Basic Guitar Effects

[Tisa Ammann]

Overdrivepedals are very different to distortion pedals - and without getting too technical - they push your guitar signal harder, rather than changing the sound completely like a distortion pedal does.

This comes down to personal preference, but both options sound great. Some industry standard delay pedals are the Electro Harmonix Memory Boy Delay Guitar Effects Pedal, BOSS DD-3 Digital Delay, the Strymon Timeline Delay and the MXR M169 Carbon Copy Analog Delay Guitar Pedal.

One of the most widely known and widely respected boost pedals is the MXR Micro Amp, as is the Orange Two Stroke Boost EQ Pedal and the Blackstar LT Boost Pedal.

Chorus pedals actually make your guitar sound like there are a variety of different guitarists playing the same thing that you are playing, but with a different guitar and slightly out of time with you.

An EQ pedal has been designed to allow you to tune certain parameters of your sound such as the bass, middle and treble frequencies. They are predominantly used by more experienced guitarists who want to add or take away specific bands of sound.

A compressor pedal is another type of pedal that you could class as more of a tool than an effect. It essentially takes all the dynamics out of your playing and ensures every note you play is the same volume.

When you engage this pedal, regardless of how hard you play the string, it will sound the same in terms of volume. These are favoured by bass players as they ensure each note can be heard correctly, but they are also used by guitarists who like to solo as they add sustain to your playing.

A tremolo allows you to change the speed at which the volume drops happen and how severe the cut off is. You can have it set to completely cut your sound out or just gate it, which allows a certain amount of sound through at each interval.

For example, if you play an open E string and then play the E string on the 12th fret, it will sound the same, just an octave higher. You can set an octave to play the higher or lower notes or both at the same time. This is ideal for those who want to really thicken up their sound, and they are often used by heavy metal guitarists to make solos and riffs sound really cool!

If you want to learn more about guitar effects pedals, or need to know how to put a pedal board together complete with all the accessories, power supplies and patch cables to create a full live and recording rig, check out our How to Put a Pedal Board Together Guide. We hope you've enjoyed our beginners guide to guitar effects pedals, but if you need more information check out a full selection of guitar effects pedals over at PMT Online or call in to your local PMT Store to speak to any of our Experts about getting the best guitar effects pedals to suit your needs.

Guitar pedals allow you to add cool effects to your playing. Guitar pedals can help you do a variety of things, from adding a layer of distortion or fuzz to your playing, changing your acoustics and tone, and many more ways to carve out a unique sound of your own.

Guitar effects pedals can also help you emulate the sound and style of some of your guitar heroes. Chances are, there are a few guitarists who may have prompted you to want to start playing in the first place. Using guitar effects pedals can help you achieve a sound similar to some of your favorite players.

So as not to have a jumbled mess of cables connecting your pedals to each other, you can buy shorter patch cables designed to link your effects pedals together without worrying about getting your foot tangled in the wires when playing.

Our pick for a compression pedal for beginners: Compugilist Compressor / DistortionThe Compugilist Compressor / Distortion pedal is a 2-in-1 pedal that allows you to switch between compression, distortion, or combine the two effects. Not only does this pedal give you the option to play with unfettered distortion, it also gives you the option to dial it back with compression. As an added bonus, the Compugilist also features a bass boost switch to enhance your low end.

The Acoustic Preverb effects pedal works to enhance the naturally beautiful tone of an acoustic guitar, offering three reverb settings meant to complement hollow-bodied guitars. Notch filter and Polarity controls help to diminish feedback, while the adjustable Tilt EQ knob helps you to better equalize your sound.

Fender Play can help you find added inspiration through bite-sized lessons that allow you to learn to play guitar anywhere, any time. Browse through our library of hundreds of songs and start playing something new. Sign up for your free trial of Fender Play today!

This shows using a signal generator. For the guitar you just need a phone jack, plug in like normal (in and out) and the tip (signal) goes into R3 (wire the tip of the jack to it) and the ground is chassis and connect to any ground point there. Same on the output.

Im trying to understand the gain knob connection, are the middle and right legs connected together or is the middle leg going down to the diodes and the right leg going to the capacitor? Separate connections? The two green lines are connected and its hard to understand if they are joined or not. Plz help. Tia

You can use a basic resistor divider, or go with something a tiny bit more sophisticated if you have a spare opamp: _u-mz2IXK5xBLgCjQfTHyk1YXIBoPmcLrfFfw-BDIulUawg2JJBYATb7wTnXD9N8DmYPpj3f3AbWHWKs3TiiDBmeBsitlNuwzCw

I was going to use your simple overdrive circuit to breadboard to test something for fun. Could I change it to a Distortion by just moving the diodes into a hard clipping position? Or would you recommend making any changes to capacitor or resistor values to make it sound better as a Distortion?

The opamp is biased to 4.5 volts. This is to center the signal around the DC offset of about 4.5 volts, which is necessary because we are powering the opamp with 9V and ground (0V). Since the (-) supply is 0V, the output of the opamp cannot go below 0, so we center the signal at 4.5 V by biasing the opamp, then use a capacitor before the output of the circuit to block this DC value. In other words, the capacitor removes the 4.5 V DC component of the signal, effectively recentering the signal at 0 before it moves into the input stage of the next circuit in the chain, where the whole process will happen again.

Everything is working as expected expect for the Noise. There is a lot of noise in the output which when played via an amp amplifies the noise as well making it much noisier. Any possible solution to remove/reduce the noise in the circuit?

This is amazing. You can learn all of this by reading a bunch about different band filters and source followers and reading explanations of circuit teardowns, but having it step by step like this is clever.

Im so much appeciated this tuturial. Even though i have a little knowledge in electronics. This tuturial will help us. Its easy to read and understand, unlike others hard to understand..thank you so much sirl

I see your voltage divider circuit uses resistors and capacitors to get 4.5V from a 9v source, I am trying to find a circuit like that that gives me 5V instead, but all I seem to run into online are ones built with resistors only, why do you use the capacitors? And how would I modify your circuit to produce 5V instead?

Hi! I have a couple questions!

1. What does the biasing do to the circuit? Does it add more headroom before the op amp clips?

2. Why is the capacitor on the output of the op amp polarized?

3. Do the capacitors (parallel with gain, on input, on GND of gain) help only to smooth the tone, or are they for decoupling?

Also, I had to remove the C21 (100 pF) cap that was across the diodes; with it in place, there was almost no distortion (overdrive). Without this cap, the overdrive circuit works. Not sure why this is the case; is the value of C21 in the schematic wrong. Besides the 1N4148 diodes, have you others tried other diodes to get varying clipping (distortion) sounds? I tried LEDs and noticed a difference.

I have grown to really appreciate amp and pedal builders. I have dabbled in amp mods unsuccessfully but want to get into pedals. Brian, thank you for extending your knowledge to the guitar community. I am attempting to jump out and build my first pedal. My question is on the power section, the components laid out: battery, C30, R32, R33, R41, & C27, is that pretty much standard for adding the power section to the main circuit?

Super basic question here. First step you say we put the signal through a 10k resistor and a 470nF cap. Ok. Why? How does this affect the sound? Why did you pick those values? Is it necessary or preference? What does it actually DO? Throughout the post, it would be helpful to know these types of things. Thank you for actually taking the time to explain and to interface with people, it seems a rarity these days and is very much appreciated ?

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