Guitar pedals are the single most transformative component in a guitarist’s rig. Although the choice of guitar and amplifier form the tonal foundation, effects pedals allow musicians to find creative ways to enhance their sound.
Since the first guitar pedals were created in the 1960s, they’ve come a long way in terms of responsiveness, reliability, and quality. The variety of guitar pedals produced today is staggeringly wide, and with every passing year, it seems that a new batch of options is made available to be slotted onto your pedalboard.
Due to the sheer number of guitar pedals out there, choosing the right kind to create your desired tones and effects can be a little overwhelming. This comprehensive guide aims to present and describe the must have guitar pedals that every guitarist should be aware of. Regardless of whether you have any prior knowledge or experience with guitar pedals, I’ll help you to expand your knowledge to the expert level. While there technically is no such thing as an essential guitar pedal, the pedals are the list are the most commonly used and versatile for a wide range of playing styles.
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What it Does and How it Works: As digital technology has advanced considerably in the past few decades, reverb pedals have become increasingly popular amongst guitarists. Reverb is a natural effect that is caused by a sound source bouncing off a surface, then coming back after the original sound. A reverb pedal simulates this process.
There are a number of reverb types that have been developed over the years, which are incorporated into reverb pedals. Firstly, spring reverb was discovered by passing a sound through a number of springs, and sending it back into a pickup. This variety is commonly used in amplifiers to this day. Then there’s plate reverb, which is created similarly to spring, but the difference is that the springs are replaced by large metal plates, allowing for more flexibility.
Finally, the most commonly used reverb used for guitar pedals is digital reverb. This replicates all of the above varieties and provides you with the option of adjusting certain parameters that affect the sound, like decay, attack, or room size.
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Reverb is known as a timing/space-based effect, alongside delay. It is used in pretty much every genre and style of music you can think of, whether that be on guitars, vocals, drums, or synthesizers. Reverb guitar pedals are especially useful for softening your tone, adding dreamy, ambient textures, and creating trippy soundscapes.
How to Use it: Using a reverb guitar pedal is easy once you establish the purpose of the various controls. Although the controls vary from pedal to pedal, there’s a staple set that you’ll find on most reverb stompboxes. The attack is used to control the speed at which the reverb becomes audible once a note is played. The lower the attack, the quicker the reverb will kick in, and vice versa. Decay performs the function of determining the length of time between the reverb starting and ending. If decay is cranked up, the reverb will last for a long, drawn-out period.
Another commonly found control on reverb guitar pedals is Level. This one is quite self-explanatory, but useful nonetheless. The level parameter oversees the volume of the reverb in comparison to your dry, unaltered signal. The final control that you are likely to encounter is Tone. The function of this control will differ depending on the pedal in question, but it affects the nature of the sound produced, for example making it sound darker, more treble-heavy, or airy.
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Reverb guitar pedals are also useful tools in the recording studio, as well as in a live performance setting. When using a reverb pedal for recording, you get the pure characteristics of the particular type of reverb selected, and can directly record into your interface so that the tone of the amplifier doesn’t affect your results in any way. Although people generally position reverb pedals towards the end of the signal chain, placing them towards the front can evoke interesting results too.
The reason that it’s common to find a reverb pedal at the end of a guitarist’s chain, is that otherwise, all of the pedals that follow it will be affected and therefore the output could become muddy. Reverb is a highly compatible effect and will blend nicely with a range of other pedals, like distortion, modulation based pedals, or chorus pedals. Reverb pedals are extremely popular and are considered by many to be one of those must have guitar pedals.
What it Does and How it Works: Delay is an instantly recognizable effect that has been used to create many iconic guitar tones over the years. A staple of most pedalboards due to its versatile nature and malleable characteristics, this type of guitar pedal can add a vintage touch to your guitar or bathe it in psychedelic ambiance.
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Put simply, the delay is the sound of the exact note played on a guitar being played back shortly after the initial playing. It can be repeated infinitely, to create a series of delays. Despite its seemingly simple nature, there’s lots of room for tweaking the way the delays respond and are played back to the listener, greatly affecting the sound.
Onboard delay guitar pedals you’ll likely find three reoccurring parameters used to adjust the characteristics of the effect. These are Level, Feedback, and Time. Let’s look at each one individually.
Level affects the overall volume of the repeated signal. When this parameter is turned up, the volume of the repeated note will match that of the initial note. Turning it down makes the delayed signal more subtle. Feedback control determines the number of repeats that will be created. Turning it down will repeat in a singular delayed repeat while turning it up will produce many repeated signals. Finally, the Time control is responsible for deciding the length of time from the original note being played and the first delayed tone being produced.
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How to Use it: When using a delay pedal, there is one common capability that makes the process much smoother – Tap Tempo. Because delay is a timing-based effect, it produces certain rhythms that need to be synced to the tempo of the song or piece you are playing. This is very hard to guess using rotary controls, so tap tempo is the ideal solution.
Tap tempo switches allow you to tap your foot to the beat of your desired speed, then the signal is sent to the pedal and the delay matches your rhythm. For guitarists, this makes it possible to use the same delay effect on several songs without worrying about the speed clashing and causing a sonic mess.
In terms of positioning a delay pedal in your signal chain, the rule of thumb is similar to a reverb pedal. Delay should be placed as near to the end of your signal chain as possible, to avoid the effects that come after it from being hijacked by its transformative nature. You can use delay with just about any other effect, and it’s a lot of fun to experiment with.
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Using delayed guitar pedals in the studio is also a possibility. The only issue with this is that the timing of the pedal needs to be synced perfectly to the recorded track; otherwise, it will sound out of place. Again, this is achievable using a tap tempo switch. Delays also sound great on vocals, so in theory, you could re-amp vocal tracks through the delay guitar pedal for some interesting results.
What it Does and How it Works: Another must-have guitar pedal is distortion. This effect is sometimes produced unintentionally when an audio signal gets too loud, causing the waveform to clip and saturate. Discovered in this way by accident, it’s now been tamed into many guitar pedals that can add power and character to your tone.
Technically speaking, distortion is an umbrella term that describes any kind of saturated signal, but concerning guitar pedals, it’s an effect that is less harsh then fuzzes or overdrive. It causes your tone to break up slightly, giving it raw warmth that has long been used in rock music.
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Distortion guitar pedals work by pushing the input signal of your instrument to its dynamic limits, adding gain until the sound becomes slightly crunchy. Digital distortion is the preferred choice, and this occurs by the circuitry overloading to an extent to produce the desired effect.
How to Use it: Distortion pedals are used mainly to make your guitar more prominent within a mix. They can add life to a blues riff or solo, and are also a great way to roughen up a chord sequence. In terms of compatibility with other effects, distortion works well with any other pedal that doesn’t also add too much gain to the signal.
Some amplifiers will produce natural distortion due to their tubes becoming overworked. Distortion pedals are an effective way to enhance this, but it’s important not to overdo it unless you want a very heavily saturated signal. In the recording studio, distortion pedals allow to you reproduce your live sound with
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