What does Drive mean with regards to guitar amp settings?
Real over drive is when you saturate the tubes on a tube amp. There are pedals that mimic this of course, Tube Screamer, Blues Driver, etc. Over drive and distortion are kind of the same thing but not exactly. But yes turning up the gain on a tube amp helps to saturate the tubes and gives you sort of a distortion and that really depends on the amp. My Orange tube amp will get pretty raunchy with the gain up while my Fender will not.
