player's desired proportions, and multiple band equalizers (typically for low and high frequencies).

Boutique fuzz bass pedals even have unusual effects such as a "starve" effect, which mimics the distortion sound a pedal gives with a dying battery, a diode selector (either silicon or germanium) for selecting the transistor overdrive tone, and an octave selector (above or below the pitch being played).

The first known musical recording to use the fuzz bass was Marty Robbins ' 1961 song " Don't Worry ".
Paul McCartney , in one of the earliest uses of the fuzz bass, played the guitar on the 1965 Beatles song " Think for Yourself " from their album Rubber Soul .
Bill Wyman in one of the earliest uses of this type of guitar played with a growling fuzz bass tone on the 1966 Rolling Stones songs " Under My Thumb ," " Flight 505 " and " Think " from their album Aftermath .
Waveform plot showing the different types of clipping. Tube overdrive is a form of soft limiting, while transistor clipping or extremely overdriven tube amps resemble hard clipping.
Aguilar Agro bass overdrive pedal, manufactured in the 2010s.
Darkglass bass overdrive pedal on a 6 string bass.
Over the years, various Peavey bass amplifiers have had built-in distortion effects.
Lemmy Kilmister , the bassist for Motorhead , obtained a natural fuzz bass tone by overdriving his twin 100 watt Marshall Bass stacks.
Napalm Death, a grindcore band shown here at a 2007 show, typically uses a heavy, grinding bass distortion tone.
Motörhead's bassist and lead singer Lemmy Kilmister often played with a fuzz bass tone that came from overdriving his twin 100 watt Marshall stacks.
Jack Bruce from Cream , shown here performing in 1972, often played with a fuzz bass tone.