Pedal Your Way to Sonic Bliss

Guitar players are always on a sonic quest looking to get the sounds they hear in their heads out and onto their pedal boards. Achieving this acoustic alchemy can be tricky and it is different for each player. One is looking for a warm, bluesy slide tone, another a shrieking, shredding metal attack and a third that crystal, glassy, clean tone. 

But regardless of those sounds in your head, there are some guidelines…not rules because after all we are musicians and we break all the rules when looking for our tones…but guidelines that at least get our musical journey off on the right note. 

So let’s consider which pedals might get us to our ideal sound and in what order we might place them in our quest for our sonic holy grail.  

Stay in Tune

Tuners usually come first as you want a perfectly tuned signal hitting your cool effects. You can get this job done cheaply and effectively with some of the clip on tuners that have become so essential in the last few years. Apex, Snark and Planet waves all make clip on tuners for under $30 that many players love for their small size and ease of use. But professionals like the idea of muting their guitars while they tune and this requires a stomp-box styled tuner like the popular Boss TU-3 ($99), the great Korg Pitch Black or the tune-all-the-strings-at-once TC Electronics PolyTune.

Next up comes the Wah Wah Pedal as this pedal sweeps the entire frequency range, it is best closer to the beginning of the signal chain where it can find the purest signal with the most range to affect. The classic Dunlop crybaby ($112), Vox and Morley are all good choices with many adding distortion boosts and effects for added versatility or voicings specific to artists like Jimi Hendrix, Zakk Wylde or Buddy Guy. 

Squeeze me

This is the effect most people find the most difficult to hear. What a compressor does is to even out your playing making louder notes softer and softer notes louder. Country players and finger-style guitarists will find it invaluable. The MXR Dyna Comp ($112), Seymour Duncan Vice Grip ($249) or the Diamond CPR1 ($249) all do a great job at ensuring your “chicken pickin” is smooth as glass. 

I can't hear you!

This is usually the first pedal most players add after a tuner. These overdrive or distortion pedals add the gain, crunch and grit to your sound. These two pedals get that desirable “dirty sound” in different ways. 

Boost pedals overdrive your amplifier’s preamp making the tubes run hotter and inducing that warm overdriven tone. 

Distortion pedals clip the sound waves and get dirty by chopping up (in a good way) the signal. 

You need to experiment here to see if you like the boost first and distortion second or if you prefer the distortion first and the boosted signal second. Either way there are literally hundreds of distortion pedals available from around $60 to well over $500 each. Popular choices include the orange Boss Distortion DS-1, the Metal Zone MT-2 and the Blues Driver BD-2. Ibanez makes the most famous overdrive the rugged Tube Screamer TS-9 for a tried and true sound. MXR, Marshall, Way Huge, Electro-Harmonix, Fulltone, Maxon, Diamond, Strymon, TC Electronics and many other boutique manufacturers all make interesting and unique overdrives and distortion units. Here lies the heart of your tone, all you need is time and patience as you sift through these many grains of sand looking for your diamond. Long and McQuade carries a huge selection and will give you the time and space to find the perfect fit. 

The world of modulated tones comes next.

Pulsating Tremolo, watery vibrato, lush chorus, warbly phasers and swooping flangers, any pedal that affects the sound by shifting time and space is called a modulation effect. Simple ones like the classic Boss Super Chorus CH-1 ($99) to the mid-priced Diamond Tremolo TRM-1 ($249) to the ultimate all-in-one Stymon Mobius (call for pricing). These pedals add that dreamy, ethereal quality found on records by Pink Floyd and Flaming Lips. Add one of these to our rig if you need to thicken, modulate, crush, or squeeze your sound.

Reverb, the ultimate thickener

This might be the second pedal to add to our collection after your distortion or overdrive. This effect adds an echo to your sound from that found in a small club to those massive ones we find in stadiums that seem to never end. Try the Hall of Fame by TC electronics ($209), the Holy Grail Neo by Electro-Harmonix ($165) or the fabled Stymon BlueSky.

Digital and Analogue Delays

This effect adds repeats to your notes that trail off adding to the fullness of your sound. Try the analogue MXR Carbon Copy ($209), the Boss DD-3 Digital Delay ($179), or the Line 6 Delay Modeler ($339).

Make it Go to 11

A volume pedal increases or decreases the overall volume of the signal and can be placed at the front or behind the signal chain. Ernie Ball, Dunlop and Morley should be auditioned. Essential for those great volume swells we love so much. 

More Power

To keep all these pedals powered you will need to look at a dedicated power supply. Most pedals operate on 9-volts, but some of the larger ones may require 18 or even 24-volts. Be sure to purchase a power supply that can power the number of pedals you own or plan to own and at the voltage each needs to operate successfully. Voodoo labs, iSpot and MXR all make units that will power from 5 to 10 pedals flawlessly.

I've Been Framed

You need to corral all this sonic soup onto a pedal board frame. Boss makes a great small unit but for variety and quality PedalTrain is your best bet. From their Nano ($99) to their huge Classic Pro ($404.99) all with soft or hard cases, there is a size for everyone. 

Cables

Wiring it all up is simple with Yorkville pedal board right angle cables in a rainbow of colours. Cables can be controversial with many players claiming that the sounds can be drastically compromised by inferior cabling. Many send as much on their cables as they do a favourite pedal. 

Remember what we talked about at the beginning of this column. There is no right or wrong order so try mixing things up a bit you may find a combination that suits you perfectly and gives you a sound all your own.