GUITAR
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"Indie 500": The Broken West, Prodigy, TV On The Radio, Grand Archives "Indie 500": The Broken West, Prodigy, TV On The Radio, Grand Archives
by vadim
27 Nov 2008 at 5:02am
By: Steve Bishop
A guide
to guitar effects pedals
Electric guitars depend on electromagnetic pickups and amplifiers to produce
their sound, and the very fact that they are electrical makes it possible
to modify the sound electrically/electronically. The guitar and
amplifier themselves have volume and tone controls, but add to this the
effects you can produce with guitar pedals and the
variety of sounds becomes staggering. This simple guide to guitar
effects pedals will show you what's available.
All guitar effects pedals are variations of 4 main
effects:
distortion/overdrive,
dynamics,
reverb/delay and
pitch modulation.
The first 2 work by reshaping the electrical signal, the second two by
augmenting (enhancing) it.
Signal reshaping (distortion/overdrive and dynamics)
Vacuum tube amplifiers were originally used for processing guitar
output. They had a maximum amplification like any amplifier, above
which they clipped the tops off the waveforms. The distortion was found
to be pleasant to many musicians so this distortion/overdrive effect became
popular. Nowadays, the same effect can still be produced using a
vacuum tube (the old way) and many people think this is preferable, as
tubes gradually round off the peaks. Solid state (tubeless) modern devices
will work by chopping off the peaks, which produces a harsher distortion
than tubes. A popular example of a distortion pedal was the fuzz
box.
So a circuit which prevents output signal from reaching a
set limit by clipping is distortion. But you can also get the same effect
by reducing the signal amplification, which is a compression .
This reduces or compresses the gain of high amplitude signal. By setting
the gain high on one of these effects pedals, you can get amazingly
great sustain. Ring modulation takes the guitar signal and adds
a second from a source or oscillator, and the output is
the combined sum and difference. Pitch Shifters are microprocessor-based
devices which shift the frequency base of the guitar signal. This
requires a lot of processing power as it takes the sound and reconstructs
it at a different frequency.
Signal augmentation
The second way that guitar effects pedals work is
by augmenting the signal. For example, flanging takes two copies of the
signal, phase shifts one of them and mixes the results together. It comes
from old reel-to-reel tape practices and creates a characteristic
swirling sound. Phasing also produces a swirling sound, but without
the frequency shifts. Chorus involves splitting the two signals even further
apart, so that they're more than a cycle apart in phase, when you
can hear two distinct signals. It's less pronounced than flanging and
phasing, and tends to thicken the sound, a little like reverb,
the next effect.
Reverb adds back in copies of the original signal with time delays so
short they can't be separately heard. Delay and echo both have enough
delay so the delay is distinguishable to your ear.
All these effects come from the two core methods of reshaping the
sound signal or augmenting it. The theory is all very well, but if you're
interested in effects pedals, you need to go and try some and really
get a feel for what sound you like. Pedals nowadays can create
just about any sound you want, and they also come combined into sets called
multi-effects pedals. With these you can combine effects for almost
limitless combinations of sound.
Learning to play the guitar quickly and easily at http://www.startguitar.com
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