Guitar Effects

I'm sure you have seen some fancy wah pedals at your local music shop by now. There are a ton of different effect pedals that you can use to change your tone very quickly. Not only are there tones of different brands and products but there are a tone of different effects that each manufacturer can make.

Distortion

Distortion pedals give your guitar that mean and nasty sound you hear with heavy metal and rock music. It takes the wave signal made by your guitar and instead of making it a nice curved line it chops off the tops and makes them flat. You can also make this sound if you have a gain control on your amp. If you bump up the gain and turn down the amp you will overdrive the signal making it distorted.

Reverb and Delay

Reverb and Delay pedals are similar in effect but not sound. They both take your guitars sound and reproduce it a few times over and over. This makes an echo sound out of your amplifier. The difference is that Reverb makes it sound like you are playing in a very large room. The delay effect simply makes the guitar sound like is echoing. Both effects can be manipulated so that they sound different, like making the echo last longer or making the room sound bigger or whatnot.

Wah Pedals

Wah pedals are a very popular pedal that is used in all types of music. The wah pedal is closely related to a filter. It picks out certain tones and doesn't let them through. The thing that makes the wah pedal so great is that you can adjust what frequencies it cancels out just by rocking it back or forth. It works great in funk metal and blues and is one of the most widely used effects.

Flanger and Phaser

A flanger pedal takes the guitar's signal, doubles it, and mixes the two signals slightly out of time with each other. A phaser takes the signal and splits it into two parts like the flanger, but instead, one path keeps the volume and amplitude characteristics and the other path makes the phase out of synch. In short, a phaser effect still has the original sound mixed with the phased effect, whereas a flanger mixes up the signal completely.

Effects in General

Effects have become popular in all types of music, some effects are more prominent in some styles than others but overall you can usually find effects mixed in somewhere. The tricky part about using effects is that you can't over use them in a song or it will take away the fealing from the music completely. The best effects are the ones that are there but you can't notice them unless you really listen for them.