Besides the guitar and amp, guitar effects pedals is another piece of gear guitar players sought after and rave about. Whether it is big or small, expensive to the cheapest guitar effects pedals available, what it brings to the table in making guitar playing sound even better and a lot cooler is considerably essential.
There are two ways to start playing with guitar effects. You can either start with a multi-effects processor, or grew a guitar effects collection by collecting individual stompboxes that you can later on create an effects rig set up.
If you’re on the conservative side of things, want to test it out first just to get your feet wet and don’t wanna spend too much money right away. The best choice for you to make is to start with a multi-effects pedals. However, if you don’t mind collecting effects first to make a pedal train later on or you have now the resources to create an effects rig set up, stompboxes are the one’s for you.
Collecting stompbox effects has no false starts on what should come first and what to go last. It is very subjective, based on ideas and no one will ever tell you that you bought the wrong effects for any specific reason. Experimenting on effects is encourage, but to do this, it will cost more money especially on those modulation type effects.
A practical approach of selecting stompboxes is to take the time knowing first the budget to spend, music you are going to play heavily, together with your influence to end up having the effects you will use quite often.
In case your still wondering. As a suggestion, just to give you an idea where to start if you have decided to go ahead with the stompboxes. You might want to consider an Overdrive or Distortion, Reverb and a Wah Pedal for your first pedals. The reason why is, with this pedals, you can immediately hear the changes on your sound/tone and can already give you the funk, blues, classic rock to hard rock genre which is a great start up when playing with guitar effects pedals.
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Wah Effects Pedal
- Dunlop GCB95 Cry Baby
- Add the iconic and unique sounding Wah-wah voice to your sound
- Used by many great guitar players over the years and staple effect on a pedalboard
- Can be powered using a 9V battery or power supply
- Heavy duty die-cast construction
In the world of guitar effects, the wah-wah voice is probably the simplest and the most uniquely sounding. Why? Unlike other effects, it doesn’t need much settings to put it on a sweet spot and noticeably other effects are closely related in such a way making them almost sounding the same. Except only for the wah.
The distinctive wah-wah voice has become one of the staple effect on a guitar pedal. It has been used in many lead solos and rhythmic kind of sounds along side or combined with other effects like an overdrive and distortion which maximizes its use in crossing music genres.
Even though it is a great effect to have, it is still an effect a guitarist needs to think about on how he/she wanna use it. Some might find the wah-wah voice already useful at the beginning and others may find the use for it later on.
Overdrive, Distortion And Fuzz Pedals
- Electro-Harmonix Soul Food
- Essential pedal for classic and modern overdriven tones
- Everything you need from a clean boost to full distortion
- Controls are volume, drive, treble and footswitch
- Black knobs and road worthy aluminum housing
- Runs on .6DC-200 power supply and in 9V battery
- Selectable true bypass or buffered bypass modes
- TC Electronic Dark Matter
- Affordable distortion pedal with an extreme dynamic range
- Offers warm overdriven tones to a full lead saturated distortion
- Controls to blend are the gain, level, voice toggle switch and 2-band EQ bass-treble
- Sturdy die-cast case designed for life on the road
- Compact to fit on any size pedalboard
- True bypass allows for optimum clarity, interference free and zero high-end loss when the pedal is off
- Dunlop Band Of Gypsys Fuzz Face Mini
- Fuzzinating, biting and aggressive
- 60s to 70s fuzz effect just like what Jimi Hendrix use
- Controls are volume, fuzz and footswitch
- AC power jack and an On/Off status LED light
- White knobs, battery door and rugged mini aluminum housing
- True bypass
Playing clean to dirty is probably the priority and what comes first into mind when playing with effects. There are more than one ways of achieving this through pedals that will also show different kinds of result. Which brings us to the usually asked question. What’s the difference between the sound of an overdrive, distortion, and fuzz?
The overdrive is considered the most natural of the three distorted sound. It simulates the sound of a tube amp amplified beyond its normal limit of clean capacity breaking up giving a warm creamy distorted sound. Having an overdriven sound using an overdrive pedal is already good enough to take you far from just playing clean, but in some degree, the level of harshness it provides is less and insufficient to play other forms of music like punk, hard rock, and especially metal.
This is were distortion pedal and fuzz pedal comes necessary and arguably is better to produce the much needed heavier distorted sound on using a pedal. Distortion and fuzz is the more aggressive type of distortion, but yet again both presenting a different quality of distortion sound. Fuzz has a raspy violent and transistor like characteristic while distortion has the heavier overdriven and darker sound.
Reverb Effect Pedal
- TC Electronic Hall Of Fame 2
- Don’t miss out on this important effect to make the sound more ambient, natural and also adds more clarity on each of the notes
- Controls are decay, tone, Fx level, pre-delay toggle and multi-reverb knob
- New MASH footswitch and shimmer effect
- TonePrint enable to customize reverb effects, true bypass and optional buffered bybass
The use of the reverb is the basic on having a great sound, but often many miss out on its importance because of the use of more dynamic sounding effects. Tuning the level of effect just a little on the reverb pedal and adjusting the decay/time can make the sound more ambient, natural and also adds more clarity on how each notes will sound.
As technology progresses. Reverberation is now produced in analog and digitally for guitar’s using reverb pedals that recreates the sound of this kind of environment and also by simply using the spring/plate reverb effect built-in on most guitar amplifiers of today.
Delay Effect Pedal
- Boss DD-7 Digital Delay
- Powerful delay effect pedal to deliver the needed delay effect to use for every day practice and bring it on top of the stage
- Controls are effects level, feedback, mode and footswitch
- Classic style housing and rotary knobs to blend
- Runs on a 9V battery and using a power brick supply
- Buffered bypass
Arguable the first modulation effect pedal that comes into mind of having above the rest is the delay effect pedal. The delay pedal works by giving a repeat of the sound from a subtle echo, chorus type and to other types of delay effect depending on the how you tweak the controls.
There are many digital delay pedal on the market to choose from, but what we recommend for a best buy is this digital delay pedal called the DD-7 brought to us by Boss. The Boss DD-7 is a powerful pedal to deliver the needed delay effect to use for every day practice and bring it on top of the stage.
This delay effect pedal is equipped with two innovative new delay modes namely the modulation delay for a chorus-flavored sounds and the analog delay that offers a modeled simulation of the classic Boss DM-2.
Multi-Modulation Effects Pedals
- Nux Mod Core
- 8 modulation effects in one pedal
- Controls are rate, depth, tweak, TLock normal/deluxe toggle and effects select knob
- Effects included are phaser, flanger, tremolo, chorus, pan, vibrato, U-vibe and rotary
- Road worthy housing and block knobs to carve out lots of modulation effects
Choosing what modulation effect to use can be a daunting task. With so many of them available to alter the way a guitar will sound, there is always going to be one on the side waiting for the right moment of using it to arrive. The last two spot on this list will belong to the multi-modulation effect for that reason.
Starting with a multi-modulation for beginners or placing one on a pedal chain that you already have today can be fitting addition. Not only you get to enjoy playing and experimenting on effects you are not accustomed too, but it also lessen the cost of buying modulation effects individually.
Modulation effects can come in different group variations depending on each multi-modulation effect processor. ![]("//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=mccoy2015-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B071F4D3CF")
Some may just have three effects included and others can have up to eight types of modulation in a pedal. There is of course going to be a sound difference between a dedicated and a multi type. Nonetheless, it is still a useful piece of gear guitar players can use to enhance and change the way they sound.
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