How To Choose A Guitar Pedal That Suits Your Need
One of the most important part of your musical journey with the guitar entails getting your guitar pedals right. In order to get the right tune out of your instrument you need to find the right guitar pedals. There are a lot of varieties of stomp boxes in the market, starting from cheap prices to high end ones. To get the right one that suits your personal needs you need to do some digging around which usually starts with knowing different varieties of pedals, their effects and uses. Know that many of today’s amps come with effects and there are also pedals with multi effects. There are pedals of various qualities with various effects that come from various companies. So you need to be careful while choosing your pedals.
Know the pedals:
The first key to choose the pedals you need is to know about their functions. That seems pretty obvious of an idea, isn’t that right? But yeah, while we won’t deny the obviousness of it, we absolutely cannot deny the effectiveness of it. You just got to know what kind of pedal you need and for that purpose, you got to do some research, as there are various kinds of guitar pedals that create different effects on your tune. Some of them are explained below:
Wah: The Wah pedal controls the treble of your tone. It can create a more dynamic effect in the overall sound of your guitar.
Distortion: Distortion can increase the sustain of each note. It distorts the guitar sound and can create a thicker and heaver sound.
Reverb: Reverb can create the effect of playing in a large room. It makes the tune sound thicker while softening the edges.
Delay: Delay effect essentially splits the tone into two and plays one while keeping the other one into hold. It thus creates a ‘delay’ in the tone.
Chorus: Chorus is used to create a subtle underwater effect. It produces a richer and lusher tone.
Flanger: The Flanger effect is similar to the effect of recurrently putting a finger on the reel of the tape recorder. It produces a subtle spaced out feeling in the tune.
Phaser: Phasers apply an oscillating circuit that takes the guitar signal (which is originally a wave) and moves it in and out to create a spacey effect. This is why they are also known as phase shifters.
Compressor: Compressors have the ability to change the dynamic of any signal by affecting its range. It can control the signals by making them louder or quieter.
Multi effect: The multi effects pedal incorporates all the above mentioned effects in one box. The can come in various types, simple ones to very complex ones. They can come in handy by relieving you from ordering a whole lot of pedals
Using Multi Effect Pedal:
Multi-effect pedals offer an advantage that you should take. They can alone produce the effects of four to six pedals. So using them will give you an option to combine various effects easily. The price of these pedals start from $60 and can go as high up as $ 1,500. The kind of effects you are looking for will determine the price. It will depend on the features, number of effects and versatility of the components.
Essential components of the pedal board:
The essential components for one’s pedal board will largely depend on the type of tone he intends to produce. You can fill up your pedal board with sophisticated stompboxes to produce studio quality tones and it can also be costlier than the best of your guitar! It totally depend on your budget. So after getting your hands on the most essential effects pedals (some mentioned above) you can buy the high end pedals that suits both your taste and budget.
Decide about bypass:
Decide if you are going to go for a true bypass or a buffered bypass. Both of them have some advantages and some disadvantages. The decision mainly depends on the signal loss and impedance of the signal. If you use buffered bypass, it will convert the high impedance signal coming from the guitar into a low impedance one. The advantage of low impedance signal is it can run through longer cables with minimal signal loss. On the other hand, true bypass routes the signal straight from the input to output without creating any unwanted effects on the tone. When you are using short cables and there are few pedals on the board you should opt for the true bypass. But the more true bypass pedal you use the more treble and sharpness will be lost from your signal. So ideally you should one buffer at the beginning of the signal chain and one at the end, then incorporate true bypass pedals in between. Try to mix and match to find the best combination that works for you.
Know the basics effects: All the effects created by the various pedals mainly fall into four category. They are: distortion, dynamics, reverb (or delay) and pitch modulation.
Distortion effects: Distortion effects are divided into- distortion, overdrive and fuzz. They basically create a distortion to the original guitar tune.
Dynamic Effects: Compressors and noise gates are the dynamic effects in a studio setting, whereas for guitars it include volume pedals, tremolo, gain boosters, vibrato etc. Most of them are usually available together in multi effect pedals.
Reverb/Delay Effects: Previously these effects were produced using tape loops, but now they are produced digitally. They are now either built-in in guitar amps or available in multi effect pedals.
Pitch Modulation Effects: Pitch effects consists of flangers, chorus, wah, phase and pith shifters. They all basically shift the pitch of the signal and today they are produced through synthesizers, controlled through MIDI guitars.
So these are basically the very first information you need to gather before choosing your guitar pedals. Now go out exploring the varieties of pedals out there and choose which combination serves your personal needs and the budget.
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