Electric Guitar Effects Pedals: Five Popular Effects Pedals To Enhance Your Playing
If you are a guitarist and budding superstar, then you will eventually need Electric Guitar Effects Pedals to enhance your performance, and to develop your sound and style. Of all the pedals available this article shows five which are most commonly used, with a brief description of each.
1. Compressor Pedal
Due to the extreme usefulness of this pedal, no self respecting guitarist would be seen without one. However, despite this the Compressor is thought to be the most difficult pedal to use effectively, and it is generally understood the least. Simply put, use of this pedal enables the guitarist to perform over a wide dynamic range e.g. loud solo to background rhythmic playing, yet the output of the amplifier remains at a constant volume level. The result is that the listener can hear all the nuances of the guitarists performance, without the softer passages being drowned out by the band, or conversely, everyone being deafened by the solos.
This pedal is also used to produce those long sustained notes, made popular by the likes of Gary Moore. One drawback to the Compressor is that incorrect use may cause unwanted noise to be introduced, or at the other extreme the performance can become rather bland.
2. Tremolo Pedal
Initially becoming very popular in the 1960′s, this pedal is still in wide use today. The Tremolo produces a vibrato effect by rapidly changing the volume of the sound at a rate determined by the user.
The signal for the guitar is altered by feeding a separate sine wave through a Voltage Controlled Amplifier, within the pedal. By adjusting the gain of the VCA, plus the frequency of the sine wave, the resultant output rate and depth of the signal is modified, producing the Tremolo effect.
3. Overdrive and Distortion
The role of the Overdrive/Distortion pedal is to alter the Gain of the guitar signal to the Amplifier, to the point where the sound is anything between a dirty or gritty sound, to a warm heavily clipped tone. Compressor pedals vary in complexity – from just a few simple controls like Tone, Gain and Drive – to more complex configurations which incorporate tone shaping facilities.
4. The Wah Wah Pedal
The Wah pedal produces a similar sound as a human voice saying – you guessed it – Wah. Again this is a very commonly used pedal which is brilliant at enhancing your lead or rhythmic performances. Control over the Wah effect is carried out via a foot treadle, enabling the performer to instantly change the wah effect to suit the style and performance.
The Wah effect is produced by passing the guitar signal through a low pass filter, the amount of which is controlled by the floor pedal. This effect is now also used extensively in modern dance or trance music where the high frequencies are gradually filtered out to a muffled beat, and then restored again.
5. Phaser Pedal
Finally, there is the Phaser. This is an extremely well known effect where, basically, the guitar signal is doubled up then mixed together again at the output, but slightly out of phase. Easy as that.
Configuring the Pedals
If you are wondering about the best way to configure your effects arsenal, there are two ways available. Firstly, you could buy a Multi-effects Unit, which has a varying number of guitar effects built into the one unit. This is quite a nice way of doing things and is easy to set up at a gig. Prices vary, but the quality difference between them is very small, mostly due to the fact that they all utilise microprocessor controlled technology.
If your on a budget and can only afford one pedal at a time, then another way of assembling your effects arsenal, is by daisy chaining the pedals together with cables, as you buy more. Some guitarists even prefer this method as many have favourite pedals which they know very well, and prefer the sounds or effects they produce. The order in which they are connected is a subject I will not go into, as this is debated often amongst musicians who have their own preferences.
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