Guitar Tricks presents A Practical Look at Guitar Pedals

(This article comes from our friends at GuitarTricks.com – check out their site for tons of guitar-related tips and tricks!!)

A Practical Look at Guitar Pedals

By Shawn Leonhardt for Guitar Tricks and 30 Day Singer

Guitar pedals are an incredible way to sculpt the final sound from your guitar, they provide amazing effects at just the push of a button. In some cases they are even necessary to get the right sound for a particular band or style. Simply playing guitar chords with pedals can take your sound to another level. Many guitarists owe their fame to effects units and the ability to craft distinct tunes with them.

The Guitar Sound and Signal

Acoustic guitars are built with large bodies so that the sound will be amplified, you will notice when you play an unplugged electric guitar it is quiet. The pickups take the soundwave from the plucked string and turn it into an electrical signal. This signal is then plugged into an amplifier and boosted so that we can hear it.

From the moment the electric guitar was invented, folks like Les Paul were running this signal through everything. The first obvious place to try was the magnetic reel to reel tape machine that was for recording. If you plug a mixer into a reel to reel you can create an echo effect. If you hook two reels together you can create amazing reverb (Elvis used this slap back method).

Simon and Garfunkel put a tape machine on a bench to get the echo drumming of the song “Cecilia.” The genre of reggae dub was born out of tape machine experiments and Queen broke new ground with their epic vibes. Link Wray poked a hole in his amplifier cone to get the rumble in “Rumble.” And Jimi Hendrix had a pedal that copied the Leslie rotating speaker.

Basically musicians are obsessed with new sounds and rhythms, which means the guitar signal will be manipulated in every way. And that’s all guitar pedals are, years of sound experimentation put into one little box (or digital effect). And while each box has an intended effect, many guitar players find unique and great ways to use them in their musical palette.

Types of Guitar Pedals

As technology improved guitar pedals became smaller and more compact, but they have always been built like tanks. After all they are called stomp boxes as the performer steps on the button to turn the effect on or off. Most effects units fall into one of the categories below.

Dynamics

By changing the volume and amplitude (signal time) we can adjust the dynamics of the signal. The most obvious effect for dynamics is a volume pedal, after that the compressor and noise gate are also essential. The noise gate lets you cut out the bad low parts of your signal. That way when you stop playing there are no major hisses and hums.

And the compressor allows us to adjust different aspects of the frequency like the volume of the attack and sustain. Many times people assume the compressor is just a volume booster, but there is a lot more going on in changing the dynamic range of the signal.

Distortion

Normally you don’t want your signal to clip or go into the red, unless you want some distortion, overdrive, or fuzz. By increasing our gain or power to the signal we can make it gritty and give it lots of volume. Tube amplifiers were originally used for this extra power and warmth.

For guitarists playing hard rock, metal, or punk the distortion and gain guitar pedals are essential. When you have your song centered around the guitar, it is necessary to push that signal above and beyond. Even putting distortion on some easy guitar songs will turn the tune into a metal or punk anthem.

Delay

Effects that change the timing of the signal are delay, echo, and reverb. This delay can be quick, to give the open reverb sound, or much longer to produce more of an echo. The amount of time change will determine the type of delay that it is. In some cases this delay can be very long and repeated, which gives us a looper effect. Looper pedals are common among artists like Ed Sheeran who perform multiple parts alone.

Filter

These simply alter the guitar signal by boosting or cutting specific frequencies. An essential filter guitar pedal is the equalizer, as it helps create a more polished sound. Some equalizers are basic two-bands, and others are more complicated covering more than just bass and treble.

Wah-wah and auto-wah pedals are also filters that seemingly create vowel and wah like sounds. This also includes the infamous talk box pedal that Peter Frampton used in “Show Me the Way.” That pedal manipulates your vocal sounds more than the guitar.

Pitch

This pedal allows you to alter your pitch or add in extra pitches for harmonies. If you are changing your pitch it can allow you to play bass or higher parts normally unreachable on guitar. And if you are adding intervals it can create the feeling of more than one musician playing, it is a great way to layer the music.

Modulation

We can also alter the signal strength by splitting it, doubling it, and mixing it in a way that really makes it stand out. The chorus pedal mimics more than one instrument and the flanger and phaser alter part of the signal to produce their unique effects.

The ring modulator mixes a carrier wave or other base signal with your guitar to make a metallic or robotic sound. The vibrato and tremolo pedals alter the volume and pitch to produce their respective effects. And by mixing a filter with a modulator we can slice and dice the signal!

There are a lot of guitar pedals out there, some of them are mixtures of the categories above. The best way to discover them is to just start trying them out! And these days digital software makes them accessible to almost everyone.

Analog vs Digital

Analog guitar pedals are arguably the best sounding, and they are the most reliable during a show. But they are expensive, especially now with supply chain issues (some analog pedals require their own designated power-supply). Luckily many software developers have worked on digital emulations for all the effects above. Anything of an analog nature can be found in software now.

And yes, it is technically different, but most listeners will never know the difference in the final sound. These days you can get a simple guitar interface for your smartphone or computer and quickly plug your guitar right in. It is so easy to just plug and play with digital guitar pedals. There are even MIDI boards that act as stand in stomp boxes.

Which Guitar Pedals Are For Me?

This question is a lot easier thanks to digital emulations of guitar pedals. Especially since software often allows for trials, it is possible to try an effect out before buying it. Even if you are a die-hard analog pedal user, it is still helpful to practice different signal chains in an app or guitar amp simulator.

It is easy to find signal chains for specific bands and styles. When you first start playing with effects units, learn some of the songs you like. After you have a little practice under your belt, start experimenting! That’s another joy of the digital world, it is awesome to plug a guitar into a phone and play around with many different effects. It is addictive! There are so many options out there to try out guitar pedals and it is best to get started right away. The amount of creativity they provide is too good to pass up. You never know when you may happen upon a guitar tone that is the basis for a whole new song or maybe even a new style!

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