The Problem With Distortion

I just realized why I dislike distortion boxes. I have always claimed that they remove not only the personality of individual guitars but the playing style of the guitarist as well. Here is why. Distortion boxes work by clipping the signal or basically cutting off the top. I am excluding tubes that do something very different. When this happens, the complex changing waveform of the attack transient is turned into a square wave. In effect, the expressiveness of the musician is removed.