Getting into pedals and stuff (finally?)

[GuitarIv]

Heya guys,

So now that I have 3 of my guitars loaded with BKPs, I'm pretty much satisfied with what I have (Emerald Neck and Slowhand Bridge are the only ones I'll get next) and started thinking about other stuff that I might still need. To be honest there's loads of gear I'd like to own, but having a limited budget I'm forced to pull the best out of the stuff I already have. There ain't gonna be an EVH 5150iii or a Mesa Oversized Cab in my arsenal anytime soon :P

So to break it down: my current amp is a Peavey Valveking 100 Head with a Laney GS412LA Cab and so far I have only used a Tubescreamer, a Boss NS-2 and the Boss TU-3 for the distortion channel. Been thinking about a Keeley 4-Knob Compressor as an addition but not wanting to hide my flaws I decided against it.

Of course switching to the clean channel leaves me with a problem as I'm not a tap dancer by any means; the Tubescreamer adds dirt to everything besides the fact that the cleans on the Valveking are ok, but not mindblowing.

So I have basically found a perfect solution for my "pedal problem", the Carl Martin Octaswitch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAmME2c6xmM

Amazing piece of gear. 8 loops + the option to combine pedals the way you want and use it simultaneously as an amp switch. Gonna get it for sure + a dunlop power brick to power everything up.

Now I just realized I have another problem. I'm kinda the straight Distortion/Clean channel guy (except when I'm playing blues) and have so far never thought about specific pedals or gotten deeper into the subject besides the classic Tubescreamer Boost for high gain and Delay/Reverb for the Clean channel.

Having a day off today I decided to dig out the occasional pedals every guitar player collects over the course of the years having them sit in a drawer and had to realize I don't like the Delay Pedal and the Reverb I own. One is an Ibanez DE-7 Delay Stomp Box which sounds ok for making your clean channel better sounding but it's not mindblowing; the other one is a Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator with built in Reverb which is at least to say utter cr@p. That thing doesn't make your guitar sound like an acoustic at all (the Jumbo mode is the only one that manages to give it a slight hint of an acoustic sound at the expense of hiss and noise) and I'm pretty much gonna sell it. Don't know why I haven't returned it the day I got it. Doh.

Now what I want to know is: what are some "must have" pedals every guitarist should own? I know there's the Tubescreamer, the Noisegate, the Compressor, the Tuner, the Wah, the Delay and the Reverb, but do you have any other suggestions to give some ideas where to start from? As an example I have no idea what exactly a chorus pedal does. Some insight is appreciated, enlighten me :)

Right now I'm just thinking about the TS/NS for the Distortion Channel and a proper Delay and Reverb for the Cleans whilst having my Crybaby and Tuner as an option for both channels. For my home rig I play through an Orange Micro Terror boosted with a Digitech Bad Monkey and I'm gonna buy the Boss Line Selector so I can switch over to my 15 Watt Washburn Practice Amp for cleans when covering songs.

So there ya go, I hope some of you experts can shed some light on this subject for me and help me out,

Cheers!

[Kiichi]

I feel a must have pedal is a compressor. You will not need it for high gain, but for clean sounds it is THE pedal you need. If you are afraid of masking things get a Lovesqueze or have someone like our dear Juansolo clone you one. That one is very transparent. The Keeley style is imposing more on the tone to my knowledge, but that might be a good thing with your amp. Again Juansolo can certainly build you a great pedal and have you save money. Such a gentleman and a scholar I praise his name whenever I can.

On the overdrive side again I can say that while a tubescreamer type is great and everyone should have one that fits him, you always have the middy characteristic of it. There however is a glorious overdrive pedal that has recieved much praise around this forum which is transparant and THE more pedal: The Juansolo Klon(e).

I know this now sounds a bit like a infomercial for him, but he and his pedals deserve it ;)

On the count of chorus I quickly found this video which does explain a good bit, though sound whise it is a rather bad example: http://youtu.be/WEwrmMHXbm0
This strymon demo gives you a better idea of what it does by sound http://youtu.be/Zct8Eb7PUwk
Matter of taste if you like it. It is not something I think I would use a lot, but still something I really wanne get. That John Petrucci clean sound style depends on it.
Just donīt go all Zakk Whylde on us if you get one xD

More will come to my mind later^^

[Telerocker]

I would listen carefully a lot of clips and decide which effect you really need.

Personally I like the old Boss CE-2 (chorus). Lots of people like the Dan Electro FAB chorus.
Thinking about your budget I will not mention more expensive pedals like Strymon, Retro Sonic of Diamond.

As for the delay, the old Boss DD-3 really works well, also for solostuff. The DD-3 is on Bonamassa's board.
Not too expensive but good and loaded with more features is the Electro Harmonix Memory Boy and Memory Man. Especially on the clean channel those will produce lush sounds. The T-Rex Reptile can produce very nice and lush delay. The modulation on it is great. Way darker, but also with modulation on board, is the MXR Carbon Copy. Some stated here on the forum they are reliability-issues, but I don't know much about that. I only have an old analog Ibanez AD9, organic sounds that blend very good with the guitar's tone. Only 300ms delay though.

[BigB]

I feel a must have pedal is a compressor. You will not need it for high gain, but for clean sounds it is THE pedal you need.

Well, that's something I read quite often, yet I still prefer my clean tone without the comp, even (specially ?) when using the Tele - and the comp I have (Celmo Sardin Can) is amongst the best money can buy (when it comes to stompbox compressors of course). But well, YMMV ;)


@GuitarIv:

Good delays I've tried: the memory toy / boy / man family of course, the Ibanez AD9 (but too short for my needs), the Jacques Prisonner (great great tone but also too short), and the Catalinbread Montevillian Echo which I'm currently in love with.

wrt/ modulation pedals (chorus / flanger / phaser / vibes / trem etc) it's really a matter of genre and personal tastes - as far as I'm concerned I only use a Trem. A chorus can be a nice addition on clean tones but you've got to love that instant early 80s tone.  Try some and see how you like them, sorry but I can't help much here.

Now you say you're "the straight clean/distortion guy"... There's a whole range of great tones to get between pristine clean and overdrive, and not only for bluesy stuff. FWIW my own clean tone is never pristine clean, there's always at least a hint of breakup. Two great pedals IMHO are the xotic EP booster (treble boost with a slight but lovely color to it, makes an average clean tone better and a good clean tone magic) and the Timmy OD (in my case it's evil Dano clone), which can be used for very very slight breakup and really keeps your base tone and dynamics, and works perfectly between a EP booster and a tube screamer.  The Klon clone is probably in the same vein, ie very transparent mild OD.

Another dirt pedal you didn't mention is the fuzz. You may ask "why a fuzz when I already have an hi-gain amp" but that's just not the same kind of distortion, and there's much more to a Fuzz than all out garage / grunge saturation - on mild settings and paired with a treble boost or OD it's key to Gilmour's tone for example. Not necessarily something you're after but it can be a nice way to add a lot of sustain without that much distortion.

Then there are a lot of crazy things to do with pedals, and quite a few crazy pedals too (bit manglers, ring modulators, envelop followers etc), but learning how to properly use such stuff requires quite some time and experimentations, and might not be what rings your bell anyway. Also you cannot judge one "kind" of effect on a single pedal, you have to try quite a fews to find out which ones work for you.

[Kiichi]

I feel a must have pedal is a compressor. You will not need it for high gain, but for clean sounds it is THE pedal you need.

Well, that's something I read quite often, yet I still prefer my clean tone without the comp, even (specially ?) when using the Tele - and the comp I have (Celmo Sardin Can) is amongst the best money can buy (when it comes to stompbox compressors of course). But well, YMMV ;)

I definetly know what you mean. Generally I like my tone to be rather raw too, even my clean tone. Therefor I never set my comp (I mainly use a MXR Supercomp until I one day get my Lovesqueze clone boxed) hard, but always pretty subtle. When it starts to mess with my attack in that county style I donīt like it, so I set it for sustain and that nice fattening up and emphasizing the nice stuff. Compressors usually are the kind of effects where you donīt know when they are on, but you know when they are not and I really play on that.
Lot of people put way too much on their clean sound, but I feel that little bit of subtle compression from a good pedal works wonders for me. From all the effects I know this is really the smallest change done to the tone, but the percieved addition is great.


Also you mention fuzz and I too can attest that it is a great thing to have. The Gilmour setting you talk about I have yet to try but now definetly will.
Personally I love fuzz for single note stuff, though that usually carries a vintage flavour.
I was however also very inspired by a Zves Inventobox clip where he paired the Fuzz Factory with a Marshall Tone Stack for some wicked rythm sound. So went and combined my Factory with an EQ and man, it is pretty darn cool what you get, certainly a sound I have never gotten outa anything else before.

So when you combine a fuzz with an EQ to take out that uber fatness out of the sound to make it chugable it gives you a really unique sounds for chord riffs. Matt Belamie of Muse has done this too, but not pushed it to the extreme of what is possible.

[JimmyMoorby]

I could recommend pedals and I have done in a thread recently 'fx pedal recommendatons' as have other people.  If you're looking at what some well known pedals fx do I can suggest you check out the following tracks/riffs/solos.  It all depends on what your budget it in theory you ould almost spend as much as the amp and cab if youre not careful!
Here's some famous famous/good examples of fx.

PHASE
- The intro riff to Aint Talkin' Bout Love by Van Halen. (Eddie uses MXR Phase pedals for phase)
- The solo in 'What if?' by Control Denied at around 1:34.

FLANGE
- Van Halen  - And the cradle will rock (Blatant example) (MXR)
-Black Label Society - Crazy Horse (MXR)

Chorus
- Pretty much every riff from Andy Summers (The Police) particularly message in a bottle.
- The riff in Cyndi Lauper's Time after time!
- Zakk Wylde used A LOT of chorus with overdrive on his first 2 albums with Ozzy. (Boss Chorus now MXR)
- Judas Priest use a far bit of chorus on the Painkiller album.
- For really OTT Chorus/Overdrive listen to Type O Negative songs!  Sounds cheap and nasty but actually I like it !!

Whammy pedal (Digitech)
-Can be heard in Tom Morello's Like a Stone solo with Ausioslave
-Pantera Suicide Note part 2.
- The solos in Chinese Democracy by Guns N Roses.

Chorus, phase and flange are kinda related at times.  I find chorus very usable but some people hate it found it does sound very 80's.

I prefer phase to flange and cant think of any use for flange PERSONALLY but you can get flange type tones with a chorus pedal and well all 3 really.  Im probably making this more confusing now but listen to those songs and theyre all completely different.....not a flange fan tho

If you want phase or flanger MXR is a safe bet and the right place to start.
My favourite chorus pedal is the GreenHouse effects Stonefish but if youre on a budget the Fab Chorus stands up to any thing regardless of how cheap it is.  I personally dont like the Boss Chorus that much but this is what Zakk Wylde and Dave Gilmour HAVE used.

[Dave Sloven]

On the overdrive side again I can say that while a tubescreamer type is great and everyone should have one that fits him, you always have the middy characteristic of it.

Interesting thing is that I got myself a Maxon OD-9 last week while I was in Sydney precisely to rein in the bass end of my Peavey 6534+ and tighten things up a bit.  I'll see how good a job it does of that (I bought it on the basis of various recommendations) but the point is that in some applications a bottom-end cut or mid-boost might be a good thing.  It just depends on how big your bass is.

On flange, I have a friend who was given a flange pedal in the early '80s by his parents after asking for an overdrive pedal (maybe the guy in the shop took advantage of them?).  He ended up getting an early TS-9 shortly after that but still has the flanger, which I think was a boss unit.  Never did find one usable sound that you could get out of it that did not sound like something out of a blaxploitation film or a '70s porno film soundtrack

[Kiichi]

On the overdrive side again I can say that while a tubescreamer type is great and everyone should have one that fits him, you always have the middy characteristic of it.

Interesting thing is that I got myself a Maxon OD-9 last week while I was in Sydney precisely to rein in the bass end of my Peavey 6534+ and tighten things up a bit.  I'll see how good a job it does of that (I bought it on the basis of various recommendations) but the point is that in some applications a bottom-end cut or mid-boost might be a good thing.  It just depends on how big your bass is.

Absolutly it can be a good thing, heck my TS type pedal has a switch to cut even more treble and bass while boosting the mids xD
That is why I say that you should have a TS type.
Personally most of the time I do however like my Klone as a treble booster OD with a MXR 10 Band to cut down a bit of the bass more. The bass cut I get from that is just different, not as strong leaving you with that middy tone (which again can be a good thing, but my tone is middy anyhow).

[ericsabbath]

there are many really cheap great sounding quality pedals these days

I own these
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mooer-Pitch-Box-Harmony-harmonizer-Pitch-Shifting-Guitar-Effects-FX-Pedal-/330971116876
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Mooer-eleclady-Analog-Flanger-Guitar-Pedal-w-True-Bypass-eleclady-/121136238795?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item1c344850cb
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MOOER-PEDAL-EFFECTS-SUPER-BENDER-PITCH-SHIFTER-TRUE-BYPASS-833-/281049499873
you can get them even cheaper buying from some chinese online store, like marcmart or aliexpress
I think I paid about US$44 for the small ones and US$98 for the whammy clone (shipped)
the eleclady is amazing and sounds 95% close to the ehx electric mistress, but with a much smaller footprint and costing 1/3 of an ehx

I'm getting this one now
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NUX-TIME-Force-Guitar-Effect-Pedal-Multi-Digital-Delay-Pedal-11-Delay-Effects-/121151731645
from the videos, it sound close enough to the tc electronic nova delay I had

[ericsabbath]

one thing I can't live without for a while is the juansolo baby boobtube I bought from Twinfan
it's a tube driven vox stage with a pentode tube
technically, a very simple circuit that works as a clean preamp or as a clean booster

I use it as a clean booster in front of my modded jmp
I use a low setting so it won't drive the amp too hard (I believe it can boost up to 55db+ in front of the amp)
I set the amp to a mild crunch gain, almost clean with low output pickups
the pedal in front of it adds a nice organic sparkle and a slightlty smoother reponse
I actually forget it is on, but when I turn it off, it's like I'm losing 10% of my tone
when I need high gain, I just turn the od pedal on
my heavy tones are a lot fuller with the overdrive and boobtube combined and a mild gain setting on the amp than having the overdrive alone and more gain from the amp or from the overdrive

but the boobtube sounds great as an actual gain booster as well, although it doesn't distort by itself
if I set the pot to around 60%, I get a very warm and full drive from the amp, kinda like Soundgarden or something
I can't get that with overdrives or with with solid state clean boosters like my zambelli catalinbread picoso clone or the mxr custom audio I had
it' like it expands the raw signal frequencies instead of just amplifying a certain range, which usually results in a "hard" and bassy tone
it seems to add lots of harmonics

it also sounds great as a clean preamp straight to a power amp

[tekbow]

i'll chip in on wahs. Don't just buy a Vox or Crybaby type pedal. They're basically the same thing And def don't spend a bunch of money on Dunlops signature series wahs. They're up to three times the price of a regular dunlop for a fancy enclosure and pennies worth of component changes... there's a range of wahs out there that don't sound like this.

see here for examples:

https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=28027.msg366690#msg366690

for a briefer summary, jusy go look at Wilson Wahs. He makes clones of just about every out of production wah out there, his colorsound is especially good. or you could buy a vintage colorsound (still good deals), or you could buy a vintage series colorsound from macaris in London, which are stunning but.. I do understand that not everyone wants to spend Ģ300 odd on a wah and wait 12 months on a list.

My current fav are Boomerangs, but from a specific seller on ebay. Most Boomers being sold out there will have wrong replacement pots (this is important on these) or worn out ones. The seller has managed to source suitable, tough replacements, so the wahs sound the way theyre supposed to.

If you want details on that PM me.

[gwEm]

i would warm against too much too soon. you might not even like effects and what they do to your sound and playing.

theres alot to be said for a simple setup - but some players get a great sound from their pedal farm.

anyway, these little boxes work out quite expensive if you buy a load of them. why not get a small rack, like a low-end tc electronics thing? and then you can experiment to see what you like.

i love the live sound i get with my board now - it has three physical pedals. but honestly, i am finding the 5 footswitches a bit too much for me. not everyone likes to tap dance.

best sound i ever got was with a jcm800, a tuner and a booster, and it was the easiest to deal with ;)

my message: its fun to experiment with these things, but go easy at first ;) buy secondhand.

[tekbow]

^ of all the advice offered, this is the best. The only part i vaguely disagree with is buy any kind of low end (or indeed or my preferences any) multifx.

Pick an effect type that you want, do your researc on whats right for you, then hit the web for for deals/second hand. One at a time

[JimmyMoorby]

Yeah dont go OTT straight away.

I had a complete overhaul like a madman at one point (Not even gonna get into waht I used before that!) and bought top end stuff from Wampler, Mad Proffesor, Strymon, ISP, Cmat Mods, MXR, Xotic, Keeley and others....
Ended up selling 6 of the 9!

Spent an absolute fortune and lost a fair bit of money selling it on flea bay.  It was all trial and error and brought me to be happy really with what ive got and make informed purchases from that point on but just buy one at a time and send it back if you aint satisfied. One mans cheese is another mans meat

I could recommend things but its all so personal.

[tekbow]

Yeah dont go OTT straight away.

I had a complete overhaul like a madman at one point (Not even gonna get into waht I used before that!) and bought top end stuff from Wampler, Mad Proffesor, Strymon, ISP, Cmat Mods, MXR, Xotic, Keeley and others....
Ended up selling 6 of the 9!

Spent an absolute fortune and lost a fair bit of money selling it on flea bay.  It was all trial and error and brought me to be happy really with what ive got and make informed purchases from that point on but just buy one at a time and send it back if you aint satisfied. One mans cheese is another mans meat

I could recommend things but its all so personal.

^ This is also excellent advice. especially on informed purchases and gear being personal.

I have a Strymon Brigadier, which is the less hot older sister to the El Cap. Everyone goes nuts for the Cap, but at the end of the day, it didn't fit my requirements for features or sound. Stunning sounding delay but not what i was looking for.

If you, in your fervour, see something somewhere that everyone's going nuts for, don't buy it... wait 6 months. and never never never get involved in the hype at TGP