[QUESTION] As someone who owns 0 guitar pedals. Which would be the most fun to get first?

They're about the same to an extent. A dirty guitar signal is something along the lines of, say, "Dont Let Me Down" by The Beatles while a distorted guitar signal is like "In Bloom" by Nirvana. The Beatles track has a guitar sound that sounds like a clean amp, just turned up high and with a little extra warmth and bite to it. That's overdrive when used subtly: just a little bit of dirt. Good for blues, old school rock'n'roll, early punk, some jazz, some country, nothing too loud. When it's full on distorted, though, you get that Nirvana track's sound. Distortion is what you want for metal or modern pop punk or classic rock where the name of the game is loudness.

If you wanted your guitar to get that little bit of edge you hear in the Beatles song, you could get an Ibanez Tube Screamer or a Fulltone OCD and mess with the settings to add some gain and edge to your clean guitar sound. If you wanted to get that full on sonic blast from the Nirvana song, you could get a Boss DS-1 or an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff. You can set the volume and drive in a distortion pedal to a low enough setting that it can act as an overdrive and still sound decent, but it's hard to put an overdrive pedal on full blast and expect a good sound.

/r/Guitar Thread Parent