Every guitar player has his or her favored way of achieving the tasteful type of distortion that’s typically called overdrive. These may include use of the master volume control (allowing you to overdrive the preamp), a stompbox (such as the Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive), or a power attenuator (which lets you crank up the amplifier’s volume, while only allowing a certain amount of the signal to go out to the speakers. Playing through a small, relatively low power tube amp, like a Fender Deluxe Reverb, with the volume up is another route.
But there’s another often overlooked way of creating a chunky overdrive: using a treble booster. What? Yes, you read that right. See, if you put a treble booster between the guitar and amp, then roll off the amp’s high end (and also adjust the guitar’s tone control to taste), you’ll get a nicely saturated crunch that’s not quite like any other type of distortion. Though this was discovered by a few guitar players in the 1960s, when overdrive options were far more limited than today, it’s also how Brian May of Queen got his sweet, fluid solo sound through a Vox AC30 (which actually is a quite bright amp). In the ’60s, the best treble booster was actually made by Vox, essentially to give amps without the company’s signature Top Boost access to that feature. A quality graphic EQ just might also deliver the same results.