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Intermediate · step 8 · Not started · Electric guitar only

Effects pedals

A pedal is an effect you switch on with your foot, between the guitar and the amp. There are hundreds of them, but they fall into a few families. Goal: recognize effects by ear and chain them in the right order.

This lesson is for electric guitar: it doesn’t count in your acoustic course, but you can still read it.

Time
15 minutes
Before you start
The amp: dialing in your tone
You’ll be able to
Recognize and chain the main effects

The families of effects

Drive: overdrive, distortion, fuzz. They do the same job as the amp’s gain. Overdrive pushes gently, like an amp warming up; distortion saturates hard; fuzz gives a thick, almost woolly sound. Hear the same riff without drive, with crunch, then distorted:

Compressor. It evens out the volume: quiet notes come up, overly hard attacks are tamed. A subtle effect, but very useful on a clean tone, for nice even chords.

Modulation: chorus, plus flanger and phaser. Chorus doubles the sound with a slightly detuned, wavering copy: the tone gets wide, almost liquid.

Delay. It repeats what you play, like an echo in the mountains. You set the time between repeats and how many there are.

Reverb. It simulates the sound of a room, a hall or a church. A little reverb brings a dry tone to life.

Hear the same phrase with no effect, then with each of the three:

Wah. A rocking pedal that sweeps the frequencies from low to high under your foot: the famous “wah-wah” of funk and psychedelic rock.

Tuner. Not an effect, but the most useful pedal of all: step on it, the sound is muted and you tune in silence.

In what order?

  1. Guitar
  2. Tunerthe cleanest possible signal
  3. Waha filter you sweep with your foot
  4. Compressorevens out the volume
  5. Driveoverdrive, distortion, fuzz
  6. Modulationchorus, flanger, phaser
  7. Delaythe repeats
  8. Reverbthe space
  9. Amp
Pedal order

This order isn’t a law, but it avoids most bad surprises:

  1. Tuner first, so it gets the cleanest possible signal.
  2. Then wah and compressor: they work on the raw guitar sound.
  3. Drive in the middle. Placed after a delay, it would distort the echoes too, and the sound would quickly turn to mush.
  4. Modulation, delay, reverb at the end: they dress up a tone that’s already shaped. Reverb last, like the room everything else plays in.

Once you understand the order, feel free to experiment: plenty of famous sounds come from a “wrong” setup.

Plug and unplug your pedals with the amp off or the volume at 0, just like the guitar. And use the right power supply for each pedal: the wrong voltage can fry it.

Multi-effects units

A multi-effects unit packs all these effects, and often amp simulations, into a single box. Pros: much cheaper than a collection of pedals, saved presets, often a headphone output. Con: it’s easy to get lost in the menus. Inside a multi-effects unit, the order of effects stays the same as in the diagram.

Where to start?

You don’t need ten pedals. A good start:

  • a tuner;
  • a drive (overdrive or distortion), if your amp doesn’t already have a good distorted channel;
  • maybe a delay, the effect that transforms a solo the most.

Learn to set those two or three properly before buying more. Good tone comes first from your fingers and your amp.

You’ve got it when…