After a heated conversation with a friend I am seeking others opinions! I say that my Hep Cat is an Overdrive my friend says that it is a distortion because it doesn't have enough of a transparent clean boost. I happen to belive that the 3 key words are a little ambiguous, but here is my take-

Over drive-can be used as a clean boost and gets distortion with the preamp section of a amp

Distortion-simple buzz-y square wave w/o a lot of harmonics

Fuzz-sqaure wave with lots of harmonics...

Which pedals out there does everyone think are misnamed? Overdrives that are really fuzz pedals? Fuzz pedals masquerading as distortions??

i always thought the RAT looked more like a black box than an animal

I agree with your discriptions of the overdrive pedal and the fuzz pedal but you are dead wrong with your discription of the distortion pedal. Fuzz pedals intend to create square wave clipping of an amplified sine wave and can be a perfect sqare or less and what this means is the edges of the top of the wave could be very slightly rounded and for the most part the sides of the sign wave are parrallel.
Distortion pedals in general intend to create a softer clip whereby and for the most part the ampified sine wave retains some of it's origional form. The top of the sine wave has very round and smooth edges and the sides still retain the closer together as they rise to peak relationship.
Now ofcoarse there are a littany of manufacturers all calling their products by various names and sometimes what is popular at the moment can persuade classification. Also some manufacturers are very extreem in ways and create pedals that do both but classify them by one term only.
So to set the record straight one has to look back at the history of pedals that intend to clip or "distort" a sign wave and it is there that the classification becomes apparent.
Hard square amped clipping is where the term FUZZ originated and tube clipping is soft clipping distortion.
As for the lack or excess of harmonics in any given pedal that intends to clip a sine wave, this has more to do with even and odd order harmonics and how they are consequently filtered or not.
One other thing is yes overdrives should offer a clean or transparent boost but are not limited to preamp interaction only, many famous players have used overdrives to get a little extra out of their power amp tubes too eeking just a little more gain out of their amps.

Kind Regards
Craig

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