When it comes to getting that perfect tone for a song, there is a lot that can be done with a guitar and its amp’s controls. But type of guitar pedal effect take this a step further, allowing you to sculpt the sound in ways that are impossible to do with an amplifier’s built-in effects.
Different types of pedals have their own unique sound and offer different types of modification to a guitar signal. This can be achieved either through an analog or digital process, with analog pedals relying on transistors, resistors and capacitors to produce sounds, while digital pedals essentially sample a guitar signal before altering it.
Elevating Your Performance: Harnessing the Power of Guitar Pedal Effects
Boost, overdrive and distortion pedals work by increasing the volume of a guitar’s signal and chopping it up to create a distorted effect. Overdrive pedals can give your riffs and leads that extra oomph, while fuzz pedals are great for ’60s psychedelic styles like the Stooges or John Mayer’s fiery solo in Good Love Is on the Way.
Equalisation pedals like the BOSS EQ-1 allow you to fine-tune specific frequencies within your guitar’s signal, enhancing its clarity or creating a more bass-heavy tone. Other pedals in this category include compressors and envelope filters, which can be a little bit more complex to understand but provide further control over your guitar’s tone.
Some pedals are designed to be used ‘on demand’, meaning you only use them when you want a certain effect for a particular part of your performance. Others, such as reverb, delay and compression pedals, are designed to be left on all the time.