A Crash Course in Rock Guitar – Part III

Hey Everyone!

Hope your guitar quest is going well. So far, we’ve talked guitars, we’ve talked amps…today, we’re going to talk EFFECTS!

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“A Crash Course in Rock Guitar!”

III – Effects

You may or may not have some effects already. If you do – great – you are ahead of the game. You will undoubtedly eventually want some, or NEED some to replicate a song you might be trying to learn or as a key element of your own unique sound or style. Beside that – effects are cool! The allow you to stretch the boundaries of your sound and your imagination.

Today, there are countless effects on the market, in all types of forms, from pedals to rack units to multi-effect pedal boards and even on-board (installed directly in the guitar) effects. For the beginner, I would recomend effect pedals first. They’re the least expensive, and many are actually the best sounding.

Depending on the number of effects you might be using, you will also need short patch cables (to connect the pedals to each other) and a second long cable (again, of decent quality) to run back to your amplifier. If you are an absolute beginner, I would really limit the number of effects you start off with to maybe just a distortion pedal, possibly a chorus or a wah. Depending on exactly what you are using for amplification, you may already have built-in effects. The possible scenarios are endless.

If you happen to be using more than one effect pedal, you should realize that it does matter what order you chain them together, though there are no rules – you will simply change your sound by experimenting with their order. Your amp may also have an effects loop, and if you, you may want to experiment with running your effects through it. Generally, you want to keep effects such as distortion/overdrive, wah and compression on the foor (not in the effect loop), while you may want to try running such effects as delays, chorus and reverb IN the amp’s effect loop. On the floor, try to run compression first, followed by wah, distortion/overdrive, then chorus, flange etc.. Conversely, some folks like the distortion first, followed by the compression, and others yet like the wah to be very first in the chain after the guitar, followed by distortion and compression. Try different combinations to see what YOU like best. In the effect loop, try to run delay before any phase or flanger, followed by reverb. If you don’t have an effects loop, and only have pedals, try the following:

Guitar ->Wah->Compressor->Distortion/Overdrive->Equalizer->delay->phase->flanger->reverb->Amp

Then, Try moving the chain around until you find YOUR sound. You really can’t hurt anything by doing this – just don’t run into anything like this from your speaker jack!! That would be a catastrophe – the only thing you should run a speaker output to is a speaker (using a speaker cable – not a guitar cable).

Just remember – let your effects shape your sound, not BE your sound. Use them as you would spices to make your food taste better. You wouldn’t want to eat a bowl of garlic powder, would you?

Until next time..

Rich

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