Guitar Pedals Explained

One of the best things about an electric guitar is the freedom that it provides in terms of what kind of sound you want and the sheer variety of sounds and effects that you can get out of it. Thanks to effects, an electric guitar can be just about anything.

Guitar pedals or stomp boxes, as they’re often referred to, is an important piece of hardware used by guitar players to alter, change and customize the sound of their electric guitars and add effects to its sound.

These effects allow you to make the kind of noise you would want to with your guitar, for instance if you want to sound like someone, or allow you to create your own unique sound and define your own style.

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of guitar effects, or want to know what some of them are, here are a few of the most popular ones:

1. Distortion (and Fuzz and Overdrive)

Self-explanatory and extremely-popular are two words that do an apt job of describing this effect. Distortion pedals are the most popular pedals in modern-day guitar-playing, and give your guitar that unclean, distorted sound, usually head in and associated with rock, punk and metal genre music. Distortion can be anything from clean, smooth and melodic tube overdrive to harsh, highly-distorted, heavier and meatier sound. Distortion effects include Fuzz and Overdrive, the latter of which allows you to deliver a good ‘tube’ sound.

2. Delay (and Reverb)

A delay effect essentially repeats the original sound after a set period, usually in milliseconds or longer, creating an ‘echo’ effect of sorts. A similar effect called Reverb uses processing to simulate sound so that it feels as if sound is ‘reflecting’ off the different surfaces, making it fuller (such as the sound heard in a hall or an enclosed venue). Delay/reverb allows you to choose from different room sizes. In the 50s and 60s, musicians regularly used tape-based delays to produce echoes, and some are even designed to sound like some of the spring reverbs of yesteryear, although most modern-day reverbs are digital delay units.

3. Wah Pedals

Often referred to as Wah Wah pedals, these pedals are used to change and filter the tones from the incoming guitar signal, filtering frequencies dynamically using the foot to give a ‘wah wah’ or a ‘quacking’ sound to the guitar. In essence, it is an equalizer that can be varied using the foot in real-time. Not for beginners, since a certain amount of coordination is required to coordinate the movement of the foot with that of your playing.

4. Chorus

The chorus effect is a time-based effect, in which a slightly detuned, modulated and delayed clone of the signal is played along with the original, producing a ‘doubling’ effect of sorts (which can be controlled), hence producing a thicker tone.  The delay can be controlled, helping produce a subtle or noticeable clone-effect to your tone and sound.

5. Flanger

Both of these effecrs are quite similar to chorus – the flanger effect, for starters, was produced by playing back the same sound on multiple tape decks, while an engineer used a finger on the tape reel’s edge to speed up or slow the clone signals. This is in fact why this effect came to be known as ‘flanger’ in the first place. In modern times, the same effect is duplicated by employing digital delays which are set to extremely short times and inverting the signal’s phase.

6. Phaser

Another time-based effect, like the two above it, that lies somewhere in between the chorus and the much-more-subtle flanger. Most notably used by the likes of Rolling Stones and Eddie van Halen on many of their records, the phaser is quite similar to the chorus effect but the signal changes from in-phase to out-of-phase constantly, giving an affect which is similar to a rotating speaker.  

7. Compressor

The compressor or sustain effect limits the dynamic range of a signal, which results in more profound and a noticeably-obvious softer sound, while limiting the louder ones – which means that it is the opposite effect of overdrive. The compressor sustains the notes without degrading the sound quality. This effect is also known as a classic studio effect, and the older compressor effect units were quite noisy, however the modern compressors have certain system that cut off the signal once it reaches a particular level, keeping the sound soft.

8. Multi-effects Pedal

This is the king of all stomp-boxes; the multi-effects pedal as the name implies, includes all of the effects above, as well as a whole host of other effects as well. In fact, a few of the multi-effects pedals have so many effects, they can completely change and alter the sound of the guitar that it doesn’t even sound like one anymore! These all-in-one effect pedals can replace any and all other stomp-boxes/effects-pedals that you might have.